Growing up I remember hearing the local radio station on our telephone.
Ma Bell finally cleaned it up after a while, but then in high school I
worked with the Chief Engineer at that station in his backyard
electronics shop. He told me that in the field out behind the antenna
he'd measured nearly a volt of signal strength in the air. It was only
5000 watts AM, 3000 FM.
I worked there as a DJ my senior year of high school. Yes, it was fun.
One of my duty stations was a transmitter site in Puerto Rico. One day
I was checking the grounding wires on utility poles on the base. One
pole had a ground wire that had broken about 5 feet above the ground.
When I touched the end remaining on the pole I got a burn in my fingers
and hand. The pole was about half a mile (maybe more) from the antenna
for a million watt ELF transmitter used for communications to submarines.
When I was at Keesler AFB for tech school, they ran the search radar on low
power and pointed skyward. We were at least 3/4 mile from the antenna.
Big investigation as to how the antenna got rearmed lower after a couple
people in the barracks complained available up the fluorescent desk lamp
blinking.