BAD Analog Audio on IBOC AM

[Chuck]

Maybe, but Sinatra once sang if you can make it there (NY) you can make it anywhere. I'll tell you what, I'll take NYC and you can have the rest.

You're missing a lot, but as long as you're happy... By the way, I've spent the majority of my life working and living in the top 10 markets. I now reside in what you'd certainly consider to be the "back woods." Don't knock it until you try it. It's a big world out there.

"Once again, that is a rather myopic point of view. "And you opinion isn't?

I don't think so. From your comments, I'd hazard a guess that I'm a lot better traveled than you are. There are lots of great places out there, and I'll be the first to admit that NYC is one of them. But I can assure you that it is not representative of the rest of the world. New York City is a totally unique part of America, quite unlike most other metropolitan regions. It is certainly nothing like most of the smaller markets, although many of those less densely populated areas really do offer a wonderful lifestyle. The City not even like the rest of New York State. An hour or so drive away, and you are in a totally different world.

"The "thinning of the herd" theory sounds great, unless you happen to own or work for one. You might have a different opinion in that case."Possibly but I didn't always work at the network level. I worked in radio for a daytimer (before the whole post sunset thing took place) and to be honest many of these marginal stations don't hire staff. They take syndicated long form programing, like satelite delivered music or talk from providers. Many are now owned by group owners such as Clear Channel. Too all those complaining of IBOC interference, shutting down those facilities will go a long way to relieving all the intereference on the medium wave.

Well, I won't argue that many local radio stations are indeed in the toilet. But it isn't as much a problem with technology as it is with programming and management. Many of the current owners take the easy (read “cheap”) way out by running brokered programming that nobody wants to listen to. Even so, not all small stations are terrible. In my area there are several local stations (even 1 KW AM's) that do well because they serve their local communities. If you did shut down the “underperforming” stations, how do those owners get compensated for their loss? How would you even choose who gets shut down and who doesn’t? If you owned one of them, I’ll bet you’d be pretty unhappy if you were told that someone was going to confiscate your property without fair and reasonable compensation. Even with reasonable compensation I’d wager you might not be very happy about it. Let’s not forget, it’s not just the owners, it is also the people who work for them. Mid-life career changes are difficult at best.Unless the current owners simply give up and turn in their licenses, I don’t see the thinning of the herd theory working. If they decide to give up, maybe they will sell their stations to interested parties who actually want to do something with them. That would be novel. I think it is also very unlikely that many small stations will be able to afford the transition to HD radio. As I see it, you need a budget in the $100,000 range to do it. If you are blessed with the wrong antenna system, it may cost a lot more than that to convert. I can’t see these small stations ever having the budget to make those kinds of improvements. You’d have to sell a lot of spots at $5.00 each to make up the short fall.In my new rural life, I'm GM of a very small community oriented radio station. Maybe that prejudices my opinion about the thinning of the herd theory. Nobody likes to be a target for extinction. Our signal is marginal, but the station is popular, and doing well. I've had lots of listeners tell me that they'd put up with almost any kind of reception problems to get the programming they want. In the three and a half years I've been involved, we've done a lot to improve our signal, but I've conclude from the experience that the programming is what gets and keeps listeners. The technology is just a tool. It is very easy to get wrapped up in theories that new technology offers a silver bullet that will fix everything. It doesn't. It only gives you a new venue to work with. Give them something they want to listen to, and people will listen. It is actually that simple.

 

[autopaint-1]

"You're missing a lot, but as long as you're happy... By the way, I've spent the majority of my life working and living in the top 10 markets. I now reside in what you'd certainly consider to be the "back woods." Don't knock it until you try it. It's a big world out there"No thanks, I live in a NY suburb and my commute to work takes 35 minutes. I have the best of both worlds and spent many summers at our country house in upstate NY (Near Cooperstown). That house was on a gravel road near to a dairy farm. The closest TV stations where in Utica (30 miles away) and Albany (50 miles away). I've worked in the field of broadcasting in the number 1 market for nearly 30 years. I've lived in both rural and urban areas. I'll take NYC."From your comments, I'd hazard a guess that I'm a lot better traveled than you are. "You apparently totally misunderstand me. I've been to South America, Europe, The Middle East and about 35 states. Don't talk to me about traveling. This discussion is about IBOC and bad AM audio on AM IBOC. I've been listening to WNYC AM's IBOC feed and it sounds great and causes no interference to any other NY radio station, same for WOR HD."If you did shut down the “underperforming” stations, how do those owners get compensated for their loss?"Compensation? For what? For a business that goes under? If the station can operate and make a profit running analogue or IBOC then there's no problem. If on the other hand they can't, why should the owners be compensated? AM IBOC is a daytime only mode at the moment. NY stations won't interfere with any stations in rural markets due to IBOC."Unless the current owners simply give up and turn in their licenses, I don’t see the thinning of the herd theory working. If they decide to give up, maybe they will sell their stations to interested parties who actually want to do something with them. That would be novel."Maybe that's what's needed, but our doing nothing and not making AM viable to anyone under the age of 50 is a pressing matter for today's broadcasters. Young people do not and will not listen to AM radio unless sound quality is improved."I think it is also very unlikely that many small stations will be able to afford the transition to HD radio. As I see it, you need a budget in the $100,000 range to do it. If you are blessed with the wrong antenna system, it may cost a lot more than that to convert. I can’t see these small stations ever having the budget to make those kinds of improvements. You’d have to sell a lot of spots at $5.00 each to make up the short fall."Sounds cruel but this is the cost of doing business in the 21st century. Most of these stations would sell in the millions. This is an expensive industry and you need money to run a successful operation. If you don't have the money you're in the wrong industry."In my new rural life, I'm GM of a very small community oriented radio station. Maybe that prejudices my opinion about the thinning of the herd theory. Nobody likes to be a target for extinction. Our signal is marginal, but the station is popular, and doing well. I've had lots of listeners tell me that they'd put up with almost any kind of reception problems to get the programming they want"I wish you well but broadcasting is driven by the major cluster broadcasters who own the vast majority of the station in this country. You can thank the feds for changing the ownership rules for the current state of this industry. When I started the rules were 7, 7 and 5. Imagine though, you're in a major market. The station you own is worthn many millions of dollars (In NYC a typical FM might go for 40 or more million dollars) and you have not only competition from many other radio stations (Over 30 AM & 40 FM at my house) but I-Pods, and other portable devices, what do you suggest and don't say creative programing because the resources in the analogue world are limited and for instance as of today my I-Pod has over 4600 songs on it, how do you compete with that? Again, if you live in a small market in a rural area you don't have to worry about IBOC. It's a daytime only mode on AM and by the time it reaches your market technology will have resolved many of today's questions. Living in a NY suburb I have no interference to any other NY station even thoough we have many IBOC signals in our market. Can I hear that first adjacent out of market 250 watt station putting in a wopping .001 MV? Probably not but who cares, it isn't a NY radio station and the onoly ones who care about it going away are DXers and while DXing is a hobby, radio is a business.

 

[SUPERCASTER]

AM and FM analog radio's were here first. It is up to HD Radio to prove itself 100% compatable with the existing broadcasting systems, and radios. Not the other way around. HD Radio is just a pack of false promises and wild claims. It is not the existing AM and FM systems or radios that are defective and incompatible, it is HD Radio IBOC.The increased interference, loss of coverage, and cost to replace perhaps a billion radios in North America far outweigh any slight benefit to a handful of obsessively greedy cartel members, and their lobbyists.Stations on the top and bottom of the broadcasting bands converting to IBOC will certainly be broadcasting out of band adjacent channel digital signals.The FCC should not have anything to do with this evil scheme to greatly increase interference on the public's airwaves to benefit a few, at the expense of the many. HD Radio is just another ENRON style scam. Many will suffer for the benefit of a few.NRSC-5 has not been approved, can not be found in the FCC rules, and should never get final approval.HD Radio is a damaging, harmful, proprietary system. Who needs another OPEC style cartel/radio dictatorship?Since there is another in band non-proprietary system, FM eXtra, that causes no additional adjacent channel interference, is compatible with the existing FM channel assignments and radios and is based on FM inventor Major Armstrong's experiments transmitting audio and digital data on subcarriers. There is simply no need for HD Radio, ibiquity, IBOC (actually OBAC), its defects, costs, interference, incompatibilities, and problems.FM eXtra www.dreinc.com

 

[autopaint-1]

Gee if I didn't know any better I'd guess your first name was Leonard.

 

[Chuck]

"You apparently totally misunderstand me.

Perhaps you are easy to misunderstand. Email and Internet discussion forums have a way of doing that. My only point is that New York is not typical of the rest of the USA.

"If you did shut down the “underperforming” stations, how do those owners get compensated for their loss?"Compensation? For what? For a business that goes under? If the station can operate and make a profit running analogue or IBOC then there's no problem.

So what is your basis for getting rid of the "excess" stations? I haven't seen too many stations go dark recently. I'm sure it happens, but it will take an eternity if you wait for natural selection to weed things out.

If on the other hand they can't, why should the owners be compensated? AM IBOC is a daytime only mode at the moment. NY stations won't interfere with any stations in rural markets due to IBOC.

We'll see. I wouldn't count on AM IBOC being daytime only for too much longer. The publicity that comes from the FCC says that they are getting ready to approve night operation of the system. That should be really interesting. AM is already quite a sewer at night as it stands. I can't see that this will improve the matter, although it may bring the issue into prominence. The lawyers should really like it if the whole thing ends up as a series of legal battles about who is interfering with whom.

Maybe that's what's needed, but our doing nothing and not making AM viable to anyone under the age of 50 is a pressing matter for today's broadcasters. Young people do not and will not listen to AM radio unless sound quality is improved.

I agree that it would be a good thing to improve the sound quality of AM radio. No argument there. I'd just like to do it the right way the first time. I don't know what that is, but I'm pretty sure the current approach makes more problems than it solves. I also don't buy your argument about "young people." But even if it is the case, who cares? As long as an audience can be found to support the station, there really isn't a big problem. Not everyone can be "number one." Not everyone even wants to be. You can have a nice comfortable business without being the most popular station in town with 13-21 year olds.

Sounds cruel but this is the cost of doing business in the 21st century. Most of these stations would sell in the millions. This is an expensive industry and you need money to run a successful operation. If you don't have the money you're in the wrong industry.

OK, if most of these stations would sell in the millions, what makes you think the owners wouldn't want to be compensated for their loss, it they were told they could no longer broadcast due to interference issues caused by IBOC (or anything else for that matter)?

what do you suggest and don't say creative programing because the resources in the analogue world are limited and for instance as of today my I-Pod has over 4600 songs on it, how do you compete with that?

I will say "creative programming," or at least, giving people something they want to hear. The difference between analog and digital in the context we are talking about is merely a modulation method. The only thing a digital transmission method would do for me is give people another way to receive the station. HD won't save me from programming that sucks. In the case of AM broadcasting, HD should sound better than the bandwidth limited signals people are putting out now. The HD demos I’ve heard certainly do, assuming you have a HD capable radio. For those with existing analog radios, the signal generally sounds worse, although many AM radios are so awful, the theory is not too many folks will notice. That's a swell excuse. 10 KHz analog AM can sound pretty good. If you are going to have an industry wide ad campaign to get people to buy new radios, how about having it for high quality radios that actually sound good with existing technology? It doesn’t have to be all that expensive. A GE Super Radio can be bought for less than $40.00 and they sound quite pleasant on a decent AM station. That seems like an easier sell than a $299.00 HD ready radio. I’m confident that the prices for HD radios will go down. The prices always do, but right now, all you have for listeners are early adopters, and the folks who hang out on this news group. It will take several years to get good market penetration. In the case of FM, I doubt that many listeners will notice the sound quality difference between HD and analog, especially in their car. Under some conditions, it may improve (or eliminate) multipath problems, but where I live, that isn’t a huge problem. Admittedly, HD-FM does allow the broadcaster to have secondary channels to compete with his primary channel. Hmmm... I haven't really figured out why I really want that. The NPR guys think it is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but they have a different business model than I do.

Again, if you live in a small market in a rural area you don't have to worry about IBOC. It's a daytime only mode on AM and by the time it reaches your market technology will have resolved many of today's questions. Living in a NY suburb I have no interference to any other NY station even thoough we have many IBOC signals in our market. Can I hear that first adjacent out of market 250 watt station putting in a wopping .001 MV? Probably not but who cares, it isn't a NY radio station and the onoly ones who care about it going away are DXers and while DXing is a hobby, radio is a business.

From my vantage point, we probably have 5-10 years before we will need to seriously think about purchasing this technology, if we have to at all. For now, it is a spectator sport, although some of the group broadcasters in our area are talking about converting. We’ll see if they actually do it or not. In the mean time, it is interesting to see what works, and what doesn't. I'm glad that I have time on my side. If new radios come out that are compatible with both HD and FMExtra, we might consider going with FMExtra (we're FM) way before thinking about IBOC. Why? Because it is an elegantly simple system that uses existing SCA channels. But more importantly, we could buy the necessary equipment for $8-10,000, which for a small station is fairly affordable. Forgive me for being bottom line oriented, but unless I can see how we'd get our money back by increasing/improving our service to the community, all of these schemes make very little sense to me.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

I must say - when I started this thread - I only intended to bring bad low pass filtering techniques to everybody's attention. Now, however, it appears I have smoked out the true agenda of IBOC1) New York City is the only place in the country that matters. The rest of the country can go to hell. (Sorry - I know there are still some good folks in NYC - and some nice things to do there, but otherwise it is the one place in the country MOST like HELL to the rest of us - a place to be avoided!)(2) IBOC on talk and sports is to make musical beds and commercials sound good in stereo. (Obviously it has little effect on voice.) (3) IBOC is intended to be legal jamming of the AM band, with the express purpose of eliminating competition from small, locally oriented stations (that have been a thorn in the side to major radio conglomerates from the start. They stubbornly refuse to sell out, and siphon listeners from the conglomerates because they give people what they WANT, instead of what corporate programmers want.)(4) The proponents of IBOC arrogantly don't give a darn who they jam beyond the protected contours of their own station. All they care about is their own station, not their neighbors. If they can take listeners from other stations by jamming them, so much the better (Radio Disney 640 jamming WFAN, etc.)(5) The proponents of IBOC will pressure the FCC into nighttime operation without any further research into the effects on the band - all that matters is the 20 to 30 miles or so they wish to cover. Rural America means NOTHING to them - the hell with the midwestern farmers, small towns dotting the midwest and west - blast them with dB's of interference at night and make sure they are cut off from nighttime skywave. Anybody listening to skywave is an anachronism to them.What a sorry lot of arrogant jerks! I hope Canada and Mexico sue the heck out of the US when their AM band is reduced to IBOC hash at night. And may the citizens of the US continue to buy XM and Sirius in increasing numbers, and HD go the way of AM stereo.

 

[autopaint-1]

"New York City is the only place in the country that matters"You said it I didn't. All I said wasd that I live in a NYC suburb and we have no trouble with IBOC."IBOC on talk and sports is to make musical beds and commercials sound good in stereo. (Obviously it has little effect on voice.) "Number one even with talk the noise floor of IBOC AM is much lower than analogue and second, you assume that AM will remain talk and sports. Not true when high fidelity music becomes viable on the medium wave band,but think what you will. "IBOC is intended to be legal jamming of the AM band, with the express purpose of eliminating competition from small, locally oriented stations (that have been a thorn in the side to major radio conglomerates from the start."IBOC doesn't cause interference inside a stations protected contour (Not fringe areas as some would like to believe is within their coverage area). If you get IBOC interference within your licensed area, call the commission, that's a different matter."The proponents of IBOC arrogantly don't give a darn who they jam beyond the protected contours of their own station. All they care about is their own station, not their neighbors."I think you should have written within instead of beyond. For instance 640 AM's protecetd contour does not fall within the NY market. It can not be heard in NYC and as an example I have no trouble recieving 690, a low power Conneticut station in a NY suburb while WOR with it's 50 K is running IBOC."The proponents of IBOC will pressure the FCC into nighttime operation without any further research into the effects on the band - all that matters is the 20 to 30 miles or so they wish to cover. Rural America means NOTHING to them - the hell with the midwestern farmers, small towns dotting the midwest and west - blast them with dB's of interference at night and make sure they are cut off from nighttime skywave. Anybody listening to skywave is an anachronism to them."You are making assumptions based on your own fears. Now what do they say about people who make assumptions? Oh and how much NY interference do you suffer day and at night presently?"What a sorry lot of arrogant jerks! I hope Canada and Mexico sue the heck out of the US when their AM band is reduced to IBOC hash at night. And may the citizens of the US continue to buy XM and Sirius in increasing numbers, and HD go the way of AM stereo."I'm not the one havng the tizzy fit sir. I'd suggest that the allegations you started out with are incorrect and if you don't like the advancement of technology, you look towards other opportunities.

 

[jim8230]

WOW..... The debate over "to legally interfere or to not interfere" is still the burning question. It strikes me as odd that proponents of "IBOC" still maintain theories like.. you should go out of business if you don't have the money to convert....if you don't like this technology, well...give your licence to Cheap Channel or Econocomm, they WILL work diligently to advance the cause of new radios for all Americans. (Whether we like it or not!) .....ETC....Let's see...oh yeah...please tell me again how listeners will jump on this bandwagon simply because they will get Rush Limbaugh in stereo......Repeat after me...."IF YOU TELL PEOPLE THE SAME STORY ENOUGH TIMES, THEY WILL BELIEVE IT......''

 

[jim8230]

"Number one even with talk the noise floor of IBOC AM is much lower than analogue and second, you assume that AM will remain talk and sports. Not true when high fidelity music becomes viable on the medium wave band,but think what you will. "Sorry but I can't help myself...YOU must be the only person that believes this will ever happen!..interesting, you said, "think what you will." O.K. I think AM IBOC was dead in the water years ago!!!! Now, am I allowed to think what I will?