'Making Waves' with Travelers Information Stations

Spring 2002

'Making Waves' with Advisory Radio

Travelers Information Stations are affordable, effective broadcast tools, according to Oregon State University and interpreters across the country interviewed.
The National Park Service supports the idea, too.

An Oregon Sea Grant (OSG) educational video Making Waves with Low Power AM Radio "...shows how organizations around the United States are already successfully using...innovative, affordable technology, even without previous broadcast experience" — quite a comment from folks with nothing to gain by touting Travelers Information Station (TIS) radio. The Making Waves project was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association's Office of Sea Grant and Extramural Programs, the United States Department of Commerce and by appropriations from the Oregon State legislature.

On the video, a range of users, including "parks, chambers of commerce, museums, ports and highway authorities" talk about how they use TIS to reach "travelers, location visitors, and others."

"Imagine how you can do the same!," says OSG in literature describing the show.

The CD version, reproduced collaboratively with the National Parks Wireless Program Center, runs 18 minutes and plays on any Windows PC or Macintosh computer. QuickTime software is included. (See below to request your copy.)

Frank Weed, who served as chief of the National Park Service's (NPS) Wireless Program Center, in a recent letter to park managers and staff that accompanied complementary CDs provided them, summarized the history of NPS use of TIS radio stations:

"Perhaps you are aware of the benefits of Travelers Information Stations in disseminating information to the motoring public.... Those stations are the low power informational radio broadcasts designed to reach the motoring public in the common AM radio band [530 to 1700 kHz].... Initially conceived and developed as an experimental broadcast medium at Yellowstone National Park in the early 1970s, the radio stations and the technology utilized have matured from frail tube-type transmitter equipment and audio tapes to totally reliable and fully solid state transmitter equipment with digital audio that can be recorded/re-recorded from a distant location via dial-up connection. Today, the National Park Service has over 175 of these broadcast units in operation nationally." ISS has, for years, proudly served as the Wireless Center's radio station supplier.