So this is why Howard Stern keeps interrupting KKJZ-FM

So I'm going along listening to jazz on KKJZ-FM (88.1) when, all of a sudden, Howard Stern and Co. take over the frequency for a minute or so. WTF! I wondered what was going on ... and now I know.

The L.A Times reports that it's the RF modulators for people's in-car Sirius Satellite Radio devices:

The invasion is caused by wireless devices that people use to listen to their portable satellite radio receiver, iPod or other MP3 player through their car radios. These devices, called modulators, are sometimes so powerful that they inadvertently send signals into nearby vehicles such as Lockwood's.

The interference has been a major problem for NPR because many "plug-and-play" modulators come preset to the 88.1 FM frequency, which is used by 36 NPR stations, including WXLU in Peru, N.Y., which serves the Burlington area, and KKJZ, which broadcasts from the Cal State Long Beach campus.

...

Sirius and XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. acknowledged in Securities and Exchange Commission filings this year that some of the devices packaged with their radios were too powerful. Both said they had been working with the FCC to address the problem. This summer and fall, XM and Sirius announced new FCC certification for some of the portable radios.

On the other hand, if you want some free Howard Stern in the morning, just find a driver listening to it in the car, tune to 88.1 FM and tail him/her.

Points of order: While KKJZ is a public radio station, it isn't a National Public Radio station. First of all, NPR is a producer and distributor of programming, not an owner of stations:

NPR serves a growing audience of 26 million Americans each week in partnership with more than 800 independently operated, noncommercial public radio stations. Each NPR Member Station serves local listeners with a distinctive combination of national and local programming.

And KKJZ, owned by Cal State Long Beach, doesn't offer any NPR content that I know of. The station has been run since 1987 by a nonprofit group called Pacific Public Radio, which the university is currently in the process of dumping for radio station owner Sol Levine (KMZT, KKGO) in the hopes of making more money in the public radio game. (What? It's about making money?)