AM HD Test

[KB1OKL]

Unless one is in the 100mVM coverage area, building penetration for AM is nil anyway. Have you heard of a Faraday Cage? Skywave certainly has no building penetration, so the argument about somehow listening outside the market is somehow an advantage, doesn't wash. Where I live in Stafford VA., I hear WBZ, WLW, and WCBS in analog and HD during the fall and winter after 5PM. But I'm a realist, if I couldn't hear those stations, I wouldn't lose any sleep or be upset either. DX'ers and old-timers longing for the good ol' days, (that I would also argue weren't that great anyway), is one of the many things that's holding any future for improvement or even survival of the AM band, back. And yes, I've been engineer for several AM stations since the 70's, so I'm VERY familiar with how AM stations worked, and work now.

How many people live in skyscrapers?

 

[semoochie]

How many people live in skyscrapers?

I would say "millions" in New York alone!

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Unless one is in the 100mVM coverage area, building penetration for AM is nil anyway. Have you heard of a Faraday Cage? Skywave certainly has no building penetration, so the argument about somehow listening outside the market is somehow an advantage, doesn't wash. Where I live in Stafford VA., I hear WBZ, WLW, and WCBS in analog and HD during the fall and winter after 5PM. But I'm a realist, if I couldn't hear those stations, I wouldn't lose any sleep or be upset either. DX'ers and old-timers longing for the good ol' days, (that I would also argue weren't that great anyway), is one of the many things that's holding any future for improvement or even survival of the AM band, back. And yes, I've been engineer for several AM stations since the 70's, so I'm VERY familiar with how AM stations worked, and work now.

Really? You going to insult an RF engineer by asking if I know what a Faraday cage is? I am hardly a DX'er longing for the good old days of DX. It was ALWAYS about the music for me, not DX. I longed to be in an area that had a decent signal. Not for more distant DX. Great attempt at marginalizing an HD opponent, but it doesn't work. Everybody sees how HD advocates twist everything I say. I talk about range - you turn it around to building penetration. I talk about building penetration, you turn around and say it doesn't matter. But I remember posts from HD advocates about static free reception in buildings. Both range and building penetration are the same problem - HD is a power vampire that hurts a stations' bottom line by limiting how many people can hear them. The radio business in New York City is very different from the wide open spaces out West. You care about 30 miles or so, then people are probably listening to the next major metropolitan station. That doesn't happen in Texas, where you can go hundreds of miles between major metropolitan areas. A 60 mile difference in range can encompass more than 100 towns of populations of 3000 people or so. That is a market of 300,000 - and would rank by itself as a medium sized market. So yes - a station in Texas that loses 60 miles to coverage is going to care, that could be 10% or more of its audience and in today's razor thin margins, it counts! Take a major station in Texas like WBAP or WOAI, the difference can be 150 miles. That could easily double the number of listeners! So while an individual town might not matter, you take that vast donut shaped area gained when WBAP and WOAI dropped HD - it matters, a LOT. The engineers that made the decision were acting in the best interest of the stations employing them, and helped the station's bottom line. The radio business in New York City? Just one market 1400 miles away. We - don't - CARE! - how many people are living in skyscrapers. We can go a couple of months without even thinking about New York City.

HD AM? It might work for somebody, but it doesn't work in the wide open spaces of the West, which is 2/3 of the land area of the US and that isn't even considering Alaska. HD AM? Don't make me laugh! Tiny little circles of coverage in cities hundreds of miles apart.

 

[Kelly A]

Really? You going to insult an RF engineer by asking if I know what a Faraday cage is? I am hardly a DX'er longing for the good old days of DX. It was ALWAYS about the music for me, not DX. I longed to be in an area that had a decent signal. Not for more distant DX. Great attempt at marginalizing an HD opponent, but it doesn't work. Everybody sees how HD advocates twist everything I say. I talk about range - you turn it around to building penetration. I talk about building penetration, you turn around and say it doesn't matter. The engineers that made the decision were acting in the best interest of the stations employing them, and helped the station's bottom line. The radio business in New York City? Just one market 1400 miles away. We - don't - CARE! - how many people are living in skyscrapers. We can go a couple of months without even thinking about New York City.

HD AM? It might work for somebody, but it doesn't work in the wide open spaces of the West, which is 2/3 of the land area of the US and that isn't even considering Alaska. HD AM? Don't make me laugh! Tiny little circles of coverage in cities hundreds of miles apart.

My intent is not to insult or marginalize anyone here. You certainly have a right to an opinion, even if its wrong. Nor am I for or against HD radio of any sort. What I am against, are people making claims that I've experienced otherwise. Don't care for HD-whatever or technical evolution of a fading media? Got it, that's pretty clear. But posting about how HD reduces coverage or skywave is just flat out incorrect, in spite of whatever theory you've cooked up.

 

[KB1OKL]

My intent is not to insult or marginalize anyone here. You certainly have a right to an opinion, even if its wrong. Nor am I for or against HD radio of any sort. What I am against, are people making claims that I've experienced otherwise. Don't care for HD-whatever or technical evolution of a fading media? Got it, that's pretty clear. But posting about how HD reduces coverage or skywave is just flat out incorrect, in spite of whatever theory you've cooked up.

I've lived in the same place for 60 years and WBZ used to boom in here until they turned on the hash machine, it is marginal at best now and sounds like krap to boot on analog radios. It is pretty much common knowledge amongst, woops, got to say that dirty word, dXers, that IBOC impacts range. But what's far worse is that it hashes up 30+ khz of space around it's signal. You know that signal that nobody but engineers and dXers know about?

 

[davideduardo]

HD is a power vampire that hurts a stations' bottom line by limiting how many people can hear them.

I don't follow this statement. The analog signal is not reduced by a single solitary watt when HD is added. The HD transmitter is a separate device, with a separate power limit.

So yes - a station in Texas that loses 60 miles to coverage is going to care, that could be 10% or more of its audience and in today's razor thin margins, it counts!

Unless the allegedly lost coverage is inside the local rated market (or trading area for unrated markets), the station won't care. It has been decades since out of market coverage could be monetized.

Take a major station in Texas like WBAP or WOAI, the difference can be 150 miles. That could easily double the number of listeners!

The only "salable" listeners for either of those two stations are the ones in the Dallas / Ft. Worth MSA or the San Antonio MSA. Any listeners outside that area are perhaps seen as a free bonus by an advertiser who even knows about that added coverage, but the stations don't get any revenue from that listening.

The engineers that made the decision were acting in the best interest of the stations employing them, and helped the station's bottom line.

My guess is that the decisions were made at the corporate level, with an analysis of the operating costs of HD and the need to replace or make redundant existing HD gear as the original installs are getting older. The cost benefit analysis failed, and corporate management likely also looked at the fact that less than 200 of the 5000 AMs in the US have even bothered to convert and said that HD on AM is not where resources should go.

HD AM? It might work for somebody, but it doesn't work in the wide open spaces of the West, which is 2/3 of the land area of the US and that isn't even considering Alaska. HD AM? Don't make me laugh! Tiny little circles of coverage in cities hundreds of miles apart.

Your geography lesson is irrelevant. Except for farm stations, of which only a couple ever tried HD, out of market are coverage is not of much concern to stations. And the facilities in the smaller, unrated markets were not converting to HD anyway... so discussing rural areas is somewhat of a moot point. If you follow the revenue, you will find that it matches the defined radio market boundaries, not coverage maps.

 

[davideduardo]

There are still some stations that care about sky wave at night, a good example is CFZM out of Toronto, another is WSM out of Nashville, these two stations are well known all across the country, neither has EVER had IBOC and both sound great and really get out there.

CFZM has not considered HD because Canada has not authorized it as the digital system for that nation.

WSM likely does not consider HD because of several factors. First, ground conductivity is relatively poor around Nashville and the 50 kw signal barely covers the Metro Survey Area in the daytime, so HD with more limited coverage would cover only a fraction of the market. Then there is the fact that the station is 22nd in billings in Nashville, with even one of the daytime Spanish language stations billing considerably more... so investing in a lot of equipment is likely not seen as useful.

Radio revenues come almost entirely from the local metro, and from 6 AM to 7 PM dayparts. Even if either of the two stations mentioned could monetize nights or overnights, it's not likely that HD is even an issue to them.

Radio needs to get it's head out of the hole in the ground it is now in. A lot of people care about good radio like that, the problem is the dearth of good quality AM stations that broadcast music. AM radio bought a bill of goods 20 or 30 years ago that the only thing that sells is talk, that's baloney. If radio people are so smart why is AM radio supposedly going the way of the dinosaur?

Two generations of American have grown up on FM. They don't like the sound of AM, and are unlikely to use it for anything other than sports and some other spoken word programming. Remember that AM had almost all the music listening when the FCC mandated the end to larger market AM / FM simulcasts in 1967. Within a decade, FM had taken over half of all radio listening, and close to 2/3 of all music listening from AM even though the big AM stations had excellent programming.

Or, look at Canada where something like 60% of all AMs have chosen to move to FM. Then there is Mexico, where their Congress has declared that AM is no longer economically viable and given a path whereby 85% of all Mexican AMs will move to FM and the AM licenses will be permanently deleted. All over the world AM station counts are declining, with many countries essentially eliminating all AM or all but a few heritage stations.

The issues surrounding HD are just symptoms of the larger issues that AM faces.

 

[davideduardo]

How many people live in skyscrapers?

The term used was "buildings" and not "skyscrapers". AM reception in multi-family buildings is getting more and more difficult due to noise generated by CPUs and CFLs and dimmers and such, and reception of skywave in apartments and other larger buildings without an outside antenna or very favorable conditions is inconsistent at best.

Even in smaller towns, apartment dwellers have the same issues, made all the worse by the fact that most smaller community stations are relatively low powered and don't penetrate structures very well.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

My intent is not to insult or marginalize anyone here. You certainly have a right to an opinion, even if its wrong. Nor am I for or against HD radio of any sort. What I am against, are people making claims that I've experienced otherwise. Don't care for HD-whatever or technical evolution of a fading media? Got it, that's pretty clear. But posting about how HD reduces coverage or skywave is just flat out incorrect, in spite of whatever theory you've cooked up.

As for marginalizing - any time you make a comment trying to characterize another forum member as out of touch with the present, nostalgic for the past, a fanboy, or other really NASTY thing I have been called on this board (not necessarily by you), it is an ad hominem attack and by the laws of debate, it loses the debate. Period. Insults are beneath the professional nature of this board and is online bullying.

If AM is a fading delivery medium, I submit it is as much programming as it is the increase of interference. Banal, inane liberal / conservative talk, slob sports, foreign language, bad preaching, etc. It is hardly compelling programming. I can truthfully say I hear more of interest on the software defined radio in the Netherlands than I do on US AM. I can hear American oldies on at least 5 or 6 frequencies, other interesting local music on other frequencies. I bought a used car earlier this year. It was a month before I discovered AM didn't work in it - bad antenna. Because - there is ZERO - nothing - nada on the AM band in Houston worth listening to. Foreign languages babbling in my ear, slob sports, opinions of people with low IQ on talk radio, preaching, really bad rim shots that always seem to default to country - I wouldn't care if a got a car that didn't have an AM band or a cell phone without an AM band.

My range tests are not just casual. There were carefully done in a scientific manner, on stations before and after conversion to HD. In one case, an FM station converted, then dropped HD repeatedly while I was driving the same route from Dallas to Houston. The difference between HD and non-HD FM was dramatic. As is the difference on AM. When WBAP goes from being receivable to Roswell to barely making it to Lubbock, my mind comes to the logical conclusion that AM HD is range limiting as well. And - I noticed another poster pulled the shell game on me - again - and it is getting very old: I talk range they talk about rural markets having no meaning. If I talk about building penetration they deny it. Well, I had a 30,000 Agilent network analyzer I was using to test wireless mouse range. On my lunch hour, it was very easy for me to switch frequencies and compare HD and non-HD stations from the same antenna farm. Penetration difference was DRAMATIC. As a scientist and an engineer, I don't make these claims lightly. I have a lot of careful, repeatable observations to support them. And I am NOT under control of iBiquity or the HD alliance, so I am free to report the observations without fear for my job. There is a coverage, range, and building penetration problem on both bands, and it is huge. If you HD advocates don't like observable facts - go fix your darn system! Don't waste time complaining to me about it, don't marginalize me, don't call me a liar - you may motivate me to publish findings in respected journals!

Oh and I am not the only one reporting differences in the signal with HD vs. non-HD. Look in the recent messages. I didn't prompt those responses. And recently in Houston KHPT dropped HD for a couple of weeks. Other people reported a fantastic increase in range and coverage. Its real, folks - insulting me won't change that!

 

[Kelly A]

Wow, long post. Okay I'll see if I can take them in order and be succinct:

* (First paragraph response) Again, I never intentionally meant to insult you, don't know your background etc. What I challenged was your claims. I'm sorry if others have called you names or been insulting. Just for the record, I didn't call you names, promote HD radio, or anything of the sort. There is no need to lump me into the group who may have in the past.

* (Second paragraph response) I can't speak to whatever test you ran. As David rightfully pointed out, the digital sidebands are typically created by separate transmission source either combined into a common antenna, or transmitter via a separate antenna. There are some transmitters which have the bandwidth and headroom to generate both digital and analog modulated carriers, but they aren't that prevalent. Unless there is something really messed up with a particular antenna or filter network, there should be no difference in field strength that would affect the analog broadcast.

* Again, I can't confirm or deny what listeners post on a bulletin board without knowing all the test equipment, antennas, conditions, antenna(s), and test criteria. Everything else is nothing more than unsubstantiated claims and hearsay. I've actually done qualified and benchmarked field tests and have found none of what you claim. Not trying to insult you, just relaying the facts as an industry professional.

 

[KB1OKL]

The term used was "buildings" and not "skyscrapers". AM reception in multi-family buildings is getting more and more difficult due to noise generated by CPUs and CFLs and dimmers and such, and reception of skywave in apartments and other larger buildings without an outside antenna or very favorable conditions is inconsistent at best.

Even in smaller towns, apartment dwellers have the same issues, made all the worse by the fact that most smaller community stations are relatively low powered and don't penetrate structures very well.

Well then building penetration is far from nil, it is probably close to 100% for buildings as long as they are not made of metal or have aluminum siding. And noise is one of the things Kintronics brought to the commissioner's attention, if theFCC enforced part 15 the noise would be eliminated or at least reduced. The FCC has not cared one whit for AM for years now, it's about time they paid it some attention.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Wow, long post. Okay I'll see if I can take them in order and be succinct:

* (First paragraph response) Again, I never intentionally meant to insult you, don't know your background etc. What I challenged was your claims. I'm sorry if others have called you names or been insulting. Just for the record, I didn't call you names, promote HD radio, or anything of the sort. There is no need to lump me into the group who may have in the past.

* (Second paragraph response) I can't speak to whatever test you ran. As David rightfully pointed out, the digital sidebands are typically created by separate transmission source either combined into a common antenna, or transmitter via a separate antenna. There are some transmitters which have the bandwidth and headroom to generate both digital and analog modulated carriers, but they aren't that prevalent. Unless there is something really messed up with a particular antenna or filter network, there should be no difference in field strength that would affect the analog broadcast.

* Again, I can't confirm or deny what listeners post on a bulletin board without knowing all the test equipment, antennas, conditions, antenna(s), and test criteria. Everything else is nothing more than unsubstantiated claims and hearsay. I've actually done qualified and benchmarked field tests and have found none of what you claim. Not trying to insult you, just relaying the facts as an industry professional.

There is something else going on here - if you performed careful scientific field tests, did you do them with a network analyzer or a consumer radio receiver? My tests show the exact same thing - the spectrum of the main signal is the same, the sidebands added on a network analyzer. But a radio ramps its AGC down in response to the sidebands, causing a decrease in sensitivity. This is independent of the brand of the receiver. All of them exhibit similar effects, some more than others. I find it very hard to believe that drive tests with actual radios wouldn't show this effect, given how pronounced it is. If anybody is interested, I could do some drive tests with the AGC loop broken, and AGC coming from a potentiometer or something. That would be quick and easy, and I bet I could equal the station coverage before HD transition on both bands.

The KHPT coverage was amazing when they turned off HD. A Houston poster said they had reception up to Henderson, which is amazing. I noticed all the dropout areas were gone- even under overpasses and behind other obstructions. And stereo separation which usually blends in analog was fully separated. To me, it just plain sounded better as well. They are back to HD, and everywhere I used to get dropouts, I get them again. Funny thing is - if HD drops out, analog is also blended to mono and weak as well. So HD isn't doing anything at all to fill in coverage, it is just as bad as analog, and analog is severely compromised. I was frankly really surprised at the difference with HD off. It had been a few years since I had the opportunity to hear a station with it off - after it had been on. I frankly thought that maybe they were getting wise to the power vampire effect - and going to full coverage using the 106.9 frequency. With HD off, they don't need 107.5 to cover all of Houston. They were that strong! If they don't need 107.5, they could sell it and make a tidy profit. I remember 107.5 coverage before HD, it is the one that made it all the way to Centerville, the first Houston station you could get. Even more amazing considering it isn't at the Missouri City antenna farm, they are farther South. So I think 107.5 without HD would easily cover the entire Houston metro area all the way to Conroe, even down the hills to the lake. And probably they would get Huntsville as well. But with HD, they aren't viable even up to . But that is too specific to the Houston market. The point is stations without HD sound amazing, cover their cities much better, give better separation on radios that blend, go around and through obstacles better. Before criticizing me - try it on your station and it will make a believer out of you! AM is the same story. If I were owner of WOAI, I would shut off the power vampire, too - and hungrily eye the growing Austin area 80 miles away for more ratings. A 50 kW clear channel - literally and owned by - covering a market 80 miles away - a lot more than plausible. But you can'f fool around with power vampires like HD if you want to do it.

 

[davideduardo]

As for marginalizing - any time you make a comment trying to characterize another forum member as out of touch with the present, nostalgic for the past, a fanboy, or other really NASTY thing I have been called on this board (not necessarily by you), it is an ad hominem attack and by the laws of debate, it loses the debate.

"Fanboy" is not an insult. It is a statement of fact based on the evidence on hand.

"Fanboy: A passionate fan or advocate of something who lets his passion override social graces"

Examples of passion overriding social graces would be dismissing other formats not to one's liking, such as country or ethnic offerings in favor of one that is appealing to the poster, such as oldies. There is no "right" or "wrong" in personal preferences and taste.

 

[Kelly A]

There is something else going on here - if you performed careful scientific field tests, did you do them with a network analyzer or a consumer radio receiver? My tests show the exact same thing - the spectrum of the main signal is the same, the sidebands added on a network analyzer. But a radio ramps its AGC down in response to the sidebands, causing a decrease in sensitivity. This is independent of the brand of the receiver. All of them exhibit similar effects, some more than others. I find it very hard to believe that drive tests with actual radios wouldn't show this effect, given how pronounced it is. If anybody is interested, I could do some drive tests with the AGC loop broken, and AGC coming from a potentiometer or something. That would be quick and easy, and I bet I could equal the station coverage before HD transition on both bands.

A network analyzer to measure field strength? No. That wouldn't be an appropriate instrument to measure field strength. For FM stations we used a combination of a Potomac Instruments FIM-71 field strength meter, HP spectrum analyzer connected to a combination of a FM dipole and a standard car radio vertical utilizing a 75/50 ohm balun (subtracting balun losses) and an Audemat FM-MC4 mobile FM signal analyzer.

I use a network analyzer for measuring antenna, combiner and filter bandwidth and impedance of a transmission system, but not for field measurement.

In no case, did we ever see anything that came even close to what you assert. In fact, measured field strengths of the stations very closely fell within the calculated coverage area.

 

[ContinuousWave]

Really? You going to insult an RF engineer by asking if I know what a Faraday cage is?

Bruce, you are/have been an engineer? I am/was not aware of that.....you never have mentioned it before. Please tell me where you have engineered at? (I have been an engineer since my teens in the 70s...and have been CE of a couple of Dallas stations as well as ACE of Houston and other markets)...

I don't like AM HD as it is now....on paper it looks nice..however, the reason who a Boston station is no longer heard in Texas is not due to HD...I cannot agree with your arguments...and with the background noise problem as it is, analog has a problem with building penetration period regardless of the construction...(once Randy Michaels asked me to check 1190's night site in Dallas because he could not pick it up clearly at the downtown hotel room he was in....HELLO??? IF anyone should have known the cause, it was Randy! But I ran it anyway and sure enough, the main lobe was right on the money...of course the nulls were another issue!)

Texas AM stations do not care about anything outside their local market as well; they have no sales presence there and do not pull any revenue from there (regardless if they have any ratings in an adjacent market).....noone from Beaumont advertises on KTRH or KTHT-FM!....Mattress Mac of Gallery Furniture actually did some ads on KLVI for a SHORT while....but dropped them when he did not see any major increase of sales...

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Bruce, you are/have been an engineer? I am/was not aware of that.....you never have mentioned it before. Please tell me where you have engineered at? (I have been an engineer since my teens in the 70s...and have been CE of a couple of Dallas stations as well as ACE of Houston and other markets)...

I don't like AM HD as it is now....on paper it looks nice..however, the reason who a Boston station is no longer heard in Texas is not due to HD...I cannot agree with your arguments...and with the background noise problem as it is, analog has a problem with building penetration period regardless of the construction...(once Randy Michaels asked me to check 1190's night site in Dallas because he could not pick it up clearly at the downtown hotel room he was in....HELLO??? IF anyone should have known the cause, it was Randy! But I ran it anyway and sure enough, the main lobe was right on the money...of course the nulls were another issue!)

Texas AM stations do not care about anything outside their local market as well; they have no sales presence there and do not pull any revenue from there (regardless if they have any ratings in an adjacent market).....noone from Beaumont advertises on KTRH or KTHT-FM!....Mattress Mac of Gallery Furniture actually did some ads on KLVI for a SHORT while....but dropped them when he did not see any major increase of sales...

Oh yes - of course! I was not paid, but if you wanted to have a show on WAPN, you had better be able to be an engineer because there was no guarantee the station would even be on the air. I - along with one other guy - kept that thing running. Everything was right there, the transmitter, the tower, right by the studio. I never had to climb the tower, but the other guy did. Lightning hit before his show, he had to climb 350 feet and scrape carbon off the antenna connectors. I had to chase down germanium transistors from the early 60's to fix the exciter, came up with several improvements to it so we could keep on channel better. We went from +/- 20 kHz off frequency to less that a kHz off frequency after my redesign. We all had to deal with the emotional swings of the diabetic owner. His tendency to re-engineer on a whim - on his own - put us in some very dangerous situations, like the time he decided to go with one bay, and a very old 6000 watt transmitter. He hired somebody to climb the tower, and an electrician to put that thing in a leaky shed behind the station. We came in to 480 three phase running across a damp concrete floor, and a station that was drinking power out of power company drop. We had to seal off the back room - I had a two year old daughter at the time and the coffee maker was back there right next to the kludged 480V three phase wires. Fortunately, the electric bill deterred the station owner after a month, and we had to restore the good old reliable 900 W transmitter and 4 bays. As an interesting side- note - running off one bay completely eliminated picket fencing in the fringes! The station was either there, or dropped like a rock. I also coordinated the rental of our RDS system for paging, etc. - a little revenue stream for a station operating on a razor's edge of profitability. Yep - six years of fun-ness! I wish I had been paid an engineer's salary, but that station is not able to afford anything. Cassette tapes from preachers with checks rubber banded to them. Not big checks either. Barely enough to keep the lights on. I wonder if they ever bought their optimod? I need to stop by that place on my next trip to Florida. I bet it still operates on band-aids, kludges, and duct tape!

My profession is RF and analog electronics - although the RF part is not radio station, it is things like ISM band, RFID, wireless communication, etc. So I have access to some really good RF test equipment, and make regular use of it doing real RF design. I am familiar enough with radio station equipment - as I said - to re-design the electronics in it, making it perform better.

We were all really excited in Midland when KLIF announced it was increasing nighttime power from 1000 to 5000 watts! Daytime was weak but listenable, nighttime was worse. After the 12 tower array and breaching whale pattern was implemented - the net effect over Midland was - exactly the same! Oh well.

As I told you - I've got drive tests of my own pre and post HD conversion that back me up. My theory is the AGC in the radio - but you are right, that doesn't hold water because at night there is plenty of other sideband interference on AM. So there is some other mechanism at work here. I'm not asking anybody to believe me - do the test for yourself with a radio and not a spectrum analyzer.

I think Mack's problem was that 80 mile drive KLVI listeners had to Gallery. But Geico and McDonalds and other national sponsors won't have that problem. So - if the sales manager at a 50 kW clear channel AM station doesn't mention to Geico his station reaches half of Texas during the day, he is negligent and should be fired immediately. If not range, then the ability penetrate buildings IS - or should be - important. The two are intimately related, and based on before and after drive tests - HD is a HUGE problem on both AM and FM. They seriously need to fix their darn systems, because if I owned a station, I would go for signal strength in my own market over HD. My own version of "being the loudest sounding station" in the market. KHPT's two week HD outtage was amazing! I had forgotten just how reliable big city FM can be over its market, none of those pesky little blends or dropouts, just one heck of a solid signal.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

"Fanboy" is not an insult. It is a statement of fact based on the evidence on hand.

"Fanboy: A passionate fan or advocate of something who lets his passion override social graces"

Examples of passion overriding social graces would be dismissing other formats not to one's liking, such as country or ethnic offerings in favor of one that is appealing to the poster, such as oldies. There is no "right" or "wrong" in personal preferences and taste.

Your second definition indicates derogatory. I was unaware of the term prior to your use of it - but every instance I have encountered of it being used in popular culture since then is derogatory. I did not mention you as the one using the term against me. It certainly is beneath your professional reputation to engage in online bullying. I encourage you to stop before you further damage your own online reputation. I have never, and never will, engage in online bullying through name-calling. I encourage you to take a stand with me against online bullying - in all of its ugly forms. I am very active in organizations that stand against bullying, online and otherwise. I am actively working with some celebrities in Hollywood to promote anti-bullying messages, campaigns, and even television specials. The ultimate goal is to criminalize all forms of bullying - including on-line. Bullying is not a victimless crime, and it has no place in our society.

 

[davideduardo]

So - if the sales manager at a 50 kW clear channel AM station doesn't mention to Geico his station reaches half of Texas during the day, he is negligent and should be fired immediately.

The way radio advertising is bought does not give points to a station for coverage. It does not even award points for actual measured listening outside of the local market / metro.

Local stations are bought for local market audience delivery.

If not range, then the ability penetrate buildings IS - or should be - important.

Advertisers today do not buy "ability" to be heard. They buy actual measured audience delivery. How the station gets those listeners, such as by having the best signal, is irrelevant to the time buyer at an agency.

A good example of the lack of value of out of market coverage and audience can be seen in the Riverside / San Bernardino market in California. 5 of the top 10 stations and 11 of the top 20 are Los Angeles facilities. Yet those LA stations don't get any real revenue boost from having high ratings in this large adjacent market. In fact, most of the LA stations that show in the Riverside / San Bernardino report are not even subscribed to to that Nielsen report as it does not present any sales opportunities.

 

[davideduardo]

Your second definition indicates derogatory. I was unaware of the term prior to your use of it - but every instance I have encountered of it being used in popular culture since then is derogatory.

In the context of your glib and flip dismissal of formats you do not like while showing extreme enthusiasm for all manner of oldies stations, you demonstrate fanboy behaviour. You want your oldies, but in the process you demean country stations, ethnic stations, stations in languages other than in English and so on.

That's not an insult. It is a commentary on your one-sided perspective which is, essentially, "I do not care what other people like because if I don't like it it is useless".

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Really? Another "fanboy" post? Sometimes if you inform a bully, they might not have been aware that their behavior constitutes bullying. I tried. Let me make it clear: I don't use words like n_gger and w_tback to describe people because they are offensive words. I am advising you - lay off "fanboy" because it is offensive. People using offensive words to describe other people are generally insecure about something in their own life.

As for my opinions of formats I don't like, we all have our personal tastes. Mine don't have to agree with yours to be valid for me. Yes, I like oldies. I don't think I am being a "fanboy" when I state that oldies / classic hits stations are rated well in every market surrounding where I live, so it is a pretty safe bet the format would be a success in this market as well, given that the demographics are very similar.

Perhaps you mistake my use of the word useless. It applies to me. It makes spots on the dial effectively jammed with programming I have no use for. If other people chose to listen, that is their perogative. It does NOT mean I have to like the station playing it, appreciate it, or even tolerate it in my home or car. The frequency is used in the public interest, but not mine. The frequency is useless TO ME, and to persons with tastes similar to mine. A new station in Houston with what often sounds like a shouting black man is of no interest to me. The frequency is useless to me. I will not celebrate its existance. I will wait hopefully for the format to fail in hopes of the frequency being used for something I would prefer to listen to. There is no racial component to it. I make no commentary on those who do listen. It is simply a useless station - to me. If I were an advertiser, I would not direct even one advertising dollar to it because I would probably want to attract customers who are like myself. Unfotunately of the 75 stations easily received in the Houston metro area, there are a grand total of 5 non-HD2 signals I have a use for. The rest are covering up frequencies that potentially have more distant stations with more palatable formats. 93.7 is a prime example. If the new hip hop station were to turn in their license, KLBJ would be receivable and has a format I like much better.

HD-2 is a much different story. While this experimental, unpopular system is dying its slow, inevitable death from consumer apathy, stations throw disenfranchised persons such as myself a little pity and program formats that they don't care about, but they know still have a following. In 20 to 30 years, the number of HD stations and radios will probably equal the number of C-Quam stations and radios that exist today, and I will be listening to satellite and streaming - because HD-2's with oldies, smooth jazz, Christian rock, indie rock, eclectic, all 80's, etc. will become unavailable as HD is turned off station by station. KHPT's recent two week venture into pure analog was a real eye opener of the excellent coverage FM used to have, and will have again as HD signs off.

I look forward to reading your posts daily, and I hope they can be on a professional level without use of derogatory, obsolete terms that are intended to hurt the feelings of fellow professionals on this board. I would NEVER post something to another human being with the intent of purposely hurting their feelings, and I hope you feel the same way.