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Clear Channel Leases HD Channel in New York

B

Barry

WWPR HD2 on 105.1 HD2 is now carrying One Caribbean Radio. This is a local commercial broadcaster.
I believe it is significant that the nation's largest broadcaster has leased one of their major market HD channels, in place of rebroadcast programming from IHeartRadio. Perhaps this will be the beginning of a trend-To monetize HD channels by leasing them out when possible.
Of course it remains to be seen whether One Caribbean Radio will be financially viable. They had been carried on an SBS station's HD2 in New York through last year. Then they went off the air for a few months. Perhaps they have more advertisers lined up for this second effort.


http://www.onecaribbeanradio.com/
 
This business model for narrowcasting to ethnic audiences has been successful for decades in the New York radio market using FM subcarriers.

Years ago, I knew guys who were using subcarriers on stations licensed to Newark, NJ, to reach ethnic audiences all over the New York market core.

One guy did very well broadcasting Mandarin Chinese, to audiences in New York's Chinatown, and Chinatowns in Brooklyn, and Queens.

The other guy ran Italian language programming 24/7, he set up a studio in an Italian neighborhood in Queens and hired a professional broadcaster from Italy to do the local morning show, and then made a deal with the Italian broadcaster RAI to carry their programs fed by transatlantic satellite. His biggest draw was live coverage of Italian soccer.

Currently, South Asian, HumDesi Radio is heard on another NYC FM HD channel under the same kind of lease arrangement.

It just makes sense to do this. The ethnic groups tend to live in the same neighborhoods, shop in the same stores, have the same cultural tastes etc. There are a lot of incentives for members of the group to want to listen, and for their local advertisers to be able to efficiently reach them. HD radios can be sold in local stores, and the stations promoted at community events, and advertised in ethnic newspapers.

Since the major broadcasters haven't found a way to make money on these HD channels using their own programming, leasing them this way brings in a little extra revenue. For the ethnic broadcasters who could never afford a regular station licenses, it is an opportunity to do business, to serve a specific unserved market, and good luck to them because they are doing it legally and not resorting to being unlicensed pirates.
 
Detroit needs to do this too, as one wanna-be owner tried two 'translator' BS stations and it caused intererence with long-established FM stations; they need to rent spots on some of the higher powered FM sticks, and get them to run -10dB IBOC.
 
Let's hope the ethnic groups which tend to live in the same neighborhoods don't move around much. If they do they'll find their favorite programming on HD subs, chronically dropping out.

"If it ain't broke don't fix it" Dept: what was wrong with traditional SCA for this purpose? It was more robust and didn't cause interference to neighboring channels. ??? ::)
 
what was wrong with traditional SCA for this purpose? It was more robust and didn't cause interference to neighboring channels. Huh Roll Eyes
Click to expand...

In the NYC radio market there is nothing wrong with using SCA for this purpose, except that most, if not all, of the available SCA frequencies are already taken.

Check this list that is about six-months old:

http://www.n2nov.net/NYCareaFM_SCA.html

Using HD this way just adds more potential channels. And it should be pointed out that there are plenty of AM stations in the NYC area that are also available for these purposes on a block time basis. Foreign language radio is a big market in NYC. And then there are the NJ stations doing the same thing, like WPRB in Princeton running HumDesi for South Asians on HD, and WPST, Trenton running Greek programming on SCA.
 
I have heard SCA, and the difference with an HD subchannel is like night and day.
SCA channels sound really hollow and tinny. I'm pretty sure SCA can only be heard in mono. One Caribbean Radio has excellent audio, and stereo separation that compares favorably with other FM stations.
I do not believe there are any car radios that can receive SCA channels. So they cannot be used for mobile listening.
And because WWPR , the station being used by OCR, is running HD at 4% the strength of the main signal, it can be heard with few dropouts, about 30 miles from the transmitting location.
 
Good move for CC. NYC has really needed a decent Caribbean station since WLIB abandoned the format after running it for a couple of decades. I think they dropped Caribbean music to become the Air America outlet for market #1. IIRC, WWRL tried to make a go of Caribbean until THEY became the AA outlet, but 1600 never had the signal to cover the market like 1190 does. I still don't know why WLIB didn't reclaim the format when their talk programming bombed. Wouldn't be too surprised if WLIB jumps back in to counter program WPWR's HD-2.

SCA requires a stronger signal than even HD does to deliver a mono signal that tends to be noisy with poor audio frequency response and dynamic range. If HD does nothing else, at least the HD 2s and HD 3s provide far better service than the 2 analog SCA channels could ever do.

-
 
SCA requires a stronger signal than even HD does to deliver a mono signal that tends to be noisy with poor audio frequency response and dynamic range.
Click to expand...

Going back a whole lot of years, I remember dealing with a company called General Background Music, that would feed subscribers using the SCA channels on WRFM 105.1 in New York, and WDHA 105.5 in North Jersey. IIRC, the audio was mono and the frequency response was about 8-khz, actually 8-kc in those days. And because it was for background music they wanted a limited dynamic range. All of that said, SCA could still sound good compared to AM, but almost all the receivers used rooftop yagi directional antennae so they were dealing with strong and straight signals going into the receiver, not what you're likely to get with a portable SCA radio.

If nothing else, HD offers better sound quality, and more than doubles the available channels for this kind of ethnic narrowcasting. Sometime back, some NYC FM subcarriers were being used for non-audio purposes. I suspect that may still be the case, which further limits the available SCA channels for audio.
 
I would not be surprised if HD radio on FM can now be at least reasonably profitable for stations in major markets.
They now have three ways (that I am aware of) to make money off their HD signals:
1) Leasing HD2/3/4 channels to ethnic groups or other niche broadcasters.
2)Leasing bandwidth to traffic/data providers, such as ClearChannel Traffic, or Navteq (typically used with mobile GPS units).
3) Use them to feed translators that transmit conventional FM signals.
 
I bet there's actually a lot of billboards, too, where the backside is far less visible but could theoretically be sold for ad space.
 
Tom Wells said:
I bet there's actually a lot of billboards, too, where the backside is far less visible but could theoretically be sold for ad space.
Click to expand...

I don't know how well the billboard business is right now .. I see tons of Clear Channel billboards around town that are "blank" ..

[Surprised they don't barter with themselves and advertise their own stations when they can't find someone else to pay to put up an ad..]

I wonder what kind of $$$ an HD LMA would go for.. considering that any money made from a LMA would be profit on the CC end...
 
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