Countdown to the end of the Universe

[Savage]

We interrupt this thread to bring you this important disclaimer:

It has come to our attention that some posters to this board suffer from PSOHD, the easily-remembered acronym for "permanent sense of humor deficit." For those of you grappling with the daily heartbreak of the dread syndrome, "pi**head," the suggestion that someone drive off with Bob Struble tied to the bumper was NOT A SERIOUS ONE. Repeat: NOT ADVOCATING violence or personal harm. Of course not.

He's just another player caught up in a stupid vortex of money, politics, power, and....junk engineering. Just another guy conducting extremely high-risk experiments with someone else's livelihood, where he has virtually no downside and where small-to-medium market broadcasters will be the victims if IBOC sends AM south forever. You know, kind of like Chairman Martin, major-market engineering execs, the NAB....the usual suspects.

Did some poster to this board have a sig that included the claim "the success or failure of broadcasting means more to me than it does to you?" Really? Wow. No arrogance THERE.

 

[amfmsw]

Condolences, Tom W.

 

[jim8230]

"dbdigital has an excellent point. If IBOC-AM was such a great idea, any rational radio professional would immediately embrace it. The fact that there's any technical debate AT ALL - much less the current roar of protest from thinking persons in the industry without a pro-HD agenda - indicates serious problems."

Let's get a little more milage out of this quote.....

Here is the link to the FCC's AM IBOC stations page:

http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/cdbs/pubacc/prod/sta_list.pl

....So where are all the Entercom stations? I spoke recently to the local Entercom CE and he told me they had no intention of converting their AM's.

To Savage: This board was in dire need of someone like you to join in. I, for one, am glad you did.

 

[jim8230]

Oooops! Here is the corrected link:

http://www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/

Just scroll down to IBOC Digital and click on the AM to the right.

Sorry 'bout that!

 

[semoochie]

OK, I've solved the problem: After a certain amount of time, all AM stations in rated markets should simply go off the air! This should leave plenty of room for stations that actually have a chance of making a living.

 

[LinoNYC]

OK, I've solved the problem: After a certain amount of time, all AM stations in rated markets should simply go off the air! This should leave plenty of room for stations that actually have a chance of making a living.

That is exactly what is already happening. The process will accelerate as the last of AM's current listenership ages-out and dies off.

Here in New York, I can point to a number of AMs that were once major players that have faded into oblivion.

Take WMCA, during the 1960's this 5K directional was the top-40 for most of the decade, more popular then WABC. It's fade was slow but one-way, first it went talk (1970) then religion-leased (1989) now, almost no measurable audience.

WNEW-am another big one (50K) went nostalgia in 1979 limped along 'till it was sold to Bloomberg in 1992. Today it's a good station for business news, nut almost no listeners.

WWRL A personal favorite since early 1964, was the "black WABC" during the 60's and early 70's it's 5K signal nonetheless dominated the R&B scene and it was said a song added to it's playlist would often see a boost upwards of 50.000 copies sold.

Today it barely makes the ratings with most of it's time leased to Air America and religion on the weekends.

WHN was once the leading country station in the Nation, today: vanity outlet for ESPN. Few listeners.

WQXR 1560 Once the leading classical station, then big band now Radio Disney. Despite frequent advertising of this station it doesn't seem to get rated.

WABC Not much needs to be said about their past, today however they have the oldest listeners in the market.

Even the "healthy" AMs are starting to have significant demographic problems.

Lino

 

[SUPERCASTER]

OK, I've solved the problem: After a certain amount of time, all AM stations in rated markets should simply go off the air! This should leave plenty of room for stations that actually have a chance of making a living.

That is exactly what is already happening. The process will accelerate as the last of AM's current listenership ages-out and dies off.

Here in New York, I can point to a number of AMs that were once major players that have faded into oblivion.

Take WMCA, during the 1960's this 5K directional was the top-40 for most of the decade, more popular then WABC. It's fade was slow but one-way, first it went talk (1970) then religion-leased (1989) now, almost no measurable audience.

WNEW-am another big one (50K) went nostalgia in 1979 limped along 'till it was sold to Bloomberg in 1992. Today it's a good station for business news, nut almost no listeners.

WWRL A personal favorite since early 1964, was the "black WABC" during the 60's and early 70's it's 5K signal nonetheless dominated the R&B scene and it was said a song added to it's playlist would often see a boost upwards of 50.000 copies sold.

Today it barely makes the ratings with most of it's time leased to Air America and religion on the weekends.

WHN was once the leading country station in the Nation, today: vanity outlet for ESPN. Few listeners.

WQXR 1560 Once the leading classical station, then big band now Radio Disney. Despite frequent advertising of this station it doesn't seem to get rated.

WABC Not much needs to be said about their past, today however they have the oldest listeners in the market.

Even the "healthy" AMs are starting to have significant demographic problems.

Lino

So what has all this to do with HD radio?
Exactly nothing. After over $500,000,000 of promotion less then 1% of those surveyed have said they have any intention of even giving HD radio a listen, much less actually buying one.
Reduced fidelity, poor programming, increased HD jamming and interference, can only accelerate the public trend toward migration to other new media.

 

[Tom Wells]

amfmfsw: Thank you for your condolences.
In the last two days driving to and from work I hear a new difference in all the 50kw AM iBOCs.

I had to stop, turn off the car and really listen to be sure, but the recent upgrades have restored a decent measure of
of crispness to the analog signal.

When perfectly center tuned there is still white noise, but ibquity seems to have rearranged the spectral distribution of the AM
sidebands. There is less energy translating to audio in the 5-10 khz region. The higher hiss remaining is much more like
regular transistor-based amp hiss in a high gain amp. But not audible now in the moving car, while the previous "pink noise"
hiss was ever-present except in the highest ambient noise situations.

The crispness of audio is improved on all of them. WSCR the least, WGN next, then WBBM, and WLS has done the best
job taking advantage of this. When kept to normal to low levels, the speech carries and copies well now.

I compared back to plain-old AMs, while they are still cleaner, and sound better, I really do believe ibiquity has implemented the
7-khz mode mentioned a while back, or has something else new on the air.
Maybe they have taught the digital system to listen only during the time the analog is not using the 5 to 10 khz for
sibilant info. Waveform analysis and real-time control should make this easy.

It's still touchy to tune in perfectly centered on a mechanical-tuned radio.
And the balance on them changes while driving around, but the imbalances now translate to less noise than previously.
Or they have actually balanced them better somehow!

I wasn't expecting this, and find it hard to believe I'm fooling myself, or my hearing perception is changing but I don't think so.

Can anyone else confirm on such changes in other areas?