AM HD TURNOFF PACE ACCELERATES

[Don Juan]

You should rename the thread:


"AM TURNOFF PACE ACCELERATES"

 

[Savage]

You bet. And in large part because of HD hash, IMO. And self-interference on many radios. A large swath of the AM band is unlistenable now, thanks to roaring skywave IBOC noise.

Let's all recall the posts of "a certain frequenter of this board" gleefully counting down the days, hours and minutes until 24-hour AM IBOC was to be permitted by the FCC on 9/14/07.

HD was supposed to resuscitate the AM band. As is now being chanted here in the latest HD talking point, "it was AM's last hope." So if HD-AM is so great, how come this didn't happen?

Its failure to accomplish "saving AM" is only a minor item in the endless list of HD Radio failures and the ramped-up nighttime interference and terrible analog audio quality has only solidified a perception among the general public that AM is a noisy audio junkyard.

I'll now let HD's three regular boosters here start screaming for empirical proof of a causal relationship between IBOC noise and audience loss on AM. Of course it can't be proven that way. But all you have to do is (try to) listen to the AM band at night in the Northeast. Or listen to the crappy analog audio on HD-AM stations. And look at how even heritage AM stations like KSL and WSB are adding FM simulcasts or are moving to FM entirely. It's not rocket science. It's common sense that HD has accelerated AM's decline.

HD perpetrators are now just hanging onto this abject engineering disaster as a face-saving measure, even as their noise-choked signals alienate more listeners and injure other broadcasters. IBOC is an engineering crime.

 

[badjef]

The problem comes in that there is only so much you are going to be able to do with the AM band with new technologies co-existing with ones already established. There isn't enough room.

This was discovered in the 1920's when work on FM began.

Bandwidth is at a premium. That won't be so in the future. But when you only have 10khz to deal with, you do with what you have. (Star Trek - Gorn episode).

Politics will trump all, even with radio. Ubiquity was able to sell a bill of goods to people who were looking for the magic elixir and that's what we are left with.

I still find it interesting and exciting to see with everything the broadcasters have going against them, they still find ways of pulling the rabbit out of their hats.

As long as there are people with an appetite for information and entertainment, there will be people ready and willing to deliver it.

I'm still waiting for a station named "105.7-The Restaurant"

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!

 

[Ken Tucky]

I always thought CKLW was #2 signalwise, behind WJR. I know WWJ has gone 50kw on a former regional frequency of 950, as have 1270 and several other Detroit market signals - but they've all mostly got something like nine-tower arrays. So while it's hard to figure how they could have better facilities than the 60-year old 5-tower CKLW system, I will defer to localoscillator - he has "boots on the ground" in Detroit and knows whereof he speaks. If WFDF indeed has the second- or third-best facility on AM in the market, that's quite an accomplishment.

Meanwhile; UPDATE! Barry McLarnon reports that AM-HD's pop-count has inched downward once again, to 244 total (83 on unlimited hours, with about half on graveyard channels.) Clear Channel and Bonneville have backed towards the exits, likely hoping nobody notices, by turning off major signals in HD.

Let's keep it up! Let's set a goal of fewer than 200 AM-HDs by early 2011!! ;D

Is there a city ANYWHERE with more AM directional monstrosities than Detroit?

 

[Savage]

Youngstown, Ohio, has to be close, especially if you weight it for population-per-tower! ;D

Search www.fybush.com "Site Of The Week" section for Youngstown AMs.

 

[local oscillator]

Yes, AM in Detroit is a "directional mess." Of the 25 or so AM stations in the Metro Detroit area (including Canadian stations!), I can come up with only 4 that operate with fewer than 4 towers: WJR, 760, Class A, 1 tower; WUFL, 1030, Class D, 3 towers; WEXL, Class C, 2 towers; and WDTK, Class C, 1 tower. There's a lot of directional RF being radiated out of Detroit -- generally to the north.

 

[Ken Tucky]

Yes, AM in Detroit is a "directional mess." Of the 25 or so AM stations in the Metro Detroit area (including Canadian stations!), I can come up with only 4 that operate with fewer than 4 towers: WJR, 760, Class A, 1 tower; WUFL, 1030, Class D, 3 towers; WEXL, Class C, 2 towers; and WDTK, Class C, 1 tower. There's a lot of directional RF being radiated out of Detroit -- generally to the north.

Looks like it's "The Phasor City" more than "The Motor City!"

 

[davideduardo]

Unlike in days gone by when THE BIG 8/CKLW was at times #1 simultaneously in three US markets (Detroit, Toledo, and Cleveland)

That was urban legend. CKLW was never #1 in Cleveland, although it did get some listening in the Western suburbs near the lake that that did not get good signals from WIXY at the time that WIXY was overwhelmingly #1 in Cleveland in the period from around '64 into the bery early 70's. By that time, FM started its ascent in any case...

1970 was the start of the fall of CKLW, with CanCon and two Gordon Lightfoot songs an hour... and then two years later, WDRQ finished it.

And a station with a null pointed at Loarain County and which does not have a 2 mV/m even at the lakeshore anywhere in the market could never be #1 in Cleveland... Toledo, yes, for a couple of books, because CKLW's day signal was nearly 15 mV/m over Lucas county.

 

[davideduardo]

And look at how even heritage AM stations like KSL and WSB are adding FM simulcasts or are moving to FM entirely. It's not rocket science. It's common sense that HD has accelerated AM's decline.

AM's decline started with the FCC decision to stop simulcasts in 1967; by 1977 over half of all listening was to FM and nearly all the under-30 listening was on the band.

So someone who was 25 in 1980 grew up totally under the influence of FM... no use for AM, no memory of ever using AM. Today, that person is 55, at the high end of 25-54, the sales demos.

So if WSB or KSL or any other big AM wants to get under-55 listeners, they need to be on the band that those listners use almost exclusively... FM.

Those stations you named were doing fine in 55+, but sales were in jeopardy or declining. There was no reason for the older listeners to leave, but there was no attraction for younger ones. Yet we've seen all over the country where AMs with challenged under-55 demos have added FM or just simply moved there and have literally shot up in the sales demos.

HD has nothing to do with this particular issue.

 

[TheBigA]

As is now being chanted here in the latest HD talking point, "it was AM's last hope." So if HD-AM is so great, how come this didn't happen?

I think my point on this is that right now AM has no hope. As its audience and heritage talent dies off, it will die off. With the possible exceptions of religion, ethnic, and brokered. The major AM owners have already begun transitioning valuable content from AM to FM. There will be no future attempts by the FCC or any electronics manufacturer to help AM radio. To make it worse, now electronics manufacturers are doing everything they can to eliminate AM from any new devices. Although the CEA is opposed to FM inclusion in cell phones, you'll notice there is no discussion at all about AM. So regardless of what happens to HD-AM, the prognosis here is not good. And sure, it's likely that AM owners will turn off their HD-AM transmitters. But this is simply part of the process with them ultimately turning off the main channel. It won't happen today or tomorrow. It may take 15 years. But it will happen. And as we all know, even one of AM radio's staunchest supporters has purchased an FM translater to better serve his market. Even he has seen the writing on the wall.

 

[audioguy]

That is precisely why radio should try to get the channel 5 and 6 spectrum before it goes away... get it now or lose it... maybe forever!

 

[local oscillator]

David, we're splitting hairs over CKLW's ratings from more than 40 years ago. Here are some reminiscences from Steve Hunter, a Big 8 jock at the time, about CKLW's ratings and a bit about WIXY, too: http://www.thebig8.net/impact.html.

 

[davideduardo]

David, we're splitting hairs over CKLW's ratings from more than 40 years ago. Here are some reminiscences from Steve Hunter, a Big 8 jock at the time, about CKLW's ratings and a bit about WIXY, too: http://www.thebig8.net/impact.html.

I'm familiar with the site... if you go to the contributor's page you will see my name.

When I want ratings information, the last person I would generally go to is a 60's jock. CKLW had about 5 big years, 1967 to 1972, when the combination of CanCon and FM Top 40 brought it down. It was the top station in Detroit, and occasionally in Toledo (which had its own Top 40) but it was not #1 or close in Cleveland and, 50 miles inland in Akron, it was not a significant factor.

In fact, by 1975, CKLW was down to about 5th, with a 5 share while WJR had a 15. They stayed second till '77 in Toledo because Toledo did not have an FM Top 40, but when it got one it died.

Obliquely you have demonstrated my point... by the mid 70's the contemporary music audience had gone to FM, and anyone growing up at the time never became used to listening to AM... HD or not. In fact, the issue predates HD by about 30 years.

 

[local oscillator]

My only point was that the once mighty CKLW has become essentially non-entity on the US side of the border, but nevertheless a solid Canadian content news/talk station that serves Essex County well on the other side. I have no disagreement with you on the demise of The Big 8, the demise of music on AM, or the fact that those events predated IBOC by decades. I've been in the business long enough to have seen it all happen.

 

[tomservo]

Although the CEA is opposed to FM inclusion in cell phones, you'll notice there is no discussion at all about AM.

That's because putting AM radio in a portable device like an mp3 player or a cell phone would be all but an impossibility. There would have to be some way to reduce the antenna size considerably and eliminate the noise that the electronics of the portable device would create itself.

 

[TheBigA]

And yet at one time portable AM radios (yes they made them once) were small enough to fit into a shirt pocket, and didn't require any outside antenna.

 

[Tom Wells]

Although the CEA is opposed to FM inclusion in cell phones, you'll notice there is no discussion at all about AM.

That's because putting AM radio in a portable device like an mp3 player or a cell phone would be all but an impossibility. There would have to be some way to reduce the antenna size considerably and eliminate the noise that the electronics of the portable device would create itself.

There is a way. A switch that when operated to use AM, TURNS OFF the clocks and CPUs that run square waves.
OR, find a way to use sine wave clocks and properly decouple such signals internally so such signals remain inside the circuit where they "belong".

 

[DaveBayArea]

There is a way. A switch that when operated to use AM, TURNS OFF the clocks and CPUs that run square waves.
OR, find a way to use sine wave clocks and properly decouple such signals internally so such signals remain inside the circuit where they "belong".

I just purchased an amazing radio. It cost me all of $60 but I can't believe what it does. It's a Tecsun PL-380, with a DSP receiver. Variable bandwidth AM with the touch of a button. The FM capture ratio must be about 0.1 db, because for the first time since the inception of IBOC I can clearly hear adjacent-channel stations that were once buried in noise. You have to move the radio around to a "dead spot" from the HD transmitter, but it works. I just got it yesterday & haven't figured everything out yet. But this is one pretty fine device. I haven't gotten it away from the city yet to see how sensitive the AM really is, but it appears to be among the best.

Dave B.

 

[KeithE4]

And yet at one time portable AM radios (yes they made them once) were small enough to fit into a shirt pocket, and didn't require any outside antenna.

My 1960-vintage Commodore Ancient Modulation pocket radio is about 3/4" thick - plenty of room for a small loopstick. It still works, BTW. A walkman-type radio is also thick enough to hold one.

My Droid phone is two sections, 1/4" thick each. An MP3 player is around 1/8" to 1/4" thick. Neither is physically capable of holding a loopstick of any size.

I'm not sure about the digital-electronics noise problem. That's fixable if the design is good. My walkman has a digital tuner. So does my home stereo/DVD player. Neither generates any noise whatsoever. AM reception is as good as with an analog tuner.

 

[Savage]

More on Detroit directionals: let's not forget that the Motor City was once home to one of two mothers-of-all-DAs, the never-licensed 12-tower ex-WJBK monster, 5kw on 1500.

Storer's attempt to get this giant licensed occupied the better part of several decades in a three-way joust involving WTOP and KSTP. Eventually it was resolved with various parties agreeing to accept a degree of mutual nighttime interference to loosen their patterns (a settlement which seems quaint in today's era of thundering IBOC nighttime noise.) The eventual result was a "simpler" array utilizing a mere NINE towers for 5kw on the current WLQV.

The US DA King to this day remains the former KLIF 1190 in Rockwall, Texas, with a 12-tower (2x6) system for 5kw dating to 1969. KFXR has historically used separate sites for day and night, and Dave Hultsman once posted a blog describing the fascinating history of this site's construction. At one point KLIF had three sites while the new night site was going up, with the result that the station was temporarily operating with some combination of 21 towers scattered over the three locations.

Canada still has CJRN Niagara Falls with 10 towers night (3.5kw) and various accounts peg the 1970s array for CFGM in Richmond Mills (Toronto) with either 13 or 15 towers, 50kw on 1320.