posted on Oct, 7 2007 @ 01:17 PM
I assume you were listening to AM Radio as most talk shows are AM. I have quite a bit of experience with AM Radio. AM is VERY prone to all kinds of
interference and fluctuations. So much of AM is affected by atmospheric conditions (as opposed to FM which is line-of-sight). That is why at night you
can pick up AM stations from Hundreds of miles away, as opposed to daytime when you might run out of range of even a local AM station by just driving
a few miles away. This occurs due to the conditions of the Ionosphere, which during the daytime is very unstable due to heating. At night the
Ionosphere calms down, and allows for greater transmission distance, as the radio waves can then bounce up further into the Ionosphere. There has been
plenty of times when I am listening to an AM show in the evening, and you can hear a third voice just appear out of nowhere (not the host, nor the
guest/caller). This is cross-station interference. Talk to any AM radio operators and you will hear all kinds of stories of strange things happening.
The one phenomenon which almost every major AM operator has encountered at one point in time is an echo of their own transmission. I believe it is
called the Long Delayed Echo Radio Phenomena, but there is a HUGE delay in the echo, and no one has ever been able to account for why this occurs.
Some have even talked of 20 second delays, and this is absolutely enormous when considering that it only takes 1/7 of a second for these waves to pass
around the Earth. You can also run across other kinds of interference on AM Radio such as crackles, pops, and hisses. It can be affected by ANYTHING
going on in the Atmosphere.
[edit on 10-7-2007 by TheAgentNineteen]