Dan Mason worried about the future of AM radio

[radioskeptic]

What I said back in Reply # 20 got a rise from a couple of IBOC defenders:

As late as the early 1960’s, the big guys still weren’t taking FM seriously. In fact, CBS didn’t object when the late Dave Kurtz, an engineer by training, applied for a short-spaced assignment in Philadelphia on 101.1, co-channel with WCBS-FM in New York. That station, now WBEB (B101), is a legend today—as is Dave’s surviving partner, Jerry Lee.

David Eduardo responded thus:

Yet that station was not successful until the very late 60's, and then due to an FCC push to get simulcasting FMs to separate...

Which station, David? You must mean WCBS-FM, because WDVR (now WBEB) had no AM sister station. But WDVR was the No. 1 FM station in Philadelphia in its first book, and the most listened-to (and most profitable) FM in the country within a year.

WCBS-FM, on the other hand, bombed in the late Sixties, first with “The Young Sound” (the brainstorm of some clueless CBS suit, it used instrumental versions of Top 40 hits—a kind of Muzak for the Woodstock generation) and then with a failed attempt to compete with the progressive rock formats of Metromedia (WNEW-FM) and ABC (WPLJ). It wasn’t much of a success until its Oldies format, which was started in 1972, began picking up disaffected listeners from WOR-FM, which had dropped pre-1964 material.

But then, TheBigA responded to one of my other comments with this:

I really get tired of these endless and unproven conspiracy theories. The fact is that HD Radio isn't restricted by ownership. In fact, the aforementioned Jerry Lee, who is an anti-consolidator, is part of the HD Alliance.

Sure, BigA, as if Jerry Lee’s membership in the “HD” Alliance proves anything.

Dave Kurtz was a good engineer, but he knew little about The Business of Radio (to borrow a phrase). He was the sole owner, and when he hired Jerry Lee as sales manager two weeks before the station when on, he couldn’t pay him; so he offered Jerry 49 percent ownership and complete control. You can read about the origins of “B101” here: http://www.broadcastpioneers.com/davekurtz.html

Dave was responsible for the station’s unexampled audio back in the Beautiful Music days of WDVR, but Jerry was the programming visionary and marketing genius who knew how to make it work financially. For a good overview of Jerry’s work, see “Smaller Player Spends Big to Remain on Top” in the Wall Street Journal, June 6, 2006, p. B5, and the piece about Jerry in Broadcasting & Cable, Sept. 18, 2000, p. 64. (Sorry no links. You'll have to go to a large public or universtiy library.)

About that WSJ piece: Jerry not only had a penthouse for entertaining clients back in the late Sixties—he also had a yacht named the “Eagle One”! I was never on the yacht, but I was very familiar with the programming system Jerry worked out that perfected the BM format, as well as with Dave’s meticulous engineering work in designing the studios.

When the “HD” madness started, Dave was already a very sick man, and no longer had any real rôle in the station. Jerry, meanwhile, was so widely admired in the industry that he had been invited to join the NAB radio board, where most of his colleagues were executives from the consolidators. They wanted him on board with “HD” just as much as they wanted NPR, and for the same reason: prestige. And without Dave to offer him sound engineering advice, he was persuaded to go along.

B101’s “HD” was off this summer for about three months, and there were no complaints. Nobody noticed except for a handful of radio geeks (there were two R-I threads about it). That should tell you something!

Note that Jerry Del Colliano, another vocal critic of “HD” (and thus another bête noire of the of the pro-IBOC crowd), is a great admirer of Jerry Lee’s acumen. See http://insidemusicmedia.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-to-get-29-share-in-radio.html, http://insidemusicmedia.blogspot.com/2008/06/radio-lee-bain-vs-jerry-lee.html, http://insidemusicmedia.blogspot.com/2008/09/radio-1-2-3-i-beat-jerry-lee.html, http://insidemusicmedia.blogspot.com/2009/05/on-air-radio-that-still-works.html, and http://insidemusicmedia.blogspot.com/2009/09/folly-of-commercial-free.html.

But I don’t need CBS’s failure to oppose Dave Kurtz’s application for a short-spaced co-channel in Philly that would later impair their NYC O&O’s signal in parts of New Jersey. I can give you another example to illustrate how little the radio establishment cared about FM in those days. How about this one:

For 14 weeks in the spring and summer of 1961, Metromedia preempted its simulcast of WIP’s wildly successful MOR format on WIP-FM in the evenings to air tapes of the Eichmann war crimes trial in Israel. If memory serves me correctly, the tapes started at 6 PM and often ran past midnight. The audio was poor, and the voices were those of simultaneous interpreters—hardly compelling radio, no matter how much you wanted to see Eichmann brought to justice. This illustrates as well as anything the kind of contempt most of the big broadcasters had for FM.

-------------------------------------

Now one other thing, not related to B101, the rise of FM, or the big boys’ indifference in those days. I also said:

The consolidators invested because they wanted to keep IBOC alive. Why? Because they didn’t want competition from new broadcasters in an entirely new digital band in the UHF range (where digital broadcasting belongs)--just as their predecessors feared competiton from the then fledgling FM band.

I should have said “in the UHF range (where digital broadcasting would work)” –(meaning it would work technically, if not economically)—because I don’t think it really belongs anywhere. Look at what’s happened to TV in Philadelphia since the digital transition. Only two of the four VHF stations moved their digital signals to their old analog channels: WPVI (ch. 6), and non-com WHYY-TV (12). I don’t have trouble with OTA reception of anything in the UHF band, but I have only occasional problems with channel 12, and frequent ones with channel 6 (82-88)—even after the FCC let the latter quadruple its power because of viewer complaints. Digital signals just don’t work very well in the lower half of the VHF spectrum, and not all that well in the upper half of it. A four-fold increase in “HD” FM power won’t help, and a ten-fold increase wouldn’t either, though even a doubling will lead to degradation of analog coverage. Neither would a change from 8VSB to OFDM help matters.

David Eduardo made one other statement I’d like to answer:

Digital on a separate band has failed in Europe and Canada, and [has] never even [been] attempted elsewhere in this Hemisphere. The radio industry knew that only an in-band solution, backwards compatible, like FM stereo, might work.

True, David, digital has failed in Canada, and all over Europe, too, as British blogger Grant Goddard has been reporting on almost every post (http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/) for months now. It’s failing in the marketplace despite the best efforts of the BBC, the larger commercial stations and Ofcom. And it’s failing not because it’s in a new band, but rather despite that fact. What do I mean?

Simple. It doesn’t matter whether digital radio is in a new and more appropriate band or shoehorned into an existing band. Either way, listeners would have to buy new radios, and they aren’t interested enough to do that. And they weren’t interested even before the economy went sour.

So even if Iniquity’s “HD” technology worked as well as you guys would have us believe, even if it didn’t cause the destructive interference that it does—and even if it were as cheap to install as FMeXtra—I think we can safely assume that it would still be a market failure.

 

[TheBigA]

What I said back in Reply # 20 got a rise from a couple of IBOC defenders:

If that means me, then you're wrong. I'm not "IBOC defender." I want the FCC to do its mandated job and deal with interference. But they haven't, and they won't. That doesn't make me an "IBOC defender." Just because I'm not a hater who comes up with conspiracy theories doesn't automatically make me a defender.

Sure, BigA, as if Jerry Lee’s membership in the “HD” Alliance proves anything.

Sure it does. It proves that your conspiracy theory about IBOC is a lie. Jerry Lee isn’t the only non-consolidator running IBOC, as I noted in my post.

By the way, I love FMeXtra, but unfortunately electronics manufacturers, the Congress, and the FCC don’t, and there’s nothing I can do about that.

 

[davideduardo]

Yet that station was not successful until the very late 60's, and then due to an FCC push to get simulcasting FMs to separate...

Which station, David?

WDVR. It barely stayed alive prior to the general rise of FM, which occured at the time the FCC forced stations to stop simulcasting in the event they were. That edict brought greater variety to FM than the usual fare of beautiful music and classical, which included WDVR. By doing so, the overall cume "magnetism" of FM increased. This is the same, but in opposite direction, of the loss of cume circulation on AM today.

You must mean WCBS-FM, because WDVR (now WBEB) had no AM sister station. But WDVR was the No. 1 FM station in Philadelphia in its first book, and the most listened-to (and most profitable) FM in the country within a year.

WDVR goes back to about '59. It was, like all FMs, a tenuous proposition... as I said... until the late 60's. At the same time, early FM adopters like Art Keller (EZ Communications) and Kaiser (KFOG and, later, the Boston station both under the pioneer Pete Taylor), bought major market FMs for, sometimes, less than $100k

About that WSJ piece: Jerry not only had a penthouse for entertaining clients back in the late Sixties—he also had a yacht named the “Eagle One”! I was never on the yacht, but I was very familiar with the programming system Jerry worked out that perfected the BM format,

While WDVR was certainly well programmed, the pioneers who transformed "a bunch of LPs in boxes" to a real format were Marlin Taylor of Bonneville and Jim Schulke. In particular, the matched flow system Schulke used, plus the systems for tape duplication, mastering, etc. were quite revolutionary in that era.

And, despite what the WDVR article says, WDVR was not even on the air when FM stereo began and prior to that time, most of the stereo stations were fulltime stereo operations; the reference to "a few hours a day" goes back to the pre-multiplex stereo offerings of AM FM combos where one channel was on AM and the other on FM (WDOK Cleveland did this around 1960).

David Eduardo made one other statement I’d like to answer:
Digital on a separate band has failed in Europe and Canada, and [has] never even [been] attempted elsewhere in this Hemisphere. The radio industry knew that only an in-band solution, backwards compatible, like FM stereo, might work

True, David, digital has failed in Canada, and all over Europe, too, as British blogger Grant Goddard has been reporting on almost every post (http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/) for months now. It’s failing in the marketplace despite the best efforts of the BBC, the larger commercial stations and Ofcom. And it’s failing not because it’s in a new band, but rather despite that fact. What do I mean?

It has failed because the consumer sees no need for the purchase of a new radio to hear what they are hearing now. This is the same issue we had in '61 with multiplex stereo. Imagina a new band for stereo... when it took 3 years for the first 100 stereo stations to begin operation, even when the system was backward compatible.

Simple. It doesn’t matter whether digital radio is in a new and more appropriate band or shoehorned into an existing band. Either way, listeners would have to buy new radios, and they aren’t interested enough to do that.

And that is exactly why a backward compatible system is right. If HD does not work, existing stations go on. If it does, terrific. Just like FM stereo.

So even if Iniquity’s “HD” technology worked as well as you guys would have us believe, even if it didn’t cause the destructive interference that it does—and even if it were as cheap to install as FMeXtra—I think we can safely assume that it would still be a market failure.

I have a lot of trouble with people who use "cute" respellings to slam things they don't like. It's juvenile, and demonstrates an underlying inability to deal with facts.

And one of the facts is that to use FMeXtra, now you have to buy a package of radio receivers... that probably sealed the fate of that system. And many HD stations are now making lots of money with SCA-like services, such as programming in Hindi or Farsi or Russian, etc.

 

[radioskeptic]

Oy vay, David. Where do I begin this time? You said:

WDVR. It barely stayed alive prior to the general rise of FM, which occured at the time the FCC forced stations to stop simulcasting in the event they were. That edict brought greater variety to FM than the usual fare of beautiful music and classical, which included WDVR. By doing so, the overall cume "magnetism" of FM increased. This is the same, but in opposite direction, of the loss of cume circulation on AM today.

Actually, David, WDVR was an immediate success, as I said above. It knocked off WQAL, the existing BM station. It also ended Wilmington BM station WJBR’s long run as a force in the Philadelphia market.

Then you said, “WDVR goes back to about '59. It was, like all FMs, a tenuous proposition... as I said... until the late 60's.” (Ellipses in your original statement.) But two paragraphs later, you said, "WDVR was not even on the air when FM stereo began and prior to that time..." (Ellipsis mine.)

So which is it, David? Neither. WDVR went on the air in May 1963—two years and one month after the FCC approved the GE-Zenith FM stereo as standard in April 1961. And it was the first FM station to go stereo 24/7 from the outset. In fact, it was the first FM in the city to broadcast 24 hours a day, except for those that were simulcasting a sister AM station either full-time or part of the day.

Even after that, you said:

And, despite what the WDVR article says, WDVR was not even on the air when FM stereo began and prior to that time, most of the stereo stations were fulltime stereo operations; the reference to "a few hours a day" goes back to the pre-multiplex stereo offerings of AM FM combos where one channel was on AM and the other on FM...

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, and it looks like you agree with him. But consistency in sticking with the facts isn’t foolish, David, and failing to do that can only undermine your credibility.

No, David, in the early days most stations only turned on the stereo generator for special broadcasts—much like color TV. WDVR was the first 24/7 FM stereo station.

Now before we leave the subject of WDVR, here’s one more error:

While WDVR was certainly well programmed, the pioneers who transformed "a bunch of LPs in boxes" to a real format were Marlin Taylor of Bonneville and Jim Schulke. In particular, the matched flow system Schulke used, plus the systems for tape duplication, mastering, etc. were quite revolutionary in that era.

In fact, WQAL had been using Jim Schulke’s tapes for some time, and WDVR blew them out of the water in their first book. WDVR did NOT use taped segments, except for the board ops’ breaks. Records were listed by the station’s library call number, the side and the cut number (with the title) for each half—hour segment on 5-by-8 cards, and were actually played on what were then state-of-the-art turntables to provide better sound.

And Marlin Taylor? He worked for Jerry at WDVR throughout the Sixties (and Bonneville was only founded in 1964!)

How do I know all this, David? I know because I was there in the late Sixties, while you were still in grade school!

Finally:

I have a lot of trouble with people who use "cute" respellings to slam things they don't like. It's juvenile, and demonstrates an underlying inability to deal with facts.

Well, David, I have trouble like people like Iniquity, or Ibiquity if you prefer. Capitalizing the second letter of a proper name instead of the first is a childish affectation. We capitalize initials because they make it easier to identify proper names at a glance. But then, how can we expect a company like Ibiquity to respect the conventions of English orthography when they don’t even respect the laws of physics?

 

[Tom Wells]

But then, how can we expect a company like Ibiquity to respect the conventions of English orthography when they don’t even respect the laws of physics?

Amen. Respect can only come after one either accepts what is known and understood, or after EXPERIENCE teaches one the same.
It would have helped if they had first employed people who were familiar with the laws of physics, to at least make sure they understood
the nature of the medium they trying to re-invent.

 

[davideduardo]

Actually, David, WDVR was an immediate success, as I said above. It knocked off WQAL, the existing BM station. It also ended Wilmington BM station WJBR’s long run as a force in the Philadelphia market.

No FM was a success in the very early 60's. While many stayed alive, they just barely existed. The numbers in the ratings were ground clutter. In most markets, no FM made the ratings in the early 60's, and if they did, it might be a 1 share compared to double digit shares for the Top 40 giants.

Then you said, “WDVR goes back to about '59. It was, like all FMs, a tenuous proposition... as I said... until the late 60's.” (Ellipses in your original statement.) But two paragraphs later, you said, "WDVR was not even on the air when FM stereo began and prior to that time..." (Ellipsis mine.)

DVR, from my data, was a CP for nearly 3 years prior to being built... a lot of FMs were thusly created, license first, delays, finace problems, etc., despite the FCC financial qualifications issues. Forgive me, I don't know the intricate history of every one of the US' 14 thousand stations... and I did not know the airdate of WDVR. I assumed it was older, based on original applications (which may, in fact, have been a different applicant for all I know). There is a real lack of factual histories of the industry.

WDVR went on the air in May 1963—two years and one month after the FCC approved the GE-Zenith FM stereo as standard in April 1961. And it was the first FM station to go stereo 24/7 from the outset.

It may have been the first FM to sign on as a brand new station in stereo, but there were lots of other fulltime stereo stations... within the limited number adopting the new system.. which simply added FM stereo at some point, including Zenith's own FM in Chicago.

No, David, in the early days most stations only turned on the stereo generator for special broadcasts—much like color TV. WDVR was the first 24/7 FM stereo station.

The ones I was familiar with put it on and ran stereo all day. Since many stations in the 60's did not run 24/7 (in fact, very, very few stations did... as any DXer will tell you) the real issue is not whether they ran midnight to 6, but what happened in the remaining 18 hours... the rated dayparts.

In fact, WQAL had been using Jim Schulke’s tapes for some time, and WDVR blew them out of the water in their first book.

Schulke did not begin SRP until nearly a decade after WDVR went on the air... when he called Phil Stout, PD of WDVR, to explore creating a better version of the format. Stout, of course, replaced Marlin Taylor, who went on to create Bonneville's service after developing his own programming formula.

WDVR did NOT use taped segments, except for the board ops’ breaks. Records were listed by the station’s library call number, the side and the cut number (with the title) for each half—hour segment on 5-by-8 cards, and were actually played on what were then state-of-the-art turntables to provide better sound.

Any of us who syndicate the format in that era know that tape was vastly superior, including the ability to eliminated pops and clicks and to preserve each LP with only a very few plays on it.

How do I know all this, David? I know because I was there in the late Sixties, while you were still in grade school!

In 1966 I put the first FM in northern South America on the air... the only FM for about 1000 miles in any direction. It did a very Latin version of Beautiful music, with 3-song matched flow sets separated by one 20" spot, for a total of 2' of commercial time an hour. By the next year, it was the lead biller of my cluster.

When i was in junior high, I worked at an FM, and decided to put a station on that band "in honor" of my beginnings at WCUY. It turned out to be the best performer, revenue wise, of a very successful group of a dozen stations.

But then, how can we expect a company like Ibiquity to respect the conventions of English orthography when they don’t even respect the laws of physics?

It's quite obvious that the FCC and the industry realize that out of market AMs and FMs are just not listened to at all, and so using the adjacent channels on AM, within the legal mask, for HD, hurts no station and has a potential for much benefit. The real issue is that most people under 50 don't use AM, and it could be 320 kbs digital stereo and it would still die...

As to using lower case letters in brands, may I remind you of perhaps the two most successful electronics products of the decade, the iPhone and the iPod. Brands can be written however the owner likes; changing a name to one that is derisive is not in good form.

 

[radioskeptic]

David your bio page (http://www.davidgleason.com/Contents.htm) says "Birth-1960." I didn't use the link, so I assumed that meant that you were born in 1960. My mistake. I, too, was born after World War II so I guess we're contemporaries.

(And as for I-pods and I-phones, I capitalize the inital letters in their names, too. And I don't own either.)

 

[davideduardo]

(And as for I-pods and I-phones, I capitalize the inital letters in their names, too. And I don't own either.)

You should. They are examples (the iPod being close to the end of it's life cycle, though) if how there will be a single communications and entertainment device we carry in the future... plugging in to screens, speakers, bases, the car... and carrying our inventory of music, mail, videos, contacts... since there will be no devices that do just one thing. Just like the move to FM, we are seing a move in "broadcasting" where the transmitters and towers of the past may become irrelevant as we move content to listeners.

 

[TheBigA]

a single communications and entertainment device we carry in the future... plugging in to screens, speakers, bases, the car... and carrying our inventory of music, mail, videos, contacts...

As I read those words, I thought of Sony. Years ago, they would have created that device. They were great at combining multiple uses in one device. The Walkman was their ultimate, but there were others. Then they lost their way. I'd like to think Apple will be on the cutting edge here again, but it could come from anywhere. Actually Samsung is doing some amazing things.

But yes, the world has completely changed from where it was ten years ago. Completely, and those two devices are just a small part of the sociological and technological change that has left radio completely in the dust. If radio doesn't wake up and join the party, and seek to invent things as RCA Labs did 70 years ago, the next stop will be the museum.

 

[radioskeptic]

I hope the quote below isn't too long for the moderators. It's from the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia's page on Dave Kurtz, the Philco engineer who left his job to satr WDVR, now B101. It was he who got the drop-in on 101.1 in Philadelphia, short-spaced to WCBSA-FM in New York. It was also he who hired Jerry Lee as sales manager two weeks before the station in May 1963. He couldn't afford to pay Jerry a salary, so he gave him 49 percent ownership.

As I said before, Jerry was responsible for perfecting the "beautiful music" format and making it viable, and he was smart enough to know that the BM demo, the only one for which he had a real feel, was aging and heading for a revenue cliff in a few years; so while it was still on top, he blew up the station. He was smart enough to hire Bill Moyes, one of the few competent consultants in the business, and the relationship has been very fruitful.

Jerry is the guy who proved FM had economic value, even before some of the big owners tried progressive rock (under the later FCC requirement to program their AM and FM stations separately). He's still at the top of his game as an owner and manager. But he's not an engineer.

So I stand by what I said before: Jerry's membership in the "HD Alliance" proves nothing. It was, well, let's call it "peer pressure" from his peers on the NAB Radio Board. And if Dave had still been actively involved with B101 when the "HD" nonsense started (he was already laid low by cancer), I'm sure he would have played his 51 percent ownership card to stop it.

In case the moderator thinks this is too long a quote, see http://www.broadcastpioneers.com/davekurtz.html, paragraphs 3-6 (it's only 8 senteces). And David, please don't try to re-write the history of Philadelphia radio, which I know like the back of my hand.

With few listeners, and even fewer dollars, a small number of FM stations were beginning to experiment with recently approved stereo broadcasting. Their stereo schedules usually totaled no more than a few hours a week. WDVR started an industry trend by broadcasting in stereo 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Just four and half months after WDVR began broadcasting; it became the number one FM station in Philadelphia. By 1966, it had the largest audience of any FM Station in the entire country -- larger than any FM Station in NY, Chicago or Los Angeles

Noted for its beautiful music, WDVR received the award for being the best music station in the world by the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra in 1967. Soon after in 1968, WDVR broke a major financial milestone by becoming the first FM Station in the Country to bill $1 million ($6 million in today's dollars).

Many experts point to this accomplishment as the turning point for FM Radio. Up to that time, most investors felt there was not a large enough audience to make money in FM Radio.

 

[TheBigA]

So I stand by what I said before: Jerry's membership in the "HD Alliance" proves nothing.

But as I said before, there are lots of other non-corporate radio stations who use and promote HD Radio. So it is not a corporate conspiracy. That is my point.

 

[davideduardo]

And David, please don't try to re-write the history of Philadelphia radio, which I know like the back of my hand.

The problem is the rewriting of the history of Beautiful Music.

There were many Beaustiful Music stations on AM and on AM FM simulcasts going back well before WDVR.

Possibly "The Station" that changed the format was Gordon McLendon's KABL in the San Francisco market. McLendon took his top 40 bag of tricks and applied it to the format, starting with the clang of the cable car bell as the station's ID logo... a technique that replaced the well-wprk harp gliss effects of previous stations in the format. And that logo was the model later for stations like KFOG and WJIB in boston with their characteristic sounds. Oh, and the date was May, 1959.

The format was a perfect one to make the transition to FM, and the earliest successful (within the definition of "successful" on that band) FMs were generally Beautiful or classical.

You incorrectly identified Jim Schulke's format as having begun in the 60's, when it really was launced by Mr. Schulke and Phil Stout in the early 70's... Phil having replaced Marlin Taylor at WDVR some years before... and Taylor went to syndicate Beautiful Music for Bonneville.

The syndicators started in the early 70's. Some grew out of in-house programming like that of Steve Trivers at KalaMusic. Others were offshoots of other syndication efforts, like Drake Chennault that had an adult Top 40 format called Hit Parade going back to 1968; they added Beautiful along with other format offerings as the decade of the 70's progressed. That period also saw the FM 100 Plan from Darryl Peters at WLOO in Chicago, RPM in Detroit, IGM in Seattle, Peters in San Diego, TM in Dallas and several others.

Syndication was as much enabled by the development of good and reliable automation as by the availability of programming, and the convergence happened in that early 70's period and was fueled by the growth of FM outside the larger markets.

Beautiful Music existed well before WDVR. And it was already well defined prior to WDVR going on the air. WDVR was a good station, but its success was more due to shrewd management than to any radical revolution among the hollyridge Strings, Paul Mauriat and Frank chacksfield.