Don't worry about what I can do to mitigate my problem, I have the electronic and RF skills+kit to deal with this.

My point is that John F. Consumer will likely conclude that his "radio controlled clock" is dying, throw it out, waste money on another one, and maybe never make the connection to his (or his neighbors) lawnmower robot.

And more importantly, that if popular enough, such (badly designed) signals will eventually make VLF timekeeping useless for everybody.