iHeart drops several HD-only broadcasts

[tomservo]

For the last week or so, I noticed that the "Gulf Coast Smooth Jazz" broadcast on WRKH 96.1-HD2 and WRGV 107.3-HD2 has been missing. Looks like it was a corporate decision to pull it. This follows the removal of the rotating specialty formats that were airing on WTKX 101.5-HD2. I've also noticed that "Radio By Grace" on WRKH-HD3 has been missing, which makes me wonder how the translator on 101.1 in Mobile is being fed. Is it even still on the air? I'm too far out to hear it.

Sadly, the audio quality of the stations in HD is still quite poor despite not carrying extra channels.

Cumulus, meanwhile, resurrected the HD on WDLT recently, after it was off for about two years.

Checking this afternoon and 96.1 and 99.9's HD are just off completely.

 

[esdx]

101.1 is still on the air, despite the missing HD3 on WRKH. Even the RDS says it's WRKH-HD3.
Same thing with 99.5, while 96.1 has been in and out of Analog only for the past few weeks.

I got my HD radio in 2019, and WDLT carrying HD is the first time I've EVER seen any Cumulus station feed it in Mobile or Pensacola. Even before, KVDU over in New Orleans would come in on HD when WDLT was all-analog. When was the last time Cumulus consistently did HD on their stations here:?

 

[Theater of My Mind]

101.1 is still on the air, despite the missing HD3 on WRKH. Even the RDS says it's WRKH-HD3.

I thought translators were required to be fed by a primary station and be set up to go off the air if the main station's signal is lost.

If the primary station WRKH-HD3 is off the air, how is this 101.1 translator still running its programming unless they are taking a direct feed and operating in violation of the FCC rules?

 

[tomservo]

101.1 is still on the air, despite the missing HD3 on WRKH. Even the RDS says it's WRKH-HD3.
Same thing with 99.5, while 96.1 has been in and out of Analog only for the past few weeks.

I got my HD radio in 2019, and WDLT carrying HD is the first time I've EVER seen any Cumulus station feed it in Mobile or Pensacola. Even before, KVDU over in New Orleans would come in on HD when WDLT was all-analog. When was the last time Cumulus consistently did HD on their stations here:?

Cumulus was an early adopter of HD, strangely enough. They filed digital notifications for WBLX, WDLT and WJLQ (as it was then) way back in 2005. I didn't move to the coast until 2012, so I don't know if they were active that whole time or not. The first to drop that I know of was 100.7's, when they flipped to talk as WCOA. It came back briefly when the music returned as WJLQ if I remember right, but went away again not too long later. Shame, too, because it was the best sounding HD in the market along with WDLT. WDLT's lasted longest, until 2020. It still won't decode on my newest Insignia radio at all, but does fine in cars. I never figured out why.

Whether Cumulus as a company soured on HD, or it was due to technical issues, I don't know. Both are highly probable. HD was a big investment for no payoff since they didn't have subchannels feeding micro-FM translators like iHeart likes to do. And with Cumulus' budgetary issues in the past, they weren't gonna fix broken encoders if no one was listening. I can only assume the HD ran until the equipment failed — which apparently was "early and often" with older encoders — and then it stayed off.

Oddly, Cumulus has been bad about not even running RDS, which is dirt cheap to implement and costs virtually nothing to keep running.

Huh. So I just fired up my SDR to check out what's going on, and it looks like WDLT's HD is only operating with one sideband! Normally there's sidebands either side of the analog signal, but theirs is only on the upper sideband. Weird. WRKH is still analog only, no RDS. No RDS on WKSJ but the HD is on. WMXC is the only one running both. WJTQ's RDS is back on but blank, and still broadcasting the call sign WCOA. 🙄

I thought translators were required to be fed by a primary station and be set up to go off the air if the main station's signal is lost.

If the primary station WRKH-HD3 is off the air, how is this 101.1 translator still running its programming unless they are taking a direct feed and operating in violation of the FCC rules?

That's my understanding as well, but there is apparently some leeway for technical issues. Losing the parent station, though? That seems like a case for shutting down the translator. WRKH is still listed as the parent for that translator, with nothing noting a change in how it's being fed.

Freedom Radio FM went away and the flagship station, WLOG in Pennsylvania, had its license deleted. I don't know where Radio By Grace is feeding programming from these days, or how it's getting to the translator now.

 

[A_b_m_90]

So no more HD2 stations for WRKH and WRGV?

 

[mightynine]

Stations could be on backup transmitters that don't broadcast the HD signal. Are the side channels still coming up with different audio, or are they not loading at all?

 

[Kelly A]

For the last week or so, I noticed that the "Gulf Coast Smooth Jazz" broadcast on WRKH 96.1-HD2 and WRGV 107.3-HD2 has been missing. Looks like it was a corporate decision to pull it.

Really? Have you confirmed that's the case, or just speculating?

Sadly, the audio quality of the stations in HD is still quite poor despite not carrying extra channels.

That's because stations insist on over-processing both analog and the associated HD so they match when the receiver switches back and forth.

Checking this afternoon and 96.1 and 99.9's HD are just off completely.

As someone else mentioned, it's likely they're running on backup facilities that don't include HD transmission gear.

 

[kevtronics]

That's because stations insist on over-processing both analog and the associated HD so they match when the receiver switches back and forth.

The HD1 digital audio has 5 dB of extra headroom compared to the station's analog audio, so you don't need to process it as heavily to achieve the same loudness. But some stations use this headroom to make their digital audio noticeably louder than their analog audio.

 

[Kelly A]

The HD1 digital audio has 5 dB of extra headroom compared to the station's analog audio, so you don't need to process it as heavily to achieve the same loudness. But some stations use this headroom to make their digital audio noticeably louder than their analog audio.

Most stations run a single processor that, other than high frequency filtering, duplicates the compression, EQ, and clipping, settings for both.

 

[powers]

Here in San Diego, iHeartRadio has quietly removed some of the HD channels which were just being served from a National format. They have kept any locally produced HD (such as simulcasts of AM talk and sports stations) as well as Pride Radio, which I guess does well enough and Black Information Network. A few months ago, about at the same time, they dropped the "Alt" format from KIOZ-HD2 (we have two alternative stations in the market, plus KIOZ-HD1, which carries an Active Rock format, plays quite a bit of crossover with Alternative music. The other station that got turned off here was KMYI-HD3, aka "The Breeze" which was mostly soft AC. We don't have another soft AC in the market and they were pretty good. The only annoying thing about them was every ten minutes or so they would do a bunch of legal IDs for about 10-15 stations each time, as they were carried on many iHeartRadio stations. I would think that they could have just done legal IDs for each market and then local automation would just drop in the single ID at the top of the hour. Instead of replacing these stations, they just turned the HD signal off on the channels, probably to give some bandwidth back to the primary stations and perhaps nobody but me was listening anyway. Many of my friends don't even know what HD Radio is, and are surprised if I show them that their car radio has it.

 

[tomservo]

So no more HD2 stations for WRKH and WRGV?

Nope, they are gone. WRGV only is the main HD channel now, and when WRKH was on, it was the same thing. Both the Radio By Grace and "99.5 The Jag" sports were missing.

Stations could be on backup transmitters that don't broadcast the HD signal. Are the side channels still coming up with different audio, or are they not loading at all?

That's certainly possible. The HD channels were completely gone on the affected stations. WRKH is still off as of this morning, while WMXC is back; they share an antenna on the WKRG TV tower.

Really? Have you confirmed that's the case, or just speculating?

That's because stations insist on over-processing both analog and the associated HD so they match when the receiver switches back and forth.

As someone else mentioned, it's likely they're running on backup facilities that don't include HD transmission gear.

It was confirmed via e-mail with someone at iHeart's Mobile office.

This isn't a processing issue, it's a digital audio file issue. Most of the iHeart stations in this market have noticeably poor sound quality, like very low bitrate mp3s. When you feed that already digitally compressed garbage through the even lower bitrate HD encoder, it cascades into even worse quality.

WRGV is the lone exception, it sounds great in HD or analog, very clean.

But you are also right about the over processing, both iHeart and Cumulus are pretty "loud and squashed" here.

 

[Kelly A]

Nope, they are gone. WRGV only is the main HD channel now, and when WRKH was on, it was the same thing. Both the Radio By Grace and "99.5 The Jag" sports were missing.

But your statement was that they're gone due to a "corporate decision to pull it". Did you confirm that with their corporate office, or just speculation on your part?

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

But your statement was that they're gone due to a "corporate decision to pull it". Did you confirm that with their corporate office, or just speculation on your part?

He said previously, "It was confirmed via e-mail with someone at iHeart's Mobile office."

 

[Theater of My Mind]

Most stations run a single processor that, other than high frequency filtering, duplicates the compression, EQ, and clipping, settings for both.

I would love to hear HD-1 channels use less compressed processing than their analog counterparts except that I have been driving around NYC for the past couple of days listening to a station that does exactly that, namely WFUV, and the experience is absolutely horrible.

That station does not have the greatest signal so you get a lot of flipping back and forth between analog and HD modes. With the HD being less compressed, the volume changes drastically every time that happens -- I mean twice as loud on the analog signal as on the HD. In the area I was driving around that was happening every second or two.

I would MUCH rather hear a station set up so that the transitions are seamless when listening in the car. Due to unequal range of HD signals those transitions are inevitable in a car, and when they happen they need to be tolerable.

 

[tomservo]

But your statement was that they're gone due to a "corporate decision to pull it". Did you confirm that with their corporate office, or just speculation on your part?

The corporate decision was to pull the "Gulf Coast's Smooth Jazz" from WKSJ HD2 and WRGV HD2. The others are off for unknown reasons. I didn't contact iHeart directly, a friend in Mobile who listened to those channels did and he passed that on to me after he saw the update on my site mentioning the HD channels being off.

I'm sorry if that wasn't clear in previous posts.

 

[Kelly A]

The corporate decision was to pull the "Gulf Coast's Smooth Jazz" from WKSJ HD2 and WRGV HD2.

And you have that point of information from iHeart's corporate group?

 

[A_b_m_90]

Why don't these stations "fix" their audio quality on the HD channels and put new music formats on them...
Why is this difficult for them?

 

[A_b_m_90]

And you have that point of information from iHeart's corporate group?

Give me their info and I'll email them myself hah.

 

[Kelly A]

Give me their info and I'll email them myself hah.

iHeartMedia, Inc.

America's #1 Audio Company - Reaching 9 out of 10 Americans every month

www.iheartmedia.com

 

[powers]

That station does not have the greatest signal so you get a lot of flipping back and forth between analog and HD modes. With the HD being less compressed, the volume changes drastically every time that happens -- I mean twice as loud on the analog signal as on the HD. In the area I was driving around that was happening every second or two.

I would MUCH rather hear a station set up so that the transitions are seamless when listening in the car. Due to unequal range of HD signals those transitions are inevitable in a car, and when they happen they need to be tolerable.

The opposite was true here in San Diego for about a month. iHeart's KGB-FM, the heritage classic rocker, had a rather lifeless sounding analog sound, When the HD kicked in, it was loud and full range. Finally after about a month, KGB's analog sound was back to normal - it may have needed an adjustment, or something was broken or missing. Also, Audacy has some secondary formats in the market with very inconsistent sound quality on the HD. on KWFN-HD2, they run a hard classic rock format called The Angry Playlist and the audio levels are very loud as compared to other analog and digital signals here. Yet, they also run a Smooth Jazz format on another HD2 and they have Channel Q on an HD3 and both of those are very quiet and thin sounding, like the audio is going through a strainer. They program other HDs in the market that sound perfectly fine.