Modifying FM for FM Translators

[Kelly A]

Those Stick values are how a majority of these companies built themselves into the powerhouses they are today.

Technically stick values are mainly calculated on presence in the market, not the actual tower or antenna. Assuming you held a position in a DAB carrier, the stick value would be the same as anyone else in the market.

Ironically, It think it would be much cheaper for iHeart or the like to have national feeds of "The Breeze", "Alt.", Kiss, BIN, that are multiplexed in each market.

Cheaper than running as HD-2, or whatever channels? These marginal formats would stand a better chance of being heard on DAB, because they would have signal parity with any other station being carried. That said; not sure iHeart would want to pay full market DAB rent for what amount to sidecar formats.

 

[speer360]

Assuming you held a position in a DAB carrier, the stick value would be the same as anyone else in the market.

Which is what the large operators do not want. They don't want competition that is on a even playing field. That is why they paid so heavily to create the IBOC alternative.

 

[Kelly A]

Which is what the large operators do not want. They don't want competition that is on a even playing field. That is why they paid so heavily to create the IBOC alternative.

They started the IBOC/HD Radio thing because of the perceived threat from satellite radio, or other things "digital". Come to find out, it wasn't such a threat after all.
Valuation after stick value is based on X-times cash flow. So, even if everyone had signal parity, the differentiation in value would be based solely on revenue and expense.

 

[Miss Tuned]

What sort of content (music, controversial talk) do the pirate radio stations broadcast?

aside:
I found out about the (1964 - 1968) Radio Caroline situation about 15 year ago, I thought it was hysterical that such a thing was done, about 10 years ago, there was an FM pirate station here in the KC area (IIRC, 107.9), but that's the only one I've heard about.


Kirk Bayne

Nothing controversial. I've heard some of the Irish pirate DAB signals in situ and they are mostly non-stop music programming, with some ethnic stations imported from the UK. There's nothing particularly exciting on them, but the fact that the technology is now so open that a pirate can spin up a multiplex is interesting from an engineering point of view.

As for Radio Caroline, it's still going, legally nowadays. The historic ship is in place in an estuary in Essex east of London, you can take a boat trip out to it and see the programming going out live. The transmitter these days is on land, at a disused BBC AM site, with a signal at 648 kHz covering most of south-eastern England.

Radio Caroline boat information

 

[davideduardo]

Funny thing is, regional-large market DAB in theory would work well here in the States. Think about it for a second; sell that transmitter site, or do away with that expensive tower lease and the need to light/monitor a tower. For Class B and C stations, lose that expensive power bill, maintenance costs, and capital expense of having to replace expensive transmission equipment. All you need to send the common DAB site is audio. Cost of transmission and maintenance is spread across all the streams, and much less variable than being responsible for your own site. Everyone in the market has equal coverage.
But it will never happen, because of the old way of competitive 'it's my signal-thinking'.

And, as I mentioned in another thread, the places where terrestrial radio has done the best in the "Survival Game" it's because the best stations got national sets of signals (using long-available technology to make travelers always tuned to the best of them) along with rich, deep Internet offerings, each with dozens of "subset" formats based on the big on-air offerings and loads of valuable information on their websites, coupled with listener specific text alerts and the like.

Only EMF has sort of figured this out in the US. What you call the "its my signal" thinking is going to end terrestrial radio in the US eventually,

 

[Miss Tuned]

And, as I mentioned in another thread, the places where terrestrial radio has done the best in the "Survival Game" it's because the best stations got national sets of signals (using long-available technology to make travelers always tuned to the best of them) along with rich, deep Internet offerings, each with dozens of "subset" formats based on the big on-air offerings and loads of valuable information on their websites, coupled with listener specific text alerts and the like.

Only EMF has sort of figured this out in the US. What you call the "its my signal" thinking is going to end terrestrial radio in the US eventually,

The major players in the radio industry as a whole in the UK decided collectively on this some time ago. The mantra became "co-operate on platforms, compete on content" and that's how it has largely remained. They collectively established a single online platform/app for all radio, Radioplayer, and co-operated on things like DAB multiplexes, where stations from competing broadcasters share space.

It's also starting to take shape in Canada, where Radioplayer now exists and where multi-city network "brands" are slowly being rolled out in place of individual clusters by the major players - although the DAB side of things never took off there.

 

[davideduardo]

It's also starting to take shape in Canada, where Radioplayer now exists and where multi-city network "brands" are slowly being rolled out in place of individual clusters by the major players - although the DAB side of things never took off there.

But severe ownership restrictions in Canada have limited any company from having a station in, let's say, every one of the top 25 markets. In Europe, true national coverage and much smaller nations combine to make this work well.

When I was considering this for Ecuador years ago, I figured I'd need about 14 to 15 "full power" FMs and perhaps 50 to 60 in the 1kw to 2kw range. Ecuador is about the size of Colorado.

 

[speer360]

They collectively established a single online platform/app for all radio, Radioplayer,

I find this very interesting that the whole org for radioplayer in a non-profit.

 

[fybush]

But severe ownership restrictions in Canada have limited any company from having a station in, let's say, every one of the top 25 markets. In Europe, true national coverage and much smaller nations combine to make this work well.

When I was considering this for Ecuador years ago, I figured I'd need about 14 to 15 "full power" FMs and perhaps 50 to 60 in the 1kw to 2kw range. Ecuador is about the size of Colorado.

The ownership caps in Canada are per market (no more than four stations, of which no more than three - formerly two - can be FM.)

If there's any national ownership cap, that's news to me. And I'm pretty sure that Bell is close to being in all the top 25 markets these days in radio, as well as owning all of its CTV stations from coast to coast save for a handful in tiny markets.