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Are there any AM-HD broadcasts going on at night ? ?
- Thread starter TheRover
- Start date
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Mike Walker
Guest
WBT Charlotte (1110) is on at night. WFAN (660AM) New York is on at night, as is WCBS (880), and WOR (710).
Barry McLarnon has a page which is updated almost daily, including callsign, facilities and ownership of all HD AM stations and whether or not they operate at night:
http://topazdesigns.com/iboc/station-list.html
http://topazdesigns.com/iboc/station-list.html
TheRover said:
670 WSCR Chicago was running a hockey game without HD a few nights ago. HD disappeared just before the game started, came back afterward.
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Radioman100
Guest
Does the delay really matter anymore?
With HDTV and satellite TV, there is some delay of the picture and TV sound.
One major football radio network is trying something new this year. They're broadcasting with a delay, and recommending their viewers use their cable or satellite DVR pause function to sync the game on radio to the TV visual.
This actually makes quite a bit of sense. If you broadcast with no delay at all, and HDTV and satellite TV inherently have some delay, you hear what happened on radio before you see it on TV.
With HDTV and satellite TV, there is some delay of the picture and TV sound.
One major football radio network is trying something new this year. They're broadcasting with a delay, and recommending their viewers use their cable or satellite DVR pause function to sync the game on radio to the TV visual.
This actually makes quite a bit of sense. If you broadcast with no delay at all, and HDTV and satellite TV inherently have some delay, you hear what happened on radio before you see it on TV.
Does the HD delay in live sports matter any more? Sure it matters. There are a lot of fans who like to listen on headphones to local ballgames while they watch the live action at the park. The delay makes this practice impossible.
We share the local baseball games with CCUs AMs in the market, doing the weekday schedule while 1180 and 1280 get the weekends. After EVERY game - with virtually no exception - we receive thank-you calls and e-mails from Red Wings fans thanking us for not having a delay. Some of these listener-baseball fans are blind and visually impaired. The ballgames are important to these disabled folks.
I think that IBOC-AM violates the Americans With Disabilities Act. It deprives blind and disabled listeners of valuable radio service.
We share the local baseball games with CCUs AMs in the market, doing the weekday schedule while 1180 and 1280 get the weekends. After EVERY game - with virtually no exception - we receive thank-you calls and e-mails from Red Wings fans thanking us for not having a delay. Some of these listener-baseball fans are blind and visually impaired. The ballgames are important to these disabled folks.
I think that IBOC-AM violates the Americans With Disabilities Act. It deprives blind and disabled listeners of valuable radio service.
This entire argument is silly. Sure if you are a small market station you'd want to get those 500 people at the ballgame because that is probably the number of people listening to minor league sports. In a major market like NY you get maybe 53,000 people in a ball park every night. Even if everyone who went to the park carried a radio it's still a very small percentage of your actual audience. Radios appeal is for those who either can't be in front of a television or who don't care for the TV announcers and whether there's an 8 second delay between the action and the report is not important. You are still talking about a very small group of people. What stations in NY are starting to do is to continue normal broadcasting over the internet (where they can charge less for spots but still gain some income) while broadcasting a game over their normal frequency. With the advent of cable penetration and the fact that most games (other than local NFL broadcasts) are no longer broadcast over free TV trying to sync a radio call with TV action is becomeing almost impossible. What's going to happen in 2009 when analogue TV disappears? HDTV also has some built in compression. Trying to syncronize TV and radio audio is becoming a thing of the past. It's time to move into the 21 century.
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LinoNYC
Guest
Savage said:
[EDIT]
If you ever get to court with your interference claims, I hope you'll be better prepared.
There isn't and probably won't ever be a requirement for radio to offer pbp in realtime, furthermore all of today's digital processors introduce a degree of delay added to that the fact that most stations carring games are normally talkers that often leave the obscenity delay in, the iboc is just another one added, if they even leave it on.
[EDIT]
Lino
[EDIT-inflammatory]
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Radioman100
Guest
Savage said:
This is quite possibly the lamest of the lame arguments I've heard against HD Radio. HD Radio doesn't accomodate BLIND fans listening AT the games and therefore violates the ADA?
Now that's just plain funny! Radio provides a valuable service for blind listeners. Good luck on getting anyone to care whether it comes with an 8 second delay or not.
I wasn't talking about syncing radio with TV. I was talking about syncing radio with live action at the ballpark.
What do HDTV and obscenity delay have to do with the argument that the HD-AM encoding delay makes listening to live games on location, impossible for the general public?
The encoding delay also complicates live remotes.
BTW: looks like WRVA and KOA have also suspended nighttime IBOC-AM. Even iBiquity's major investors are quietly edging towards the exits.
What do HDTV and obscenity delay have to do with the argument that the HD-AM encoding delay makes listening to live games on location, impossible for the general public?
The encoding delay also complicates live remotes.
BTW: looks like WRVA and KOA have also suspended nighttime IBOC-AM. Even iBiquity's major investors are quietly edging towards the exits.
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Radioman100
Guest
Savage said:
Complicates them? Yes, but no more so than the obscenity delays that every sane station airing live remote programming is already using.
This discussion of sports reminds me of a a high school football game I was listening to several years ago. Some kids in the stands, probably under the press box apparently spotted the crowd noise mic near them and proceeded to yell a few choice words into it.
Then there's the time one of the guys on a sister station of the one I worked at was interviewing Judge Mills Lane live on location without a delay and he dropped the S-Bomb live on the air.
I wouldn't dream of doing a live remote ANYWHERE these days without a delay. You can't trust the interviewees and you CERTAINLY can't trust the public!
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Radioman100
Guest
Savage said:
Personal insults? No. What I said simply reflects reality. Radio provides a valuable service for sports fans, blind ones in particular.
Nobody in the government would care whether games are broadcast with a delay or not. In fact, they would probably encourage a profanity delay of ANY live event to prevent any further incidents like Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" from airing.
Your argument about complicating remotes is amazing to me. Who other than the smallest broadcaster with the smallest number of listeners uses an over the air signal for return cue? Any legitimate operation today uses ISDN or some other digital link for sporting events. Even smaller stations could use a Comrex Hotline/Matrix/Access, you name it. All of the devices I just mentioned provide for a clean mix minus return cue and if you use a ISDN with AAC LD coding there is no serious delay caused by coding. To program a sttion to serve the relatively small number of people who carry radios to a stadium is in my opinion, rediculous.
"Rediculous," eh? I'll pass along your comment denigrating any station listening off-air on remotes for cues (SMALLEST broadcaster, SMALLEST number of listeners, etc.) to the major-group 50kw station that engages in this practice. The one owned by a major investor in iBiquity. The whose CE was complaining to me about HD-AM and how he lives for the day he can get permission to turn it off. Permanently.
Radioman, if the "insults" observation fits....wait 8 seconds for the encoding delay, and then wear it.
You're ducking the argument about live sports and HD. I never claimed that radio doesn't provide meaningful service to blind and visually impaired persons. I stated that blind people like to go to the park to enjoy the atmosphere as any sighted persons would, and stay up on the play by listening to the simultaneous broadcast.
If the broadcast is subject to delay this is then impossible. You understand this point perfectly well. It's why major-market games on 50kw clears are routinely being heard in analog real time. Without HD-AM.
Radioman, if the "insults" observation fits....wait 8 seconds for the encoding delay, and then wear it.
You're ducking the argument about live sports and HD. I never claimed that radio doesn't provide meaningful service to blind and visually impaired persons. I stated that blind people like to go to the park to enjoy the atmosphere as any sighted persons would, and stay up on the play by listening to the simultaneous broadcast.
If the broadcast is subject to delay this is then impossible. You understand this point perfectly well. It's why major-market games on 50kw clears are routinely being heard in analog real time. Without HD-AM.
Savage said:
Bob, I don't intend to get into a shouting match with you. We obviously disagree, but don't tell a 50 KW 1A in a major market is using off air monitoring for cuing. That's all well and good if you are playing a game at home but say your team is playing 1,000 miles from home, what then? Again, no professional broadcast facility that I know of is using over the air cuing as a matter of course. If you as a small market station wish to do so that's fine, but while no one is pushing IBOC on you, don't push your technology on the rest of the industry. ISDN is the norm when it comes to airing sporting events and even set at G.722 56/32 you get pretty good audio quality for AM broadcast. Don't get me started on B-1 & B-2 channels for the cost of a single call (That's 2 full duplex circuits) Now of course with equipment such as the Comrex Access, which uses IP technology, you can even use the internet for two way high quality communications. Since you are on record as being so against digital technology which even if it was out of band would eventually mean the demise of current analogue technology, how do you feel about Feb 2009 when all over the air analog television disappears. That means you either pay for cable, satellite, or a convertor box. At least using this technology (IBOC) analogue stations won't be forced to close down. Face facts, we're in a digital age and analog broadcasting is slowly going to disappear. I was a very active cw operator who passed the 20 WPM CW test when I got my Extra license. I'm not happy that CW is slowly disappearing and that you can get the same license I have today and only know 5 WPM of CW, and that wlll disappear too. We call this progress like it or not, as time moves on and it moves faster every year, analog AM stations will become more and more irrelavent. I know this last comment will cause you to lash out. It wasn't written for that response, it was written as an observation of the direction technology is heading in. By the way we can all come up with individules who like or dislike anything. That just proves that different people hold different opinions. The people who own these stations make the money decisions as you must be aware owning a facility yourself.
I agree with RF about the use of other IFB methods for fixed-venue events like sports play-by-play - but what about the news reporter on a cellphone in the field? Or the traffic reporter in the air? Maybe NYC has found a better way, but I can think of other "top-10" markets that are still cueing talent over the air in those contexts, or were until the HD delay came in. (I know of at least one that deliberately left its analog non-time-aligned for several months until an alternate cueing method could be worked out.)
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