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Saving AM Radio

Kelly A said:
Also given the revenue/ad environment, I doubt most AM broadcasters have the capital to experiment on such a gamble.
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No argument there. It would almost have to be a grant-funded experiment or a research project. But if it works it would certainly eliminate the real estate problems associated with a traditional AM facility. Then there's the whole concept of actual FCC approval - although they have shown willingness to accept some radical antenna designs:

www.radioworld.com

WQVR(AM) Is Granted CP to Use HEBA Antenna at Night - Radio World

The FCC has granted an application for a CP filed by WQVR(AM) 940 in Webster, Mass., requesting licensed nighttime operation with its High-Efficiency Broadband Antenna.
www.radioworld.com www.radioworld.com

But it would be a fun project.

Dave B.
 
Mark Roberts said:
The most concise explanation of the KOB situation - though one that appears to have some errors - is in KOB - Goddard's Magic Mast, 50 Years of Pioneer Broadcasting, by Ann Velia. It's at worldradiohistory.com...

Yeah, but. Broadcasting, September 15, 1940, on page 14 in an article written by Sol Taishoff himself, reported:
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Thanks for the promo for the stuff on my website, www.worldradiohistory.com!
 
The bottom line, for whatever format on AM is; all this speculation about using some modulation trick, Dolby encode/decode, long dead stereo, AMX, or whatever, won't alter the course of history. Normal consumers won't purchase new radios, and broadcasters aren't willing to pay whatever license fees, nor are radio manufacturers all to try some new technical trickery. And even if millions of technical dollars were invested, consumers have mostly moved on from AM. Besides, what would be the point of making massive investments to improve the quality of a 100-year-old medium to duplicate what is familiar and has been done on FM for decades?
 
Kelly A said:
The bottom line, for whatever format on AM is; all this speculation about using some modulation trick, Dolby encode/decode, long dead stereo, AMX, or whatever, won't alter the course of history. Normal consumers won't purchase new radios, and broadcasters aren't willing to pay whatever license fees, nor are radio manufacturers all to try some new technical trickery. And even if millions of technical dollars were invested, consumers have mostly moved on from AM. Besides, what would be the point of making massive investments to improve the quality of a 100-year-old medium to duplicate what is familiar and has been done on FM for decades?
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And again, in the top 100 markets, an average of less than two stations actually cover 80% of the whole market, day and night. With increasing man made noise, those that covered a significant part of a market 40 to 50 years ago have lost as much as half their population coverage.
 
Kelly A said:
Besides, what would be the point of making massive investments to improve the quality of a 100-year-old medium to duplicate what is familiar and has been done on FM for decades?
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The last massive investment for AM radio was HD Radio, begun in the early 90s, launched in the early 2000s, and basically DOA. At the time, I said (probably here) that it would mark the last time any technology company would invest money towards improving the quality of AM radio. It was a disaster in execution and implementation. It caused more problems in AM (with interference) than it solved. It was approved by the FCC, never mandated, and then they never addressed the interference issue.
 
radio11 said:
If radio can be anything, it is nothing. Communication fails.
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But you have to define what it is in order to gain an understanding of the problems facing radio and possible solutions. Up to about 25 years ago, radio was inseparable from the physical method of delivery (AM or FM). Now it's more like a stack, just like computer networking. The means of physical delivery, at the bottom of the stack, are independent of whatever else is above the stack. Then the question is defining those upper layers of the stack: programming, finances, and so on.

A possible working definition of radio would be, "Linear, real-time audio programming, curated and (possibly) hosted through research intended to maximize a potential audience that is attractive to advertisers, who provide the financial support for that programming."
 
Mark Roberts said:
But you have to define what it is in order to gain an understanding of the problems facing radio and possible solutions.
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I agree. There's a similar problem to the word camera. To most people, their phone is their camera, just as their phone is their radio, their personal music device, their GPS, and everything else. Thank Steve Jobs for that. The replacement of the physical camera with digital photography in one's phone basically killed Kodak, Polaroid, and other companies.

So for radio, the solution is breaking free from the device called a radio, restricted by geography, and becoming part of the larger digital audio business.
 
TheBigA said:
I agree. There's a similar problem to the word camera. To most people, their phone is their camera, just as their phone is their radio, their personal music device, their GPS, and everything else. Thank Steve Jobs for that. The replacement of the physical camera with digital photography in one's phone basically killed Kodak, Polaroid, and other companies.

So for radio, the solution is breaking free from the device called a radio, restricted by geography, and becoming part of the larger digital audio business.
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Well a radio is something that receives a frequency. Cell phone communication is a radio.

Ham Radio. CB Radio. Police Radio. It’s all radio.
 
Don CT said:
Well a radio is something that receives a frequency. Cell phone communication is a radio.

Ham Radio. CB Radio. Police Radio. It’s all radio.
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...and the word used before radio was wireless.
 
Mark Roberts said:
A possible working definition of radio would be, "Linear, real-time audio programming, curated and (possibly) hosted through research intended to maximize a potential audience that is attractive to advertisers, who provide the financial support for that programming."
Click to expand...

If you go back to the writings of Marconi back when he was working on radio, he referred to it as ''wireless telephony.'' Those are his words. So his intent was to create a cell phone. It just took 100 years to cram the transmission system into a handheld device.
 
TheBigA said:
I agree. There's a similar problem to the word camera. To most people, their phone is their camera, just as their phone is their radio, their personal music device, their GPS, and everything else. Thank Steve Jobs for that. The replacement of the physical camera with digital photography in one's phone basically killed Kodak, Polaroid, and other companies.
Click to expand...
If you look deeper, the thing that killed Kodak and Polaroid was digital photography. Polaroid was destroyed by instant digital pictures, and Kodak did not introduce a line of cameras and products that consumers liked; the whole digital photo industry moved to Asia.
TheBigA said:
So for radio, the solution is breaking free from the device called a radio, restricted by geography, and becoming part of the larger digital audio business.
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And the issue there is that there is no restriction on the number of audio sources, and we are ending up with a very small number of big providers and no way to be profitable for the smaller ones.
 
TheBigA said:
If you go back to the writings of Marconi back when he was working on radio, he referred to it as ''wireless telephony.'' Those are his words. So his intent was to create a cell phone.
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No, his intent was to use radio ("wireless" in those days) to replace undersea cables for telegraphic and telephonic communications.
TheBigA said:
It just took 100 years to cram the transmission system into a handheld device.
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But he was not thinking of personal services for individual consumers. He was thinking of how to connect telephone and telegraph central offices without wire.
 
DavidEduardo said:
But he was not thinking of personal services for individual consumers. He was thinking of how to connect telephone and telegraph central offices without wire.
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His company was the Marconi Wireless Telegraph company. He was trying to improve on Bell's device by eliminating the wires. However, as you say, the telephone itself was a very different thing at the time. Alexander Graham Bell's company was the American Telephone & Telegraph company: AT&T.
 
DavidEduardo said:
And the issue there is that there is no restriction on the number of audio sources, and we are ending up with a very small number of big providers and no way to be profitable for the smaller ones.
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Keep in mind there's no restriction on the number of video sources either, yet somehow the studios have managed to dominate video content because they understand the distribution, and they know how to market their content. That marketing aspect will become more important for radio companies as they try to establish a beachhead in this new environment. What happens when you have to compete in a larger market where you don't control the device? That's what the next phase will be.
 
Post #300! The definition of words evolve over time. The word "Gay" used to mean happy or jovial. Now it means something else entirely. So too has the meaning of Radio evolved.
Flower Power Radio is online only, but it's radio because they say so.
 


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