Oh yeah before I forget (again)~
Regarding the Bob Stuble "interview" (might as well be safer to call it an "ad"): one thing journalists must realise when interviewing people on product is never interview the CEO of the company, because all you will get is over-optimism regardless of how flawed (or technically illegal) their product is. He stated in his first sentence that he may be a bit biased. Needless to say "a bit" is a gross understatement.
However, to be fair I did have to agree nevertheless with his comments about new creative possibility, especially with FM multifeeds (multicasting). When I was blessed with the acquisition of a computer three years ago sporting a Pentium 4, sound editing/production software and a CD recorder, I realised I was suddenly able to do a LOT of things that I could have only dreamt of prior, when I was armed with only a Sony cassette deck, a turntable and a carton of TDK AC120's. (Can your turntable dO THIS????? Hear the tapes between the tapes!!)
So I went from creating crummy little mixed tapes that sounded like they were dubbed from my brother's eight-track deck to creating big, flashy productions that (as a matter of fact) many people seem to believe are professionally produced; somewhat unaware of the fact that they're really listening to the production work of hands and ears belonging to some bike racer kid sitting in his basement on a cold, rainy Portland night!
BUT---
The creative opportunities are only there if stations take them. Owing to the rather bland, lifeless quality of much of the commercial Fms (and even many AMs) they would be incredibly WISE to take these opportunities and milk them for all they are worth. If the secontary or third feeds are used for little other than yet more canned, lifeless, satellite-fed programming then there's little possibly for real added value. And then there's really no point of it, is there?
This, incidentally, has been the major paradox of Podcasting. From what I have heard, relevant programming, creative programming and (rarely) people who sound as if they are trying to read off their liner cardssofastmisseveryotherwordyoucantunderstandtheyaresay. Like I say the tech is there, opportunities are there, now we have to see them truly taken advantage of. That, to me, seems to be the one "killer application" which can truly tetermine IBAC's destiny, or fate.
AM IBAC on the other hand, is apparently exempt from the "creative expansion" ideal, as it only supports one audio channel and those more often than not are merely repeats of the main analogue channel. In fact AM IBAC stations are pulling their plugs. We used to have two in Portland, 620 KPOJ and 1190 KEX, but now after 620 had a *very brief* IBAC run for a few months earlier this year (it has since gone silent and analogue-only) my cards aren't showing a good outlook toward KEX's digital future.
In fact due to its many, many shortcomings, limitations and illegalities I don't see a good outlook for the future of Ibiquity AM IBAC, period.........
