Big surprise - AM-HD appears to be a flop

[GreedMongers]

"Editorial: More Than Half Full"

"AM-HD continues to fight uphill. Several manufacturers showed impressive new transmitter models designed to optimize and maintain HD performance. Yet the growth of AM-HD stations coming on the air appears stalled and we hear murmurings about some broadcasters pulling back on AM-HD or wishing to renegotiate their commitments with Ibiquity. That does not bode well as the AM service struggles to remain relevant."

http://www.rwonline.com/pages/s.0044/t.13363.html

Just in from RW. Of course, RW's snivelling little implication that HD will somehow save AM - oh please, AM is dying, even though ratings say otherwise for many of the larger AM stations (not directed at you, Bob). Of course, FM is under attack by iPods, etc, and in five years when iPod jacks are standard in every new vehicle, what is FM going to do. Oh I know - FM-HD to the rescue! So, HD was supposed to bring analog into the new digital age, but I guess that will only apply to FM. So much for any potential HD mandate (oh, I guess the crooked FCC could mandate a technology that doesn't work). Broadcasters must be getting tired of paying those on-going fees to iBiquity, with no ROI. Dah!

 

[Play Freebird]

Plan B for AM broadcasters in larger markets where FM translators aren't available:

1) Buy a UHF LPTV station

2) Hurry up and file to move it to Channel 6 before anyone else in the market does

3) Simulcast AM programming on the TV 6 aural carrier, which can be received on most FM radios.

4) Enjoy the consistent fulltime local coverage offered by VHF

5) Let the remaining 5.8 MHz of spectrum go to waste, because the FCC and NAB are clueless

 

[FightingIrish]

"Editorial: More Than Half Full"

"AM-HD continues to fight uphill. Several manufacturers showed impressive new transmitter models designed to optimize and maintain HD performance. Yet the growth of AM-HD stations coming on the air appears stalled and we hear murmurings about some broadcasters pulling back on AM-HD or wishing to renegotiate their commitments with Ibiquity. That does not bode well as the AM service struggles to remain relevant."

http://www.rwonline.com/pages/s.0044/t.13363.html

Just in from RW. Of course, RW's snivelling little implication that HD will somehow save AM - oh please, AM is dying, even though ratings say otherwise for many of the larger AM stations (not directed at you, Bob). Of course, FM is under attack by iPods, etc, and in five years when iPod jacks are standard in every new vehicle, what is FM going to do. Oh I know - FM-HD to the rescue! So, HD was supposed to bring analog into the new digital age, but I guess that will only apply to FM. So much for any potential HD mandate (oh, I guess the crooked FCC could mandate a technology that doesn't work). Broadcasters must be getting tired of paying those on-going fees to iBiquity, with no ROI. Dah!

Well, it looks like Pocket Radio has a new sockpuppet...

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Plan B for AM broadcasters in larger markets where FM translators aren't available:

Or - they could just try programming something people actually want to listen to. The band started dying when stations turned to talk, sports, and brokered programming. Coincidence?

Of course - iHASH doesn't help the listenability any, especially when seek and scan stops on sidebands.

 

[Savage]

Radio World is the industry's unofficial engineering house organ. Of course they're going to put yet another layer of lipstick on the HD Radio pig ("maybe a different shade will work better!") They are totally dependent upon equipment manufacturers and the NAB for their financial survival as a radio publication.

If you want to know what's going on with HD, look at what's going on, on the street, in stores, and among real (non-Alliance) broadcasters You'll see: no receivers in stores, so all the barbering about SIXTY NEW HD PRODUCTS!! means nothing. The few available receivers are overpriced and mostly boat-anchors. Nobody on the street listening to HD, where listeners are finding the quality somewhere on a continuum roughly between "sucks" and " not much of an improvement over analog." Sub-channels are producing a massive collective yawn. And the tiny percentage of broadcasters who have converted to HD appear to be "just about it," due to myriad factors such as something-like-zero marketplace interest in HD, excessive costs, and lousy field performance of HD (that's why the crooked HD tinkerer Walden is so desperate for his latest engineering chewing-gum-in-the-dam fix, the tenfold HD-FM digital increase being secretly rushed through without disclosed interference testing.) Just wait until the field reports of the few stations likely to increase digital tenfold come back relating massive major-market interference, staggering additional cost and - big surprise - not much better penetration.

Translation from RW's HD Cheering Section: HD Radio continues to be a disaster. The AM version is dead. The FM is on a ventilator and doctors are desperately administering highly toxic and experimental drugs. It's only a matter of time before HD's Mad Scientists run out of extraordinary measures.

 

[Play Freebird]

Plan B for AM broadcasters in larger markets where FM translators aren't available:

Or - they could just try programming something people actually want to listen to. The band started dying when stations turned to talk, sports, and brokered programming. Coincidence?

Of course - iHASH doesn't help the listenability any, especially when seek and scan stops on sidebands.

Relevant locally-focused programming is paramount, but AM stations with substandard frequency assignments have a built-in problem. My local-est station here in PA, WCHE, is a 1 kW directional daytimer on 1520, which is not allowed to have ANY night power due to WWKB in Buffalo. In the winter, the co-channel interference begins to kill them at 4 in the afternoon. There are hundreds of others nationwide in similar situations.

Allowing stations like this to migrate to VHF would help a great deal.

 

[4dude]

Looks like this garbage might be falling..............

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Looks like this garbage might be falling..............

The bovine excretion is about to hit the rotary ventillation device.

What a shame! Not that it is a flop - but it virtually destroyed a technology that could have been incorporated into radios, would have made them sound better, has great range, doesn't interfere with adjacents. All iBiquity had to do was just incorporate AMAX standards into receivers and call it "HD AM". Nobody would have been the wiser. And combined with HD-2 channels on FM, it might have made some difference in the scenario.

It was all over for HD radio when FM stations started streaming their HD-2 channels. The technology will hang on for years, but I predict the rats will run off the sinking ship any day now.

 

[Carmine5]

I've often said that a table-top radio was a terrible form factor in which to introduce HD Radio to the world. Hardly anyone buys table radios anymore and to offer one at $200.00 (or thereabouts) is to commit consumer electronics suicide.

Skip Pizzi's editorial just confirmed it:

"...CEA’s tracking of “home radio” sales (tabletop, portable/handheld and clock radios, with no other audio source built-in),...have shown a dramatic decline from their historic peak in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Annual U.S. unit sales in this category today are at about a quarter of what they were back in those glory days. Even more telling is that 2007 sales in this category are half of what they were in 2001 — unmistakable evidence of new media’s impact."

http://www.rwonline.com/pages/s.0054/t.13367.html

Nowadays you're only given one chance to make a favorable impression on the public (whether it's a person, product or service). HD Radio had its chance and blew it. No amount of legislation, radio ads, fee waivers, incentives or coercion is going to change that.

C5

 

[PhilJSmith67]

Plan B for AM broadcasters in larger markets where FM translators aren't available:

1) Buy a UHF LPTV station

2) Hurry up and file to move it to Channel 6 before anyone else in the market does

3) Simulcast AM programming on the TV 6 aural carrier, which can be received on most FM radios.

4) Enjoy the consistent fulltime local coverage offered by VHF

5) Let the remaining 5.8 MHz of spectrum go to waste, because the FCC and NAB are clueless

After Feb 2010, even the remaining analog LPTV's have to flip from NTSC to ATSC. No mpre FM carriers on 87.75 after that in the US.

 

[amfmsw]

There will never be any improvement for radio, AM or FM, more powerful than content. AM HD is like Communism...it looks good on paper, but in practice... FM HD is just the canibalization of Cume audience with subchannels.

Some of the finest minds in engineering since Tesla oft read and write on this board. And although I may not have the sheepskins to match theirs, my 35 years in this business tell me they have erred. They have dropped the ball and let down the most frail but most important of radio operators, the independant, local, community oriented AM stations.

AM HD was a failure because of cost and technical cover-ups. The AM Audience didn't go away because of Talk, Sports or News, it went to those formats because of the failure of our Radio Governing Body and Technical Standards (read FCC and NRSC) to demand more of manufacturers. AMAX was a winning idea, at the right time, with no teeth. Imagine, automatic bandwidth extension with C-Quam pilot, eargrabbing Stereo sound (platform motion and all), wideband audio, sideband filters, wideband audio, active noise blankers, and did I mention, wideband audio?

Let's see, a patient is choking for air, so let's help by covering up it's mouth and nose with narrowband radios. The spectrum is blanketed with oscillator noise from computers and hash from power lines and IBOC and suffer with poor antennas. The solution? Allow the proliferation of 100-3Kc AM radios in the #1 outlet for radio use...cars. So now, with a few exceptions, even with the finest efforts of local service and content, they have killed AM as we knew it. We looked to the NRSC, and were "rained upon".

NRSC...you demanded we brick off our high ends. It's time we demand you to require a higher standard of the listening device. Better AVC, better sensitivity, selectable bandwidth, Stereo, automatic noise blanking, and the end of 9Kc limits. If IBOC can splatter from 20Kc away from stations 50 miles away, you can live with a little sideband chatter and high fidelity analog sound.

 

[Carmine5]

There will never be any improvement for radio, AM or FM, more powerful than content. AM HD is like Communism...it looks good on paper, but in practice... FM HD is just the canibalization of Cume audience with subchannels.

Some of the finest minds in engineering since Tesla oft read and write on this board. And although I may not have the sheepskins to match theirs, my 35 years in this business tell me they have erred. They have dropped the ball and let down the most frail but most important of radio operators, the independant, local, community oriented AM stations.

AM HD was a failure because of cost and technical cover-ups. The AM Audience didn't go away because of Talk, Sports or News, it went to those formats because of the failure of our Radio Governing Body and Technical Standards (read FCC and NRSC) to demand more of manufacturers. AMAX was a winning idea, at the right time, with no teeth. Imagine, automatic bandwidth extension with C-Quam pilot, eargrabbing Stereo sound (platform motion and all), wideband audio, sideband filters, wideband audio, active noise blankers, and did I mention, wideband audio?

Let's see, a patient is choking for air, so let's help by covering up it's mouth and nose with narrowband radios. The spectrum is blanketed with oscillator noise from computers and hash from power lines and IBOC and suffer with poor antennas. The solution? Allow the proliferation of 100-3Kc AM radios in the #1 outlet for radio use...cars. So now, with a few exceptions, even with the finest efforts of local service and content, they have killed AM as we knew it. We looked to the NRSC, and were "rained upon".

NRSC...you demanded we brick off our high ends. It's time we demand you to require a higher standard of the listening device. Better AVC, better sensitivity, selectable bandwidth, Stereo, automatic noise blanking, and the end of 9Kc limits. If IBOC can splatter from 20Kc away from stations 50 miles away, you can live with a little sideband chatter and high fidelity analog sound.

While I totally agree with you, it could be argued that HD is a second chance for AM to get back the high fidelity that it should have gotten with AMAX. I think the FCC views it that way which is why they are so adamant about seeing to it that HD be adopted while dismissing the evidence that it causes harmful interference (to both bands).

Obviously, AM stereo was an attempt to achieve some parity with FM on the issue of fidelity. Who wanted it? AM station owners, of course, particularly as they saw FM draw away listeners.

As such and from the beginning, these same owners should have been putting pressure on the NAB and FCC to stop the bickering that was occurring over which AM stereo standard to adopt, pick one and mandate that it be in all future radios. Since no such pressure was applied, the outcome was too little and too late. So I fault AM station owners themselves for this development.

But why is the AM band a programming waste land? Again I fault station owners; those mom and pops who sold out for a handsome profit to the conglomerates, and then the conglomerates who have lost faith in AM so that it has become a dumping ground for third-rate (but bill-paying) programming and who are unwilling to pay for quality content or pay to promote it. They're like landlords who milk a rental property for every dollar but are unwilling to fix the property up or even maintain it at a basic level. Imagine a neighborhood of such rundown rentals. Eventually that neighborhood becomes a slum. In many ways, AM has become the slum of radio.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a booster of AM. I think AM can do a great service with local coverage and there are many station owners who "get it" as far as knowing the potential AM radio has in their community. And as we know, AM can get to people who live in hilly terrain where FM can't go.

But, as I see it, the future of AM really depends on the station owners themselves and how they view the service their station provides. If they do it right, the public, specifically local listeners, will follow.

C5

 

[Savage]

But AM-HD DOESN'T "get back high fidelity it should have gotten with AMaX." HD-AM simply provides a grating mirage of wider-response sound which is completely cobbled above 4.5 kHz, a "novelty" which kinda sounds like hi-fi but really isn't. If AM is going to rebound, any new technical standards need to work in the real world and be likely of widespread acceptance in the marketplace. The HD-AM codec is more slapdash engineering which will not produce bigger quarter-hour numbers, because it's fatiguing to listen to. It is also highly intolerant of real-world radio broadcasting limitations which are imposed on the stations and which are unavoidable - such as heavily-processed agency commercials, varying levels of news-talk sports programming and compression algorithms from network satellite receivers. AM is heavily dependent upon live sports, and at least in the case of baseball, the encoding delay is enough of a problem for HD stations to turn the exciter off during games.

In the few instances of longterm experience with AM-HD the metallic, shrill and vague sound quality of the codec has generally been rejected in favor of even noisy, bandwidth-restricted mono analog. Maybe it's interesting to hear as a somewhat startling AM radio novelty, but listeners don't stick with it.

I'm sorry, but I disagree that "the finest engineering minds" developed HD. Mostly, like Glynn Walden (a middling, mediocre engineer but somewhat astute corporate politician) they are cynical elitists with agendas, and ones which differ vastly from general betterment of radio. Primarily they're interested in sucking up to self-interested bosses and in trying to pad their own wallets - bear in mind that Walden and CBS honcho Dan Mason are former iBiquity executives, with a large portion of their compensation dependent upon the success of HD. They are also interested in destroying successful stations like mine as part of Moron Struble's declared "thin the herd" objective, using HD adjacent-channel interference as a cudgel, and hiding like cowards behind the FCC they have "persuaded" with lobbyists. Much in the way my retirement is being threatened by HD Radio, I hope theirs is likely enjoyed fighting RICO actions and Congressional investigations.

 

[Play Freebird]

After Feb 2010, even the remaining analog LPTV's have to flip from NTSC to ATSC. No mpre FM carriers on 87.75 after that in the US.

When was this date announced?

FCC's own website says "While the February 17, 2009 deadline for ending analog broadcasts does not apply to low-power, Class A, and TV translator stations, the FCC will require these stations to convert to digital broadcasting sometime thereafter" but I couldn't find any further information. Of course, it's not unusual for the Commission to provide conflicting information. See:

http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/DTVandLPTV.html

In any case, I'll bet the existing Channel 6 FM stations will request a waiver on the basis that they've built a loyal audience and digital conversion would deprive "underserved" segments of the public from receiving service.

Let's see... so far we have WNYZ-LP "Pulse 87" in New York, KSFV-LP "Guadalupe Radio" serving the San Fernando Valley and parts of LA from high atop Mt. Harvard, KFMD-LP "Radio Vida Abundante" in Redding, CA, KOAN-LP in Anchorage, and I think another Channel 6 LPTV in Texas just switched from TV to radio programming. Any others?

 

[tripinva]

There's one in Hawaii.

- Trip

 

[Carmine5]

But AM-HD DOESN'T "get back high fidelity it should have gotten with AMaX." HD-AM simply provides a grating mirage of wider-response sound which is completely cobbled above 4.5 kHz, a "novelty" which kinda sounds like hi-fi but really isn't. If AM is going to rebound, any new technical standards need to work in the real world and be likely of widespread acceptance in the marketplace. The HD-AM codec is more slapdash engineering which will not produce bigger quarter-hour numbers, because it's fatiguing to listen to. It is also highly intolerant of real-world radio broadcasting limitations which are imposed on the stations and which are unavoidable - such as heavily-processed agency commercials, varying levels of news-talk sports programming and compression algorithms from network satellite receivers. AM is heavily dependent upon live sports, and at least in the case of baseball, the encoding delay is enough of a problem for HD stations to turn the exciter off during games.

In the few instances of longterm experience with AM-HD the metallic, shrill and vague sound quality of the codec has generally been rejected in favor of even noisy, bandwidth-restricted mono analog. Maybe it's interesting to hear as a somewhat startling AM radio novelty, but listeners don't stick with it.

Again, I agree with you, Mr. Savage. Unfortunately I have never gotten an HD Radio to successfully receive HD-AM so I can't comment on the sound of HD on AM. But if it's like any other low bit rate digital audio then it is indeed not true high fidelity.

It's more like an absence of noise along with the sensation of stereo.

C5

 

[Savage]

The best way I can describe the HD-AM listening experience: you first notice the abrupt drop in the noise floor. Actually, this is just about the only undeniable positive about IBOC-AM. Then there is the stereo you hear on commercials and bump music in talk shows, which you notice immediately.

As far as objective analysis of the actual sound quality afforded by the codec, it recalls those fake-stereo oldie compilation LPS from K-Tel in the 1960s - "Electronically Reprocessed To Simulate Stereo." You'd listen to the cobbled, delay-line stereo effect, and **** your head like a retriever during an EBS test. After you listening to those cheapie records a few times you generally went back to your mono singles, because they sounded more like the familiar hit songs you liked in the first place. So take the fakey ersatz-stereo image and crank it through a mid-fidelity internet web stream. On network-delivered talk, add in a shrill and grating register, evidently a consequence of artifact-stacking from Starguide receivers, digital processors and the HD Decepticon, that will usually having you reaching for the OFF switch within a relatively short span. Levels seem to be to jump all over the place as program sources change, so certain commercials sound REALLY obnoxious, while some guests on talk shows are semi-intelligible, forcing you to crank volume up and down. THAT'S pretty much what HD-AM sound is like to me.

How much would YOU pay for this great new way to get the news, weather and the ballgame?? $200? $149? $79??? Well, DON'T ANSWER, because for the next 200 HD buyers, we'll throw in very limited reception range! That's right: "if you're within the sound of my voice in HD, you're within sight of my tower!" And you get the SAME PROGRAMMING in HD you got in old-fashioned, real-sounding AM! NOW how much would you pay? $24.95?? BUT WAIT! We'll also throw in mode-hopping as the nondefeatable HD flips back and forth intermittently to analog! And stereo to mono!! And skywave and impulse noise and fluorescent lights and computers and power lines and excessive or lack of appropriate atmospheric pressure, humidity, or zodiacal influences may affect performance.......um....(...hello? Anyone still out there?......)

 

[KB1OKL]

I myself think thew fact that the zodiac influences it is pretty cool, I'll take a Pisces radio.

 

[dumber than a box of hair]

How much would YOU pay for this great new way to get the news, weather and the ballgame?? $200? $149? $79??? Well, DON'T ANSWER, because for the next 200 HD buyers, we'll throw in very limited reception range! That's right: "if you're within the sound of my voice in HD, you're within sight of my tower!" And you get the SAME PROGRAMMING in HD you got in old-fashioned, real-sounding AM! NOW how much would you pay? $24.95?? BUT WAIT! We'll also throw in mode-hopping as the nondefeatable HD flips back and forth intermittently to analog! And stereo to mono!! And skywave and impulse noise and fluorescent lights and computers and power lines and excessive or lack of appropriate atmospheric pressure, humidity, or zodiacal influences may affect performance.......um....(...hello? Anyone still out there?......)

Someone cue the crickets...

 

[davideduardo]

There will never be any improvement for radio, AM or FM, more powerful than content. AM HD is like Communism...it looks good on paper, but in practice... FM HD is just the canibalization of Cume audience with subchannels.

There is not as much cume cannibalizaiton as you think since, as we move into PPM measurement, the average listener cumes 7 or 8 stations a week anyway. Cume is shared, but actual quarter hours can't be shared. That's why the sum of cume of all stations is more than 3 to 4 times the 12+ population, yet there are only 100 shares no matter how many different stations there are.

Some of the finest minds in engineering since Tesla oft read and write on this board. And although I may not have the sheepskins to match theirs, my 35 years in this business tell me they have erred. They have dropped the ball and let down the most frail but most important of radio operators, the independant, local, community oriented AM stations.

The problem with AM has nothing to do with intelligence or education. It has to do with a separate set of facts. Start with the fact that for nearly anyone under 45, AM does not exist. It sounds bad... these are people who grew up on FM. Then add the 30's era allocations where, today, a huge percentage of AMs either don't cover much, are daytimers, or have such low night power or directionality that they can't compete with FMs.

In the rated markets, we see in many AM listening under 10% of the total and less than 5% below age 45. There is no "better programming" if nobody under 45 wants to be caught dead listening to AM... especially with the horrible receiver quality of the last 20 to 25 years as manufacturers assumed that AM was in decline and that nobody cared... and they were right.

AM HD was a failure because of cost and technical cover-ups. The AM Audience didn't go away because of Talk, Sports or News, it went to those formats because of the failure of our Radio Governing Body and Technical Standards (read FCC and NRSC) to demand more of manufacturers.

That horse is out of the barn... and was euthanized because it was hit by a truck. The perception that AM had lost comes from 1977, when FM first passed AM in listening levels. Today, fixing AM receivers is next to impossible unless there is a reason for buying a new one. Analog AM with a little better response will not convince manufacturers to fix receivers. If they had their way, they would not even put AM on radios.