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A sad observation

C

chrish

Over the past five years I have observered the very fast and very sad deterioration of terrestrial radio as we knew it. In reality it goes back much further to 80/90 and the abdication by the FCC enforcing the standards for emission of RF noise put out by electronic equipment. In recent years ignoring the prolifiation of pirate radio, now any dirtbag can buy equipment on ebay and put a signal on the air.

Even more frightening, deterioration is now on the fast track, I have
a couple of examples:
One of lifes little pleasures has been listening to Saturday with Sinatra and Sunday Sinatra and friends with Ron Della Chiesa on WPLM-FM.
I live in Salem, NH, when WNNH was built on 99.1 a bit of antenna work minimized the problem and I was thrilled when they moved sites the problem went away.
Then came the IBOC trash from 99.5 making 99.1 unlistenable in the car north of the Concord Rd exit on I 93.
Though a major piss off I was happy that I could still listen at home......but not for long...one Saturday night a couple of months ago I hit the WPLM-FM preset on my Bose clock radio and what do I hear on 99.1......A HIGHLY DISTORTED LUNATIC PREACHER SCREAMING AT ME IN SPANISH....another pirate formerly on 99.9 that moved to 99.1 when a legal translator was licensed on 99.9

I am beginning to think I must be a real sap for obeying the law....why should I?
an evergrowing segment of the population is no longer subject to the laws
governing everyone else, at one time, for those that didn't...swift puinishment ensued.


Example # 2 since Sinatra on Saturday nights is just a fond memory I have been
listening to Pat Desmaris and Lovell Dyett on WBZ. Now AM radio is just about over.
I live in a 33 unit three floor condo about 40 miles north of Boston, in the past
five years the electrical noise level has risen so high that WBZ is now unusable
most of the time even using a GE Superadio on a windowsill.
Everytime someone turns on a microwave oven or one of those horrific energy saver
RF trash emiitting light bulbs its all over.
On a Potomac FIM WRKO covers my location day and night with 12 - 16 MV/M
which I consider a pretty robust signal....recently unlistenable much of the time with the GE superadio on the windowsill and can no longer null the noise.
Had to continue listening to WBZ on the internet tonight.

Sad to say the future for over the air radio looks pretty dim
 
And, every radio "station" can now be just one of a Billion internet "radio stations".
 
chrish said:
Sad to say the future for over the air radio looks pretty dim
Click to expand...

It sure does. After all, there's all that dirty language and bared breasts that most people never saw or heard that the FCC absolutely HAS to protect us from. Thank God we have them around to save us from ourselves. Today's FCC priorities leave scant time for such mundane things as...uh...er...enforcing their own rules.
 
chrish said:
now any dirtbag can buy equipment on ebay and put a signal on the air. - Even more frightening deterioration is now on the fast track - I hit the WPLM-FM preset on my Bose clock radio and what do I hear on 99.1......A HIGHLY DISTORTED LUNATIC PREACHER SCREAMING AT ME IN SPANISH. - I am beginning to think I must be a real sap for obeying the law....why should I?
an evergrowing segment of the population is no longer subject to the laws
governing everyone else, at one time, for those that didn't...swift puinishment ensued. - in the past five years the electrical noise level has risen so high that WBZ is now unusable
most of the time even using a GE Superadio on a windowsill. Sad to say the future for over the air radio looks pretty dim
Click to expand...

You are right!
Thanks to a "Fringe" station applying some heat via the FCC a unlicensed operator in Tucson, AZ 3 operators have recently shut down thanks to some complaints on THIS VERY board (Tucson Board) no ID, no EAS, the format... A mess of religious programming, urban, AC and AAA. According to a film documentary that featured these unlicensed stations & their operators, They state the assumption that "holding a FCC station license is not constitutional."

Well we will find out in the coming months, as all 3 stations are now silent.

There is always internet radio. It could use some improvement.
 
chrish said:
Over the past five years I have observered the very fast and very sad deterioration of terrestrial radio as we knew it. In reality it goes back much further to 80/90 and the abdication by the FCC enforcing the standards for emission of RF noise put out by electronic equipment. In recent years ignoring the prolifiation of pirate radio, now any dirtbag can buy equipment on ebay and put a signal on the air.

Even more frightening, deterioration is now on the fast track, I have
a couple of examples:
One of lifes little pleasures has been listening to Saturday with Sinatra and Sunday Sinatra and friends with Ron Della Chiesa on WPLM-FM.
I live in Salem, NH, when WNNH was built on 99.1 a bit of antenna work minimized the problem and I was thrilled when they moved sites the problem went away.
Then came the IBOC trash from 99.5 making 99.1 unlistenable in the car north of the Concord Rd exit on I 93.
Though a major piss off I was happy that I could still listen at home......but not for long...one Saturday night a couple of months ago I hit the WPLM-FM preset on my Bose clock radio and what do I hear on 99.1......A HIGHLY DISTORTED LUNATIC PREACHER SCREAMING AT ME IN SPANISH....another pirate formerly on 99.9 that moved to 99.1 when a legal translator was licensed on 99.9

I am beginning to think I must be a real sap for obeying the law....why should I?
an evergrowing segment of the population is no longer subject to the laws
governing everyone else, at one time, for those that didn't...swift puinishment ensued.


Example # 2 since Sinatra on Saturday nights is just a fond memory I have been
listening to Pat Desmaris and Lovell Dyett on WBZ. Now AM radio is just about over.
I live in a 33 unit three floor condo about 40 miles north of Boston, in the past
five years the electrical noise level has risen so high that WBZ is now unusable
most of the time even using a GE Superadio on a windowsill.
Everytime someone turns on a microwave oven or one of those horrific energy saver
RF trash emiitting light bulbs its all over.
On a Potomac FIM WRKO covers my location day and night with 12 - 16 MV/M
which I consider a pretty robust signal....recently unlistenable much of the time with the GE superadio on the windowsill and can no longer null the noise.
Had to continue listening to WBZ on the internet tonight.

Sad to say the future for over the air radio looks pretty dim
Click to expand...

The indignity of not being able to listen to whatever you want whenever you want on the radio. Now you know how it feels to be a minority.
 
Ciao.....still living the clueless life in LALA land.......I am trying to listen to licensed
legal broadcast operations who have invested millions to do it, unlike the prattle
of the criminal ignorant....... multiplying like cockroaches as social order
moves in the direction of anarchy
 
You know, sooner than later, operators are going to understand that all that expense on towers, engineering studies, transmitters, real estate, buildings is, for all intents and purposes, gone down the path of antiquity.

Terrestrial radio and it's many complaints about interference, static, man-made noise, shrinking coverage, bad ground systems, etc. is so passe' in this day and age.

People should listen to radio for content in good quality ... with fidelity, loudness and clarity.

So, for those who don't realize that flashing red beacons and obstruction lights do not a radio station make ... go by a nice Internet Radio ... stream at a decent bitrate, and for the rest of us "listeners," relax ... and enjoy the stream.

That's the "platform" of today.

Imagine the TV station with a crank on the side that turns out hundred dollar bills today. Sure, they have 1500 foot sticks, strobe lights and mega-million watt transmitters and "HD" by mandate ... but 90 percent or more of the public is watching via cable or by satellite on Dish or Direct.

Impressive at one time, but consider that to own a TV station today, you can put a Fox or CW affiliate on an LPTV of just a few hundred watts and get "must carry" designation in a market with strong cable penetration and a satellite uplink. A LOT cheaper, but a few engineers would be out of work when they bury those huge racks and knock down those towers.
 
"The indignity of not being able to listen to whatever you want whenever you want on the radio. Now you know how it feels to be a minority."

Solution: Get an iPod. That's what "they" do. Radio doesn't do that, never has.
 
oaktree said:
"The indignity of not being able to listen to whatever you want whenever you want on the radio. Now you know how it feels to be a minority."

Solution: Get an iPod. That's what "they" do. Radio doesn't do that, never has.
Click to expand...

Exactly, if the guy wants to hear Sinatra, he can download it to his iPod.
 
Pirates should be hunted down and disposed of!

The other end of the equation is the cheapening of consumer electronics.

Why is it every other electronic device got better with technology, but radios especially the AM section of car radios, have been cheaped out to the point where they remind me of the 5 dollar drug store transistor radio I bought as a kid.

Sensitivity and alternate channel rejection, along with bandwidth have gone down the toilet.

Everything is tossing RF these days. The cell phone charger I use in my car makes my FM tuner in my Toyota useless. Cuts the number of stations I can listen to in half. Sirius and XM RF converter sections routinely wipe out parts of the non com spectrum if you are within 100 yards of one. As I understand it, they send a FM signal back up the units antenna which is then supposed t be picked up by the cars antenna. I know there were some design compliance issues for a while but do you really think the consumer installed the chokes that they were supposed to get?

And pirates.. make them walk the plank.
 
WLYNgm said:
Exactly, and if the guy wants to hear Urban junk, he can download it to his iPod.
Click to expand...

Anita Baker is junk? Intersting. She sang at the inauguration of President George H. Bush. He didn't seem to think she was junk. Methinks some people are unfamiliar with R&B and have a very limited view of the genre.
 
The Beave said:
According to a film documentary that featured these unlicensed stations & their operators, They state the assumption that "holding a FCC station license is not constitutional."

Well we will find out in the coming months, as all 3 stations are now silent.
Click to expand...

Do those brain surgeons really believe this is the first time this argument has been made?

The FCC's authority to license stations derives from an act of Congress: the Communications Act of 1934. That authority has never been successfully challenged in court, though many have tried.
 
During the recent tornado outbreak back home, I didn't see photos of anyone tuning in to Internet Radio for news. I think it was due to Cable and Telco being down for a week.

Of course, it was working here, 1603 miles away. So, my family would call me (via cell phone) to get the news about their neighborhood.

Radio and TV still have a place in the world.
 
Things like the tornado outbreak are reminders that radio still has its place. As does today's article about Hugo Chavez' new plan for national intelligence where neighbors are to snitch on one another (http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/03/america/03venez.php). Your internet listening is vulnerable to outages from natural and man made disasters. Also, it can be monitored by those with less than altruistic intentions.

On the other hand, a good portable AM/FM/SW radio will still work and what you listen to is between you and your radio (and your significant other).

There still is, and will probably always be, a place for radio.
 
One time I stopped into the station and there was a big wig from corporate visiting. We got to talking about new tower sites and I told him there was no way in hell we were going to be able to build a new facility around here. Between the NIMBY crowd and the price of land, the best we could do would be to move onto an existing tower.

The Big Wig, who was an engineer, said he would love to see the industry get together long enough to agree to shut down for an hour.. everyone turn the transmitters off on an agreed upon day and time to make a point about how important radio is and it should not be taken for granted.

Imagine if you will, 5 PM on a friday and every station goes dark. No news, no traffic, no nothing.

I thought it was a great idea.
 
ZRXOA 5248 said:
One time I stopped into the station and there was a big wig from corporate visiting. We got to talking about new tower sites and I told him there was no way in hell we were going to be able to build a new facility around here. Between the NIMBY crowd and the price of land, the best we could do would be to move onto an existing tower.

The Big Wig, who was an engineer, said he would love to see the industry get together long enough to agree to shut down for an hour.. everyone turn the transmitters off on an agreed upon day and time to make a point about how important radio is and it should not be taken for granted.

Imagine if you will, 5 PM on a friday and every station goes dark. No news, no traffic, no nothing.

I thought it was a great idea.
Click to expand...

I've attended hearings on tower sites, and some of the things said in those hearings would amaze you. Radio stations are accused of causing cancer, eavesdropping on the paranoid and being solely responsible for murder, rape, suicide, blizzards, tornados, you name it.

I've also noticed, as a sort of comic relief, that the same NIMBY or BANANA types who complain the loudest about not wanting radio towers anywhere near them also have a cell phone on their belts or in their pocketbooks and are constantly complaining about its coverage. The disconnect from reality is either funny or sad, can't decide which.
 
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