Buzz Off!

From Nik Goodman:

I’ve just visited client station KRONEHIT based in Vienna, who are just celebrating audience figures (from their measurement system in Austria called ‘Radio Test’) that put them well over the ½ Million listeners mark. Well done to all the hardworking team there. One of the fun initiatives that I heard about while I was there, is a fantastic idea that I had to share with you.

In summer, as we know, there are a lot of insects about... especially mosquitoes, which if you are near any water, can be particularly bad. So KRONEHIT are offering listeners a 'Mosquito Free Summer'! How? Well... with a little bit of technical trickery!

They are embedding a silent tone of 14,850 Hertz in the signal, which imitates the buzzing of female mosquitoes. Therefore other female mosquitoes who hear this tone, are apparently repelled by the sound, and don’t come near it! Brilliant!

Therefore, the message is simple. If you’re outdoors, get KRONEHIT playing on the radio and you’ll enjoy your first summer without mosquitoes!! Genius!

Now, there’s a lot of debate as to whether high frequencies actually repel mosquitoes or not.... but that’s not the point. The initiative is quirky enough for people to try and it and stands out as something really interesting when you hear it.

When I was told about this, I didn’t know if it was some sort of whacky radio stunt or not... but they are actually doing it for real, with a real frequency generator on the transmission chain. And I’m sure they’ll be lots of listeners who say how brilliantly it works too.