You bet, it is role reversal, even commercial stations made noise in the press and on the air about going stereo, it was a big deal. In the mid-1970s our newspaper had a radio schedule printed, with a list of AM and FM stations, and in the FM section, if a station was followed with one asterisk * it was stereo, two ** meant stereo 24 hours.
There was a station that broadcast talk during the day with the stereo generator off, and then would turn on the stereo at night when they switched over to music. I read about a station that would promote turning on stereo for music programs. The DJ would play a fanfare for it, switch the stereo on, and the stereo light would glow on listeners' radios, how cool that would have been..
On one of the radio boards they were talking about the earliest days of FM stereo where there was supposedly even a rule that if a station was broadcasting a monophonic program, they should turn off the station's stereo.
Another thing that was important in the 1970s, higher end stereo systems, where a receiver with FM stereo was a selling point for music listening.
As radio experimenters, getting stereo at home was a delight. My first was the Ramsey FM-10 Kit, 1990. It worked, but with disappointing quality. A few years later I worked with WOLF-FM, and they had Panaxis which was much better.
I'm not with this dude at Radio World about turning off stereo. I think that even if you're making a few listeners more satisfied that it's worth it.
