BREAKING NEWS! THE REAL REASON WHY WGN HAS DROPPED HD-AM

[KB1OKL]

I'd love to see those radios Tom. I love the old consoles, nothing like them. Man if I just had the space. I sent out an R-390 (not an R-390A) to an expert to have it restored, those can sound good too with outboard amps and speakers

Inspector, WBZ used to come in well here pre-iBlock, I'm sure you're going to say it's nothing to do with it, but it is quite a coincidence though isn't it? They have lost quite a bit of signal here in the past few years. If only the audio could go one tenth the distance the whooshy, noisy, hashy, buzzy (I could go on ) sidebands go, WBZ and the rest of the gang would be in business, I guess for now though they're content just with disrupting half the country (and with their ten listeners).

 

[clouseau]

Inspector, WBZ used to come in well here pre-iBlock, I'm sure you're going to say it's nothing to do with it, but it is quite a coincidence though isn't it?

It's really no coincidence at all. If there is a degredation it's OUTSIDE THE SERVICE AREA. And KB, this is a fact you just won't accept. The listening that matters occurs INSIDE the service area.

Clouseau

 

[Tom Wells]

Inspector, WBZ used to come in well here pre-iBlock, I'm sure you're going to say it's nothing to do with it, but it is quite a coincidence though isn't it?

It's really no coincidence at all. If there is a degredation it's OUTSIDE THE SERVICE AREA. And KB, this is a fact you just won't accept. The listening that matters occurs INSIDE the service area.

Clouseau

I disagree. The degradation is everywhere, and the interference goes WAY outside the intended service area.
Radio experimenters came up with radios that had such built in hash back in the 20's called autodynes.
They were quickly abandoned in favor of of superhets, which mixed in a much-more removed frequency to come up with
higher IF frequencies which were not in the "audio" range.
It is a poor idea to serve up interference which subjects all listeners to the quality of a 1920's blooper radio.
Even three-dial TRFs sounded better, they at least did not whoosh.
The listeners decide if they being served or not. If they listen, they are in the service area.
Any station willing to disenfranchise listeners with self interference should not be shocked when listeners give up listening.

That said, why is WGN still so heavy in mid-range and upper bass frequencies?
This eq balance is still of far cry from what they used to sound like before they got so far off the path.

 

[Savage]

Chief Jim Carollo's somewhat disingenuous statement, when WGN switched off HD late last year, was that the station was experimenting with different processing. Or words to that effect.

I say "disingenuous" (typical for anyone making public statements about the outrageously-misrepresented technical train-wreck "HD Radio") because when Carollo was making his cryptic comments, it had been well-established from at least two other sources - including one at WGN - that the station's management feared HD was interfering with Arbitron PPM encoding, and could thus be preventing the station from getting all the diary credit it should have. So "processing changes" would have been only tangential, at best, to the real reason.

Not that Carollo or anyone else at WGN is obliged to tell anyone publicly what they're doing. It's just that, if you're going to make public statements, tell the whole truth, not a misleading excuse-laden red herring. If you can't make candid and truthful statements, why not just shut the hell up?

Truth. The second casualty of HD Radio. (The first being, "the listener.")

Maybe WGN management has decided to conduct "processing experiments" to see how bassy and shrill they can make the station sound. If that's the objective I know of a BL-40 Modulimiter I'll sell them for FAR less than they spent on the iBiquity Decepticon.

 

[Savage]

Aha! Behold! Once again Clouseau runs to hide under the skirt of the tired, discredited "refuge of HD scoundrels" a/k/a "Interference-Protected Contour." So, ludicrously, if the NIF runs down the middle of your street, it's fine for people Inside The Magic Circle to receive your station, but everyone across the street is SOL. At least that's the preposterous argument they constantly chant.

Riddle me this, Inspector.

What's the contour? Measured? Or predicted?

In areas of the country where winter and summer ground conductivity changes drastically with the weather - as in, "practically all of the northeast," when the real world measured NIF moves all over the map, how do we enforce this incredibly stupid and dishonest rule? Will the HD-interference generating station promise to make MONTHLY field measurements to determine the real-world NIF? Weekly?

BTW - last I checked the FCC insists on field measurement data to determine coverage, or in the brave new world of lying, irrelevant, scum-sucking HD Radio, have we once again cobbled together 'special rules' for HD operators while at the same time screwing the operators they should be protecting??

Don't give me that "you're outside the protected contour" crap. It's garbage. You know it and everybody who posts and visits here knows it.

 

[KB1OKL]

I have a coverage map right in front of me prepared by the National Radio Club, this may not be part of the protected contour BS, but their coverage extends from Boston all the way West to almost Wyoming and Montana and almost down to Florida South and everything in between. Now if I'm not supposed to be able receive a 50KW station that broadcasts West right by me halfway across the country, something is wrong. I'm only 40 miles west of their transmitters and they used to be a local.

 

[Savage]

Yeah, this is a graphic example of the absurdity of the "you're only entitled to your interference-free coverage" argument. WBZ's nighttime half-millivolt goes, IIRC, about to Cleveland.

Yet an IBOC defender is arguing that you "shouldn't be trying" to listen to WBZ in your location. Apparently, he's asserting this silly argument with a straight face.

Of course, the implicit argument pro-HD people make also make is, "and the FCC decided that all coverage outside your interference-free contour should be WORTHLESS." (To say nothing of the fact that WBZ-HD is harmfully interfering with a WYSL signal OVER TWICE our NIF, which has been the subject of at least two formal complaints, and which the FCC Enforcement Bureau is ignoring. But that's a subject for another thread.)

This assertion is just another off-the-shelf IBOC lie. If this were true, then the FCC has just decreed its entire allocation scheme has gone out the window. To say nothing of decreeing that EAS is similarly worthless. How many CPSC-1 stations are being received and forwarded by other stations outside their NIF? Of course none of these decisions could have been taken without formal rulemaking, public comment, and possibly Congressional input. None of which has happened, notwithstanding the wonderfulness of HD Radio.

If these outrageous policies were actually enacted the way Clouseau and others apparently believe they were, such as defacto sweeping reallocation and trashing of EAS without public input, Congress would have been dealt with Little Kevin the way a Texas tornado deals with a trailer park.

Just more IBOC dishonesty. More theater of the absurd.

Isn't it time to pull the switch on HD-AM already? Nobody's listening to it. Or ever will.

 

[KyDXIn]

740 in Toronto puts a great signal into this area in early evening; it's nice to know some AM broadcasters still care about good audio.

Love all this discussion about old gear! As for AM 740, it puts an excellent signal into New Jersey from before sundown on through the night. Great music too!

I'm just a listener, but I find listening to AM stations that run IBOC trying, at best. The narrow analog bandwidth removes any vestige of audio fidelity, and that damned hash kills adjacent channels 20 kHz out. Add that to the electrical noise of LED stop lights, power lines, etc. Makes me yearn for an FM talker around here.

I'm listening to Louie Armstrong singing "A Fine Romance" on 740 right now near Louisville, KY.

 

[KB1OKL]

740 in Toronto puts a great signal into this area in early evening; it's nice to know some AM broadcasters still care about good audio.

Love all this discussion about old gear! As for AM 740, it puts an excellent signal into New Jersey from before sundown on through the night. Great music too!

I'm just a listener, but I find listening to AM stations that run IBOC trying, at best. The narrow analog bandwidth removes any vestige of audio fidelity, and that damned hash kills adjacent channels 20 kHz out. Add that to the electrical noise of LED stop lights, power lines, etc. Makes me yearn for an FM talker around here.

I'm listening to Louie Armstrong singing "A Fine Romance" on 740 right now near Louisville, KY.

I listen to that station quite a bit here in MA too, I hope I'm not breaking any FCC rules. I especially like it on Saturday nights. Damn rebels, broadcasting so far out of their "protected contour"

 

[calstymes]

KB1OKL did solemnly lament:

[snip on]

I hope I'm not breaking any FCC rules. I especially like it on Saturday nights. Damn rebels, broadcasting so far out of their "protected contour".

[snip off]

Now wait! You mean, I can be arrested for hearing a radio station come out of my radio's speaker if I am located outside their FCC protected contour??? Holy iBiquity, Batman! I guess the laws of physics were suspended here and are now prohibited from being observed by the general population.

I am in a lot of really bad trouble and I hope they don't find me, lest I might be required to appear before an unfriendly administrative law judge.

 

[stacker]

Tom Wells said,

I disagree. The degradation is everywhere, and the interference goes WAY outside the intended service area. <snip>

The listeners decide if they being served or not. If they listen, they are in the service area.

This is the most sensible description of a station's real world service area that I have seen on this board.

Those who rely on the "outside the service area" argument with regard to nighttime AM coverage either ignore or don't understand how a station's NIF is calculated. Interference of any kind is additive in nature. Throw in IBOC adjacent channel energy contribution and do the math. You can prove through RSS analysis that the presence of the additional energy can shrink an adjacent channel station's existing NIF contour. In fact, if you calculate the energy introduced into the adjacent channel by an "always on" IBOC signal and examine it from the standpoint of whether it would be permitted under existing the rules as a "new" station, most IBOC operation would not be allowed.

The NIF does not determine a station's nighttime service area. The usable nighttime signal exceeds the NIF by at least 25% and in some cases more. The NIF is simply a tool used by the Commission to demonstrate coverage over the city of license, and even then, the Commission only requires 80% coverage. If the NIF really defined the service area of a station, the Commission would require 100% coverage.

 

[Savage]

Tom Wells and Stacker make excellent points. BTW, it's worth observing here that never - often, occasionally or even once - has there been an official statement from the FCC that "stations are only entitled to coverage within their interference-free contour." Never.

That's just more made-up crap from the increasingly desperate pro-IBOC crowd (and, judging from this board and others, a "shrinking" crowd as well.) As has been amply demonstrated here with actual engineering data and overwhelming common sense, trying to argue that IBOC-AMs should be able to massively interfere with adjacent-channel operators five feet outside their NIF is preposterous. It's a self-deluding attempt by the HD Radio types to overturn the entire AM allocation scheme in favor of certain favored "HD pioneers." To say nothing of destructive and pointless, since the public has conclusively rejected HD-AM (and, in all likelihood, HD-FM as well.)

It's not gonna fly. It needs to be turned off. And as soon as possible, before HD Radio does even more damage to the struggling AM band.