would all sinatra on a sub work

[davideduardo]

One of my cars has HD radio, I really like it

Music in HD is wonderful, and I can listen to the only 2 AM stations in my market on their HD2 counterparts and it sounds infinitely better

The FCC should mandate it like they did FM and quality UHF tuners

As Scott Fybush said, there was never an FM mandate. AM only radios continued to be manufactured widely well into the 80's, with the later ones mostly novelty radios shaped like candy bars, cans of a branded motor oil, etc. Even after that date, a few could be found... mostly intended for sale in underdeveloped nations.

Similarly, FM stereo was never mandated, although I have seen messages that believe it is required unless you get permission not to. AM stereo: never mandated, as it fell victim to delays and market forces.

Radio had no mandate comparable to the UHF requirement for TV; that one was real.

 

[TheBigA]

No matter how often it gets asserted as fact on message boards, the FCC never mandated FM in receivers.

Seems to me the FM patent ran out in 1966, and the Armstrong family didn't renew. GE and RCA immediately added FM to their portables, and improvements in the technology began. Perhaps a similar thing could happen if the HD Radio patent were not renewed. Not likely though.

 

[frankberry]

To get around the patent for the FM discriminator, RCA came up with the ratio detector. It did not perform as well as the discriminator.

 

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

Work is a relative term. Would it make money? No. Would effectively anyone hear it? No. Would it cost money? Yes.

If you consider a money sucking hobby as working, sure. As a business model? No.

True Sinatra's median audience has to be 80's-100's at least and these people are going away.

 

[JH_Radio]

What is mandated is how FM should sound in radios, unlike AM in radios. That's not the same as mandating FM though.

 

[JH_Radio]

And, no. just no. Any stream app could do this. Hell use spotify free app would probably do it. I'm sure that HD in LA isn't making money either. If a tree falls in the forest...

 

[nd2023]

I agree on just about everything but I wonder about the money part. BEN-FM had that stale Dance side-channel for years and years and it sounded to me like it was thrown together in not much more than a day--assumedly by someone who already was on the payroll and who (from the sound of it) clicked PLAY and never thought about it again. Sure it kinda sucked because years and years of new material was coming out but the library never changed. But here, we're talking about Sinatra. I don't think Ol' Blue Eyes is going to be putting out any new records at this point. 🤣🤣

But seriously, folks: Someone would have to want to do it literally for the sake of doing it. We're basically talking about replacing one side channel no one listens to with another side channel no one listens to.

I have never heard a song newer than the summer of 2007 on 95.7-HD2. The playlist has been the same since the summer of 2007. They play some songs that were on the charts in 2007 and never heard on the radio since then except on 95.7-HD2.
I kind of like it. Every time I’m in Philadelphia I hear the same thing on 95.7-HD2. I think whoever programmed Club Ben initially is long gone, yet his legacy lives on.

 

[Radi0411]

I have never heard a song newer than the summer of 2007 on 95.7-HD2. The playlist has been the same since the summer of 2007. They play some songs that were on the charts in 2007 and never heard on the radio since then except on 95.7-HD2.
I kind of like it. Every time I’m in Philadelphia I hear the same thing on 95.7-HD2. I think whoever programmed Club Ben initially is long gone, yet his legacy lives on.

How many times do you have to post this SAME statement? While we're at it, let's mention that WBZC died when Brett left... Jeeesh! Maybe relishing in 2007 over and over again isn't so bad for WBEN-HD2... it certainly was a lot better than the times we're in now...

 

[AbrahamJSimpson]

I just figured whoever set it up in aught seven left without giving anyone the password to the Windows 95 computer running it, and they’ve just left it alone ever since.

 

[vchimpanzee]

I think Sirius still has a Sinatra channel. Last time I was in Luigi's, they were playing it. If people want it bad enough, they can subscribe.

But 24/7 broadcast means they have to find a lot of advertisers. Right now, WPHT can only sustain it for a few hours Sunday morning.

Not all-Sinatra. And for some of us, it's the closest thing to what we want that Sirius/XM has ever since they shut down the good channel.

 

[wibgradio99]

I don't know why people praise Sirius/XM, even at their modest price. Their decades channels for example, play the same worn out tunes, the 60's channel upward have annoying jocks to boot, their music channels are limited. I have a few internet radios at home, hooked up to my super audio home system, plus Iphones where I can stream over 100,000 stations all over the globe with tons of formats from all Jimmy Durante to all DaBaby, plus news, sports, weather, and many music decade channels, streaming T stations if you want to fantasize you are in that market hearing local content, also slacker, tune in, and hundreds of other outlets like oldies radio stations, too much to even list. My in home wifi is free with cable and my Iphone is Verizon with unlimited data, never had drops driving anywhere city to forests, great sound playing through my cars audio system, on the beach, Christmas Music, laying in the sand in July lol, so why mess with satellite.

 

[Miguelito]

I honestly don't get it either. My new car came with the standard trial period. I've listened to it once and it dropped out. When I'm in the cars of friends who swear by it, it drops out all the time too and I'm like "Why do you want to pay for radio that stops working in the middle of the song when radio that doesn't do that is free?!"

Every year after Christmas, I sit down and go through my entire music library to pick which songs make me happy. Usually, I end up with between 1400 and 1800 songs. I put them in my iPod and iPhone and I shuffle away. For the entire year, I hear songs that I picked by hand. When I'm in the car, my iPhone is always connected so that Apple Car Play does its thing. So not only am I avoiding terrestrial's shortcomings, I hear my own hand-picked songs with no dropouts. And it's all already paid for!

 

[davideduardo]

I don't know why people praise Sirius/XM, even at their modest price. Their decades channels for example, play the same worn out tunes,

Those are, per research, the songs subscribers want to hear. Were they to put additional songs in each of the decades, those would be songs that have considerable negatives among much of the audience, and they would lose subscribers.

In other words, for people who might or do subscribe, those are the songs they most want to hear without many... or any... songs they hate.

They are not in the business of creating personalized playlists. The majority of subscribers want a good selection of music on each channel without the work of building a playlist.

 

[vchimpanzee]

I honestly don't get it either. My new car came with the standard trial period. I've listened to it once and it dropped out. When I'm in the cars of friends who swear by it, it drops out all the time too and I'm like "Why do you want to pay for radio that stops working in the middle of the song when radio that doesn't do that is free?!"

Every year after Christmas, I sit down and go through my entire music library to pick which songs make me happy. Usually, I end up with between 1400 and 1800 songs. I put them in my iPod and iPhone and I shuffle away. For the entire year, I hear songs that I picked by hand. When I'm in the car, my iPhone is always connected so that Apple Car Play does its thing. So not only am I avoiding terrestrial's shortcomings, I hear my own hand-picked songs with no dropouts. And it's all already paid for!

For me free radio drops out all the time, usually briefly. Power lines. I only listen to stations that play music I like or something close, or talk radio.

 

[vchimpanzee]

Those are, per research, the songs subscribers want to hear. Were they to put additional songs in each of the decades, those would be songs that have considerable negatives among much of the audience, and they would lose subscribers.

In other words, for people who might or do subscribe, those are the songs they most want to hear without many... or any... songs they hate.

They are not in the business of creating personalized playlists. The majority of subscribers want a good selection of music on each channel without the work of building a playlist.

When XM and Sirius were separate services, though, the channels were much better. As similar channels were combined into one, that's when they got boring.

 

[Marcos_C]

When XM and Sirius were separate services, though, the channels were much better. As similar channels were combined into one, that's when they got boring.

The decades channels were better, at least on XM. I was a subscriber of XM during those days, so I remember their decades channels playing songs that I hadn't heard in years. As for Sirius, I read in the now-defunct XM radio forums that their decades channels had shallower playlists. The decades channels with deeper playlists ended when Sirius took over XM to form SiriusXM.

 

[JBraddock]

I don't know why people praise Sirius/XM, even at their modest price.

Commercial free easy access in the car.

Those are, per research, the songs subscribers want to hear. Were they to put additional songs in each of the decades, those would be songs that have considerable negatives among much of the audience, and they would lose subscribers.

I think it's more that they won't lose any subscribers who are bored by the tighter playlists; the subscriber will just tune to another channel. I find myself channel flipping through SXM far more frequently than in 2003-2009. Of course, I had XM then with their more adventurous programming philosophy.

Today, they probably can't go wrong by serving the lowest-common-denominator listener as terrestrial radio does. But it makes the service more difficult to use for subscribers like myself. They removed The Loft eclectic rock channel from the dashboard (satellite) a few years back. I assume they'll keep Deep Tracks and Underground Garage around for awhile, without which I'd lose interest in the service entirely.

Heck, they learned the hard way what happens when you take a unique channel (easy listening Escape) off the bird without understanding its utility to subscribers.

The majority of subscribers want a good selection of music on each channel without the work of building a playlist.

...but they settle for medicre playlists that are commercial free, easily available and part of a package of many channels. It's not great, but it's good enough to keep the subscriptions in place. And that's all it needs to do.

When XM and Sirius were separate services, though, the channels were much better. As similar channels were combined into one, that's when they got boring.

Yep. The channels were better, but mostly on the XM side. Sirius, with a few exceptions, was playing it safe with generic formats. Now we have more channels, but many are pay-to-play dedicated artist channels which just take up space. Follow the ca$h.

Still, plug-and-play in the dash with a variety of commercial-free 'content' that is always there at the push of a button is the satellite killer app.

 

[wibgradio99]

But isn't that the purpose of a listener paying for satellite radio, to hear music you cannot hear on T radio, off the wall and "oh wow" stuff. Most of the music they program with the exception of the 50's and 40's channels can be heard on any local signal, and in some smaller markets you can hear the aforementioned years. Whereas internet/WIFI can zero in on a specific brand of programming and many commercial free, example I read a post here about WIBBAGE at the shore with a internet 50's/60's channel, went to the site, loaded it and now I can listen with smooth stereo sound, cannot do that with satellite.

 

[TheBigA]

But isn't that the purpose of a listener paying for satellite radio, to hear music you cannot hear on T radio,

Not really. The purpose of paying is so you avoid commercials. All of the music channels on Sirius are commercial free.

But there are 100 music channels and some of them feature music that isn't commercially available on the radio.

 

[JBraddock]

But isn't that the purpose of a listener paying for satellite radio, to hear music you cannot hear on T radio, off the wall and "oh wow" stuff.

Apparently not. If SXM management is right, the average subscriber is happy listening to the same old stuff, but without the commercials. (See my previous comment regarding how SXM management isn't always right).

I don't stream in the car, but at home I have easy access to hundreds of streams that are programmed more to my liking than SXM. As such, my SXM listening is limited to the car where SXM has convenience and reception superiority over streaming.

Eventually when in-car streaming becomes a single-button operation, SXM will lose their dashboard advantage and have to compete on programming alone except in areas of poor or no cell reception where they'll be one of the fall-back options.