• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Some clear thinking on IBOC: Skotdal: AM Band Needs Drastic Change

K

KB1OKL

From Radio World:

"The author is licensee of 50 kW AM stations KRKO and KKXA in the Seattle market, incoming chair of the Washington State Association of Broadcasters and a former NAB board member. He participated in the recent NAB Labs driving tests of all-digital on the AM band. Opinions expressed are his own."

SUNRISE OR MIGRATION?

"What about an AM “digital sunrise” process, in which all-digital stations would operate on the band alongside analog signals, at least for some period of time?

This would be a mixed bag at best. All-digital is far more robust than current hybrid transmissions. But the sunrise scenario could make the band sound worse to listeners with analog-only radios and could hasten audience flight.

All-digital signals on the AM band sound like 1990s phone modem noise to analog radios (remember the “whoosh” sound after the handshake?). The sound is audible in the sidebands of stations using the technology now. The benefits of stereo separation, better coverage and signal consistency would be realized only by the small portion of the population capable of receiving the all-digital transmissions.

A more elegant solution would be to use the next four decades to migrate occupants of the AM band to abandoned VHF spectrum, meaning current Channels 1–6, and simplify the user experience."

"An all-digital mandate on the AM band could push a large number of directional operators — half or more — out of business, depending on the timing; because the bulk of AM stations in the United States are running with worn-out equipment and transmitter sites, and the revenue supporting those stations is too thin in many markets to justify new investment. The mandate would cull those who can’t or won’t make the upgrade, helping the transition."

Andrew seems to feel that there are too many obstacles in the way of converting AM radio to all digital, time, cost, antenna issues, that interference would eventually overrun IBOC anyway and feels that eventually the AM band should migrate to the mostly abandoned lower VHF band which has been mentioned here time and again.

Much more at:

http://www.radioworld.com/article/skotdal-am-band-needs-drastic-change/273566
 
Or, you know, we could do the smart thing and throw the whole IB(A)C system in the sewer where it belongs. Doing so would save money, time and trouble, it wouldn't force a technology nobody wants onto a band nobody cares about anymore, and it would show that broadcast suits have some sense in their brains after all. But then, that last bit is exactly why it won't happen.
 
KB1OKL said:
Andrew seems to feel that there are too many obstacles in the way of converting AM radio to all digital, time, cost, antenna issues, that interference would eventually overrun IBOC anyway and feels that eventually the AM band should migrate to the mostly abandoned lower VHF band which has been mentioned here time and again.
Click to expand...

They just don't get it. They can "migrate" AM radio anywhere they want. It doesn't mean the people will follow.

The one important lesson we should have learned from IBOC is the people are not buying new radios. Period. They're not buying satellite radios, internet radios, or HD radios. None of them. Radio HAS to come with something else they want. It can be a phone, a computer, or a car. But that's where the radio has to be. If it's not there, the people will find some other way to get what they want.
 
JoshTheRadioDude said:
Or, you know, we could do the smart thing and throw the whole IB(A)C system in the sewer where it belongs. Doing so would save money, time and trouble, it wouldn't force a technology nobody wants onto a band nobody cares about anymore, and it would show that broadcast suits have some sense in their brains after all. But then, that last bit is exactly why it won't happen.
Click to expand...

Since there are less than 200 HD Radio equipped AM stations operating today, we can pretty safely say that when the adoption rate is somewhere around 3%, the thing has pretty much been thrown away already.

Last I checked, about 17% of all radio listening is on AM and about 40% of all Americans cume AM. That is not something "nobody cares about anymore".
 
A far better solution is buried in the article:

"Frankly, if we got lucky and went from 4,700 AM stations down to 700 stations, the AM band, and radio, will be more sustainable."
 
JoshTheRadioDude said:
Citing statistics paid for by people who want them to be positive is a failed proposition. Apparently you haven't figured this out yet.
Click to expand...


No, all we have here is a person who answers every known statistic about radio with the same cynical and misanthropic response of disbelief

Ratings are produced for the advertising business even if the media pays for them. Ratings are audited by experts who are not from radio or TV on an ongoing basis. Changes in methodology are similarly scrutinized. We get a very good product within the restraints of how much the media can afford to pay.

Folks in denial about rating are usually those who had bad results from a show or station and those on the outside who do not understand the process or its purpose.
 
Last edited:
TheBigA said:
A far better solution is buried in the article:

"Frankly, if we got lucky and went from 4,700 AM stations down to 700 stations, the AM band, and radio, will be more sustainable."
Click to expand...

The problem is that the 700 that are left would mostly be the better full timers that demand mutual protection, so few of the 700 coul improve facilities much.
 
DavidEduardo said:
Ratings are produced for the advertising business even if the media pays for them. Ratings are audited by experts who are not from radio or TV on an ongoing basis. Changes in methodology are similarly scrutinized. We get a very good product within the restraints of how much the media can afford to pay.
Click to expand...
The voice of denial, ladies and gentlemen.
 
HD requires new radios. Moving the band requires new radios. Nobody is going to buy new radios just to listen to AM, or FM for that matter. Any solution to the problem of declining listening on AM and FM needs to work for existing radios. Period. Anybody who promotes an idea that depends on mass consumer purchases of new radios is living in a fantasy land.

Comparison to adoption rates of FM are valueless, because FM really did offer advantages to music listeners - noticeable increase in frequency response and stereo.

Comparison to digital television adoption is valueless, because HDTV looks much better than the outdated NTSC system.

HD radios do not sound any better than analog radios to the overwhelming vast majority of people, who are now trained to listen to music over earbuds with poor fidelity or trendy table radios with ridiculously too small speakers to have any sound quality at all. HD is a solution to a problem they do not have.

A government mandate to change to all digital transmission would fail. People would simply give up on radio rather than replace radios. They would stream the content they previously got over the air.

The only ones who keep pushing for the adoption of digital radio are the ones who have a financial stake in the technology.

About the only thing that could help AM at this point is a shuffling of the existing band, allowing the large broadcasters who are successful to broadcast with enough power to punch through the interference, and putting the rest of the AM stations in "graveyard band" within the AM band, where they take their chances with interference.
 
You know AM is in trouble when the only idea a Commissioner of the FCC can come up with is allowing owners to apply for FM translators, which they can do anyway. It does nothing to solve problems the FCC created with the AM band, and just promotes abandoning the band altogether. With all the issues, no one is talking about enforcing interference rules or improving bandwidth, two simple things that could demonstrate just a little commitment.
 
JoshTheRadioDude said:
Exactly my point.
Click to expand...

That's not a point when next to nobody agrees with you. And hundreds of thousands of people in the radio, TV and advertising business do not agree.

One thing is to complain about aspects of ratings that need fixing. Another is to indict the whole system based on the fact that you think it is wrong, despite no empirical evidence to the contrary.

In the time that Arbitron has existed as a continuous service starting in 1965 (and ignoring ARB's occasional radio surveys in the early 50's), we have seen all these services go by the wayside: Pulse, Hooper, Mediatrend, Mediafax, Birch, SRC, Burke, Audits and Surveys and even Nielsen's own attempt at radio prior to the purchase of Arbitron. If any were so superior, advertisers and stations would have jumped to leave Arbitron. They didn't.

Many of us in the industry have been part of different committees to push Arbitron to improve. I have been on several of those, and was most active in the push to do language enumeration for Hispanics. In that case, our group felt that Arbitron was severely lacking and, after several years of battle, we got much of what we wished for because we made our case to the MRC which encouraged Arbitron to incorporate the proper procedures.

And many others have found problems with individual books. The problems ranged from a competitor getting credit for a generic phrase or one they did not use to improper ascription procedures in diary editing. I got a half-dozen books reissued based on problems I found, and also got a trend reissued... the only time in about a decade a trend was recalled and reissued. So you can see I spent a lot of time watching over what Arbitron did, and took action when necessary. I did not drink the Cool Aid and look at every change and modification with due skepticism.

But the underlying principle of polling a few and projecting the results into a universe is well proven world-wide and across all areas of business and the public sector.

And in radio, the results Nielsen gives us are quite adequate for the purpose, which is mostly to establish a pricing metric for advertising and to show which stations deliver more of the consumers advertisers want. The ratings system has, in fact, worked for that purpose for nearly 85 years.

In fact, back in the diary days, on several occasions I had phone crews doing "instant" polls to anticipate and, hopefully, correct program issues prior to a full book coming out. These were essentially 24-hour aided recall polls and we got results that very closely paralleled Arbitron for the leading stations... proving that the "real" ratings could be closely replicated, even in a home-brewed limited sample survey.

Your claims about the supposed inaccuracies of ratings are baseless, lack any proof or evidence, and are not worthy of the pixels they are written on.
 
Last edited:
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom