1997 Mercury Villager Owner Guide 1st Printing - Page 53

Electronic Sound Systems When several broadcast towers are present (common in metropolitan areas), several stations may overload the receiver, resulting in considerable station changing, mixing and distortion. Automatic gain control circuitry for both AM and FM bands has been incorporated into this system to reduce strong signal capture and overload. All About Radio Frequencies The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) establish the frequencies that AM and FM radio stations may use for their broadcasts. The allowable frequencies are: AM: 530, 540...1700, 1710 kHz in 10 kHz steps; FM: 87.9, 88.1...107.7, 107.9 MHz in 0.2 MHz steps. Not all frequencies will be assigned to a given area. This radio will tune to each of these frequencies using manual tuning and no fine tuning is necessary as radio stations may not use other frequencies. Some FM radio stations advertise a "rounded-off" frequency which is not the frequency on which they actually broadcast. For example, a radio station that is assigned a frequency of 98.7 MHz may call itself "Radio 99" even though 99.0 MHz is not an allowable FM broadcast frequency. 51