Eureka-147

[K6JHU]

It looks like Canada is about to shut off the Eureka-147 signal because nobody has gone out and bought a new radio. There may be some lessons here for HD:
1. IBOC at least has an analog compoent not obsoleting an existing service.
2. Cost of new service is important.
3. New service should provide a new service (HD-2, HD-3).
4. A new service in Ch 5-6 spectrum needs to be carefully considered.

 

[Play Freebird]

This report, published three years ago by the Digital Radio Coordinating Group of CBC, discusses the results of the initial 2007 IBOC field tests in Canada:

http://www.cab-acr.ca/english/radio/drb/DRCG_Report_final.pdf

The Report Summary offers these words of wisdom:

"Based on the evidence currently in hand, the DRCG considers that it would be risky for
Canadian broadcasters to proceed at this time with an unrestricted roll-out of HD Radio services
in the FM band, in the manner implemented in the US. There is no ground-swell of radio listener
interest in this technology so far and the lack of inexpensive receivers, as well as unique new
programming services, continues to make it difficult to market HD Radio to the public in the US.
Moreover, there is no evidence that Canadian digital radio listeners are being lost to the 10% of
US FM stations that have implemented HD Radio to date."

 

[Savage]

Were there ANY "Canadian digital radio listeners" to be lost?

Wonder how many Canadian ANALOG listeners to U-S stations have been lost because of IBOC interference?? Canadian listeners to Canadian stations? Anyone? (Buehler? BUEH....ler....?)

 

[mmnassour]

HD FM stagnant at best here, HD AM dying here, Eureka 147 shut off in Canada, endless promotions to push DAB in Europe....

Does anyone, except for equipment manufacturers, really want digital radio?

 

[Rich883]

The DAB+ version of the Eureka 147 family of standards is actually getting good adoption in parts of the world. The UK, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland and Austria, Australia, Singapore all have many channels and services available. France, Germany, and Italy are all about to launch more nationwide coverage with both government and commercial broadcasters. Canada picked Lband – poor coverage, and no radios. The rest picked VHF band III, more radios – better coverage. The biggest thing for many of these operators is reduced costs. They need to operate several FM stations in nationwide networks to run their programs… may transmitters. With DAB= there are up to 25-30 channels on one transmitter, much lower cost per channel if you do that…… Different model than the US.

 

[RadeoEngineer]

With DAB= there are up to 25-30 channels on one transmitter, much lower cost per channel if you do that…… Different model than the US.

And this is precisely why it didn't happen in the U.S. When you add that many channels with a system that works, you instantly devalue the existing (AM and FM) properties. No commercial owner in their right mind wants more working broadcast channels cutting into the pie when they've paid Tiger Woods divorce bucks for a single channel (Yeah, exageration). Lets say you have a market with only 15 local signals and every existing licensee gets a channel. Do you think for a moment the rest of the available channels will go unused? No way! So take a market like L.A. An occupied channel on every frequency with lots of intrusion from nearby markets. Lets say it takes three 147 channels to give every licensee a home. Now you have a potential 90 channels all trying to sell Viagra and virtual colonoscopies. This is whay we have HD, and the suits know it and saw it coming. The slide rule guys told them way long ago HD wouldn't work, but the diversionary tactic of putting it on sure did. "Yeah, I'm a suit and I'll sign onto this thing and spend a couple hundred large to prevent the real damage from all these new signals coming in."

And I do sometimes wear a tinfoil hat, but think about it. Pay me now or pay me later. There is a difference in the tech. I told them this 15 years ago.

 

[Savage]

Interesting perspective on the IBOC mess, Radeo. So to keep the DAB wolf away from the door, The Suits deliberately chose a crackpot defective system as a "digital place holder" strictly as a defensive move?

Gives a whole new meaning to the term "running interference."

 

[RadeoEngineer]

I believe the top suits did and sold it to the lower suits. I had this discussion at very high levels of corporate where I worked at the time. That the HD system in development then was going to be garbage and would never work as promised, and that the right way to go digital was going to be Eureka or something similar, but that they needed to be aware that would put all AM's and FM's on a level playing field, and that if there were any left over digital channels in a market they would get filled one way or another. They agreed it was instant devaluation of their existing properties and didn't want that to happen. Then they bought into the HD thing before it was even working in an actual situation other than at the NAB show in a very controlled environment. That's why Eureka wasn't pursued by NAB or any of the other top level people in the business. It was too dangerous to existing facilities. The whole argument against possible spectrum was nonsense. If the NAB and the majors had wanted spectrum it would have been found. Now most of those people are out of the business with their nice retirements and the folks that are running HD on either frequency band are realizing they were sold a bill of goods. This is of course all in my very humble tin foil hat opinion.

 

[Savage]

"Just because you're paranoid, doesn't make you wrong." :-\

I think your tinfoil hat is very stylish.

This makes absolute sense. Let's recall that the most outrageous developments throughout history would, every one, been rejected as proposed novels or screenplays because they were too unbelievable.

I think it's common knowledge now that IBOC was concocted in every way, to be a hedge against smaller broadcasters getting a competitive leg up. It was consolidation....literally....by all means possible.

 

[chattersley]

Remember the sage advice of Johnny Fever from WKRP in Cincinnati: When they're out to get you, paranoia is good thinking...

 

[Carmine5]

On a similar note, Michael Lyons-BBC Trust Chairman, expressed his disappointment over the failure of DAB to catch on with British consumers.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/06/bbc_radio_review/

Taken together, the failure of DAB and Eureka-147, the stagnation of IBOC, it should be glaringly apparent that, on the whole, the public is just not that interested in hearing broadcast radio in digital.

BTW, this weekend, I did find two HD Radio receivers for sale at my local Best Buy. They were both Yamaha Cinema Theater Station receivers--and they were both open box returns marked way down.

c5

 

[OKCRadioGuy]

Yup... The public is also getting more and more disinterested in radio in general because the product that we, as an industry, are turning out sucks. I'm a technical type of person, but McCorporate needs to think about fireing the capital budget for expensive toys (HD comes to mind) and start hiring some damn help that's worth having for on-air and other key positions. Bean-counters have, for years, thought talent is like a disposable light bulb. One breaks, just replace it with another, hopefully at a cheaper cost. Advance time up to 2010, and add a lousy economy to the mix, and you've got the quandary we're in right now. Entertaining the stock holders with toys isn't the useful solution. Entertaining the PUBLIC so we can sell ads that are useful to clients is what's needed. We are becoming irrelevant due to our own collective stupidity in this industry.

 

[OKCRadioGuy]

And, Eureka, DAB, IBUZ -10 or whatever isn't going to cure it. The public doesn't give a damn how it comes to their ears. They just want an acceptable sound and excellent programming. Currently they most certainly aren't getting good programming in most cases.

 

[OKCRadioGuy]

I bet a station could say they are broadcasting a digital sound (most stations have some digital somewhere so it's not a total lie), and if you asked their listeners, they'd say the station was in digital, regardless of if the station had IBUZ or not. They simply don't know, and simply don't care.

 

[Carmine5]

And, Eureka, DAB, IBUZ -10 or whatever isn't going to cure it. The public doesn't give a damn how it comes to their ears. They just want an acceptable sound and excellent programming. Currently they most certainly aren't getting good programming in most cases.

This is absolutely correct and excellent programming is everything. Case in point:

This past weekend while my wife and I were at a friend's house for a dinner party, I found myself conversing with a woman in her mid-30's, who had just purchased a condo, about the L.A. housing market and she began quoting the wisdom of Dave Ramsey to me.

Startled, I asked her how she knew about Dave Ramsey and she said that she always listens to him right after listening to Dr. Laura on KFWB 980 (apparently Dr. Laura leads into Dave Ramsey). YES! A woman in her 30's actually listening to AM, good old analog AM, because she likes these two syndicated shows. I practically fell over (of course, I was drinking at the time). And, no, she doesn't have HD Radio, no, she doesn't mind the noise of AM.

Say what you will about Dave Ramsey, Dr. Laura, syndicated shows or the future of AM and radio in general but young adults do listen and will listen to any band, any technology if the programming has meaning or is of value to them. I am now firmly convinced of that.

c5

 

[tomservo]

You guys are saying sound quality doesn't matter to the general public, and sadly you're right. The same public that gas accepted satellite radio's awful sound have apparently accepted HD's noise on AM. Hence A reason why HD radio's claim of improved sound quality was ignored for promoting the subchannels.

 

[Carmine5]

In spite of the BBC Chairman's disappointment over the lack of interest in DAB, according to the Financial Times:

"The UK government will confirm on July 8 that it is to press ahead with the timetable for the switchover to digital radio broadcasting by 2015, as foreseen by the last administration."

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/b502a432-89...l&_i_referer=http://www.benton.org/node/37554

Apparently nothing less than the heavy hand of government will "motivate" consumers to make the switch to digital.

c5

 

[tomservo]

What do the Brits have to gain from switching? Existing radio spectrum is really only good for one thing: analog radio broadcasting.

 

[JohnnyElectron]

My buddy in Australia is thrilled with his DAB+ and he is an early adopter. He indicated that AM stereo has had a good life down there (with one single standard - CQuam) from the start, and that the music stations on AM simply migrated this stereo audio to their DAB+ transmissions.
He indicated that each market has a limited number of AM and FM stations as well as DAB+, so no worries like you'd have here in the States with pigs hogging-up as many DAB+ streams as possible to keep their neighbors out. He indicated that in Oz you have to have one of the current limited-ownership AM or FM stations to get your DAB+ stream, and like all things digital, audio is great with a few, but it you start to divy-up your digital bandwidth with mutliple streams (ala HD-2, HD-3), the digital audio turns to crap.

Also, he indicated abundant tuners all available simultaneously at the 'kickoff', portables, and at reasonable prices. Each major city had a separate kickoff date as well. Said battery life not what he would like on the portable, but that's his only beef at this point. Again, it's the programming too, not just more of the same that's enticed him to go DAB+, as they actually have 'beautiful music' stations down there on AM that sound spectacular in DAB+ (at least in part of the outback) he says. With horrible commute times in Sydney, they spend a lot of time listening to local radio for travel info.
Also, he denoted the arrival of radio satan in Oz, in the form of Clear Channel somehow being able to buy into the Aussie radio waves, unilke the USA & Canada where foreign ownership of broadcast properties is verbotton?

 

[Rich883]

My experience in Oz is the same as your friends, they seem to have been really thoughtful there.

With respect to the move in the UK, the motivating factor for many to switch to digital, especially the BBC is the cost to operate multiple nationwide analog networks. In FM they operate up to 6 overlay FM networks cleverly called BBC 1 to BBC 6. The cost to run all these transmitters nationwide vs the cost of running a single DAB multiplex, which in their cast has about 12 channel on it is about half of the cost of analogue. Lots less transmitters, let building space, less combiners, more channels.
In most of the places where DAB is successful, it is driven by public-government broadcasters who have a mandate to cover the country and deliver multiple channels of programming. Commercial broadcasters participate, but the driver is the public service broadcaster.