FCC Proposal to Raise HD Power Levels

[davideduardo]

If we were going to begin digital radio on a separate band, then we should have adopted DAB like the rest of the world.

Except for most of the countries in that world. Name a nation to the south of the US that has adopted and implemented DAB.

Where DAB has been adopted is almost entirely in nations where the government controls radio vastly more than in the US and where much of broadcasting, such as the BBC, is government owned and operated.

Today, in our hemisphere broadcasters see no need for any broadcast digital service, believing that Internet services are "where it's at".

But it was a non-starter in North America because the 50 kW FM stations would never stand a 250-watt AM daytimer being on the same DAB multiplex and having the same coverage and audio quality as them.

By the time digital became a possibility, most successful stations were on FM and most of the successful ones were on relatively equal facilities.

So IBOC DAB / "HD Radio" was invented as a way to sub-optimally shoehorn digital signals onto the existing AM and FM bands while keeping competitive positions intact.

It was created using existing technology created by "Ma Bell" and the AT&T laboratories as a way of making existing stations digital in an era when "digital" really had no meaning to most Americans. Most stations and operators did not see the need for a new band, making something like 600 million radios obsolete.

 

[kevtronics]

Except for most of the countries in that world. Name a nation to the south of the US that has adopted and implemented DAB.

Norway, if you fly over the South Pole to get to it.

It was created using existing technology created by "Ma Bell" and the AT&T laboratories as a way of making existing stations digital in an era when "digital" really had no meaning to most Americans. Most stations and operators did not see the need for a new band, making something like 600 million radios obsolete.

It was created in response to the threat of DAB and satellite radio. I have an electronics magazine from 1993 that announced that IBOC was "right around the corner". That "right around the corner" turned out to be over a decade later.

 

[semoochie]

If we were going to begin digital radio on a separate band, then we should have adopted DAB like the rest of the world. But it was a non-starter in North America because the 50 kW FM stations would never stand a 250-watt AM daytimer being on the same DAB multiplex and having the same coverage and audio quality as them. So IBOC DAB / "HD Radio" was invented as a way to sub-optimally shoehorn digital signals onto the existing AM and FM bands while keeping competitive positions intact.

DAB would have required use of the L-Band, which was unavailable in this country because of military constraints. The alternative band choice would've required too many terrestrial repeaters and was eventually given to Sirius/XM. An inband solution was the only remaining alternative.

 

[secondchoice]

If we were going to begin digital radio on a separate band, then we should have adopted DAB like the rest of the world. But it was a non-starter in North America because the 50 kW FM stations would never stand a 250-watt AM daytimer being on the same DAB multiplex and having the same coverage and audio quality as them. So IBOC DAB / "HD Radio" was invented as a way to sub-optimally shoehorn digital signals onto the existing AM and FM bands while keeping competitive positions intact.

Streaming kinda levels the playing field. If there is a format/station the listener wants hopefully he / she finds and downloads your app. With SEO you don't nessarly have to be on iHeart and Audacy but right now they are seem to be the way to go. But just give it time, the Internet can change people's habits. AOL was really big at one time. I have switched from Google to Duck Duck Go for my searches. If you can accurately predict people's internet habits five years from now you could be very rich.

 

[secondchoice]

If we were going to begin digital radio on a separate band, then we should have adopted DAB like the rest of the world. But it was a non-starter in North America because the 50 kW FM stations would never stand a 250-watt AM daytimer being on the same DAB multiplex and having the same coverage and audio quality as them. So IBOC DAB / "HD Radio" was invented as a way to sub-optimally shoehorn digital signals onto the existing AM and FM bands while keeping competitive positions intact.

If the community transmitter is a deal breaker then HAAT would be limited 300 feet for Class C an D AMs and class A FMs. A & B AMs get 500 feet in FM B territory or up to 2000 feet else where. Class B FMs would be limited to 500 feet. The Class C FM would get their existing class HAAT. Of course stations can take a power penalty if they go higher.

But like I stated that opportunity is not available now. It seems the commission really doesn't care for radio except for the revenue from licenses.

 

[Kelly A]

It seems the commission really doesn't care for radio except for the revenue from licenses.

You got that right. Spectrum auctions make their world go round.

 

[Greg Strickland]

Excerpt from the link below

"For FY2023, the FCC requested a budget authority of $390,192,000 from regulatory fee offsetting collections. This request
represents an increase of $16,192,000 (4.3%) from the FY2022 annualized Continuing Resolution level of $374,000,000. Of
this amount, the FCC requested $132,231,000 in budget authority for the spectrum auctions program. This request represents
a decrease of $2,264,000 (1.7%) from the FY2022 annualized CR level of $134,495,000. As of January 31, 2022, the FCC’s
spectrum auctions program has generated over $233 billion for government use; at the same time, the total cost of the
auctions program has been less than $2.3 billion (1%) of the total auctions’ revenue."

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45699/13

A lot of information here:

Auctions Summary

www.fcc.gov

My comment-

Regulatory fees are main source of money for FCC budget. A small radio station might pay 2 thousand dollars each year to the FCC.
The spectrum auction is a business, it has revenue and expenses, and profit goes to the US Treasury.

FCC receives a payment for conducting auctions and money to promote them. In the reverse spectrum auction, much of the revenue was paid to licensees who relinquished their licenses in exchange for money from those who later "bought" spectrum in the auction. The rest of the money goes to US Treasury.

The auction I looked at in detail was profitable, and money went to the Treasury. Auction proceeds do not happen every year, and profit produced is in context of total government expenditures of approximately 6,000 billion dollars.

You can read all details of FCC funding online, including what the FCC is paid for conducting the auction.

Ultimately Congress controls FCC funding and legislative direction. The President appoints FCC Commissioners, the Senate confirms them. FCC staff are career employees. FCC Commissioners are responsive to members of Congress and the President The FCC commissioners and agencies are responsive to public and interested parties, according to rules and policy for that.

Anyone with an Internet connection can comment on a pending rulemaking.

ECFS

Federal Communication Commission Electronic Comment Filing System

www.fcc.gov

Join the 55 thousand who commented on 10-90.

ECFS

Federal Communication Commission Electronic Comment Filing System

www.fcc.gov

If you do comment, note " Comment Period End Date and Reply to Comment Period End Date"

I think the FCC is doing a good job.

 

[davideduardo]

It was created in response to the threat of DAB and satellite radio.

It had been in development well before DAB or satellite radio by the old Ma Bell laboratories. When Bell was broken up, the technology and patents ended up with iBiquity and got initial capital from a number of the larger groups.

There was never a fear of DAB in the US as, first, the band was not available and, second, there was no support in the industry. DAB moved ahead in Europe due to the push by large, dominant government broadcasters.

Satellite, due to its subscription and hardware requirements, was not anything that pushed radio into HD. In fact, HD was pushed by the eventual patent holders and equipment manufacturers who saw a market for new transmitters and gear. And far from fearing satellite, a number of larger broadcasters had equity positions with Sirius and XM and several even provided audio channels to them.

I have an electronics magazine from 1993 that announced that IBOC was "right around the corner". That "right around the corner" turned out to be over a decade later.

And it had been in development for much longer than that. The biggest impediment was the fact that AT&T could not find a way to do DAC without huge power demands, making it impossible to make transistor battery radios. iBiquity did not care, and went ahead anyway. The market did not respond.

When the head of iBiquty, Struble, presented to the managers and department heads of Hispanic Broadcasting prior to the launch of HD Radio, I asked him about battery and portable radios and he admitted there were none planned because of the power issues. I told our management not to waste money on it, and we dropped out of the HD Alliance and all that stupid "stations between the stations" crap.

 

[Kelly A]

Ultimately Congress controls funding. The President appoints FCC Commissioners, the Senate confirms them. FCC staff are career employees. FCC Commissioners are responsive to members of Congress and the President.

I think the FCC is doing a good job.

This is a request. It's common for any agency to request an increase each year. And Congress frequently takes into account how much revenue the Commission brings in via things like auctions to weigh if and how much any increase would be.
I'm not thrilled with the attrition/loss of actual engineers, the closing of multiple field offices, and not allowing Field Engineer positions to be back-filled. Instead, they replace open positions one-for-one with more lawyers and staff assistants to lawyers.
The humans reviewing and processing applications are short-staffed and overworked. That's why applications sit or get buried in the process.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

On a semi-related note, the FCC authorization for IBOC radio broadcasting was granted 21 years ago today. IBOC can have a beer 🍻

The Report and Order: https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-227261A1.pdf

 

[Kelly A]

I told our management not to waste money on it, and we dropped out of the HD Alliance and all that stupid "stations between the stations" crap.

At the time I recommended to the group I was working for, to do the same, by spending money that other groups were on building IBOC facilities, on something that would make the company money. "The stations between the stations" was a good example of radio promoting itself, inside itself. Except with cryptic promotional lines that your average consumer pays no attention-to. SXM (separately) was buying TV, magazine ads (back when magazines were a thing), and offering free periods to new car owners. The HD alliance did none of that. Another wrong assumption of the 'if we build it, they will come' philosophy.

 

[pclover]

IMO right now HD radio uses extremely old technology from 2003 and seriously needs a refresh. Modern digital communications stuff blows it clearly out of the water. Also modern DSP now is much more advanced and do much more.

Also, I don't understand why when it was designed modulation profiles are fixed instead of being variable based on your station coverage and power. Anything modern digital communication wise is variable without anything being fixed.

If you have a strong station with good coverage they should allowed the option for 8-PSK or even 16-QAM to get some higher bitrates out of it. The entire channel being only 128 Kbps in extended hybrid is very limiting. Less in regular hybrid mode.

 

[pclover]

At the time I recommended to the group I was working for, to do the same, by spending money that other groups were on building IBOC facilities, on something that would make the company money. "The stations between the stations" was a good example of radio promoting itself, inside itself. Except with cryptic promotional lines that your average consumer pays no attention-to. SXM (separately) was buying TV, magazine ads (back when magazines were a thing), and offering free periods to new car owners. The HD alliance did none of that. Another wrong assumption of the 'if we build it, they will come' philosophy.

Also another hindrance was them double dipping on fees that they still refuse to give up on.

Charging royalties for each radio made and revenue sharing for streams beyond HD-1 is unappealing. At the very least they should not charged a royalty for radio manufacturing and charged yearly license fees to maintain your exciters.

Really, HD radio should have got it's own band instead of trying to cram it into the FM broadcast band. A dumb move IMO but it's set in stone.

DAB is a vastly better standard overall compared to HD radio.

EDIT: We also have DRM+ that I guess can act like how HD Radio now and have sidebands below and above the analog FM carrier or sit on a separate band.

 

[Kelly A]

Also another hindrance was them double dipping on fees that they still refuse to give up on.

Charging royalties for each radio made and revenue sharing for streams beyond HD-1 is unappealing. At the very least they should not charged a royalty for radio manufacturing and charged yearly license fees to maintain your exciters.

That involves the licensing fees from ibquityXperi who owns the rights to HD Radio, not the Commission.

Really, HD radio should have got it's own band instead of trying to cram it into the FM broadcast band. A dumb move IMO but it's set in stone.

There wasn't spectrum to have created a new band. That, and by that time, consumers stopped purchasing new radios.

DAB is a vastly better standard overall compared to HD radio.

But where rolled out in Europe, many listeners were lost because they refused to purchase new radio making the transition.
If you tried that today, the vast majority of consumers would just stream full time and forget terrestrial radio.

EDIT: We also have DRM+ that I guess can act like how HD Radio now and have sidebands below and above the analog FM carrier or sit on a separate band.

DRM wasn't selected as an In Band On Channel standard in the U.S., so that ship sailed long ago.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

There wasn't spectrum to have created a new band. That, and by that time, consumers stopped purchasing new radios.

I must have missed the part of Exodus where God handed down the frequency allocations to Newton Minow on stone tablets.

This point is a logical fallacy (specifically "post hoc, ergo propter hoc"). Since the FCC (and not stone tablets) are the exclusive authority on the matter of frequency allocation, the FCC would have simply created a band if they chose to adopt DRM, moving out whatever was in the way.

But yeah, too late now.

 

[Kelly A]

I must have missed the part of Exodus where God handed down the frequency allocations to Newton Minow on stone tablets.

This point is a logical fallacy (specifically "post hoc, ergo propter hoc"). Since the FCC (and not stone tablets) are the exclusive authority on the matter of frequency allocation, the FCC would have simply created a band if they chose to adopt DRM, moving out whatever was in the way.

But yeah, too late now.

The problem is viable multi-stream digital transmissions like Eureka 147 or DAB require a lot of bandwidth. Higher bandwidth works best at higher frequencies, mainly due to the size of the band plus lower natural and manmade noise levels. UHF bands are sought after by cell/PCS companies for exactly these reasons, and this is why the spectrum has become so valuable. MW and VHF bands aren't large enough, clean enough, or usable for multicast DAB, so HD was developed as a way to get something digital going in existing active real estate.
As someone else mentioned; doing a Eureka 147 or consolidated DAB would require bands already used by satellite, cell/PCS, or government/military bands. Because here in the U.S.A., unlike countries that rolled out DAB, the government doesn't do broadcasting, so there's zero motivation for evicting other services to play music and for commercial companies to make money on it.

 

[pclover]

That involves the licensing fees from ibquityXperi who owns the rights to HD Radio, not the Commission.

There wasn't spectrum to have created a new band. That, and by that time, consumers stopped purchasing new radios.

But where rolled out in Europe, many listeners were lost because they refused to purchase new radio making the transition.
If you tried that today, the vast majority of consumers would just stream full time and forget terrestrial radio.

DRM wasn't selected as an In Band On Channel standard in the U.S., so that ship sailed long ago.

At the end of the day HD Radio is set in stone and it's unlikely to see any improvements. I figure we likely will never see all digital FM.

I do wonder when it become so obsolete that broadcasters just turn it off for good. The fact Xperi was able to buy iBiquity so easily doesn't bode well for it's future. It's already been dropped in a lot of newer cars. Mostly cheaper ones it looks like. I figure they probably don't care or miss it.

It seem any future new digital radio standard is going to be ATSC 3.0 but that's been very messy. I almost wonder if it's a dead end at this point that wont see any traction.

As a side note complaint the US has to kept adopting worse or designing worse standards then what is already in place. Like we should have adopted DVB instead of ATSC which is garbage. ATSC 3.0 fixes the issues but a massive uphill battle.

 

[Kelly A]

At the end of the day HD Radio is set in stone and it's unlikely to see any improvements. I figure we likely will never see all digital FM.

I do wonder when it become so obsolete that broadcasters just turn it off for good. The fact Xperi was able to buy iBiquity so easily doesn't bode well for it's future. It's already been dropped in a lot of newer cars. Mostly cheaper ones it looks like. I figure they probably don't care or miss it.

The auto manufacturers pay for the ability to do HD Radio. If it's a low budget vehicle, why should the manufacturer pay the additional?

It seem any future new digital radio standard is going to be ATSC 3.0 but that's been very messy. I almost wonder if it's a dead end at this point that wont see any traction.

The ATSC 3.0 working group along with Sinclair Broadcasting were just grasping at concept straws for anything to help make the case for ATSC 3.0. So far it's fallen on deaf ears. Consumers don't buy new radios. Let alone ones that would receive radio via limited TV signals.

As a side note complaint the US has to kept adopting worse or designing worse standards then what is already in place. Like we should have adopted DVB instead of ATSC which is garbage. ATSC 3.0 fixes the issues but a massive uphill battle.

Consumers don't buy things like replacement radios to hear the same thing they can hear analog. Nor do consumers understand, let alone care about what type of modulation is being used to broadcast the same thing they already here. Content is, and has always been king. Not some broadcast technical standard.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

It seem any future new digital radio standard is going to be ATSC 3.0 but that's been very messy. I almost wonder if it's a dead end at this point that wont see any traction.

One of the things Kelly and I agree wholeheartedly on: ATSC 3.0 is a dead end. The only group who wants ATSC 3.0 are broadcasters. Consumers definitely don't care, and the consumer electronics companies who make televisions don't feel any pressure to include ATSC3 tuners. There are a few. I see two Sony models in stock at my local Best Buy. But that's a sliver of all the TVs in their store.

As a side note complaint the US has to kept adopting worse or designing worse standards then what is already in place. Like we should have adopted DVB instead of ATSC which is garbage. ATSC 3.0 fixes the issues but a massive uphill battle.

That's not historically accurate. The FCC adopted ATSC several years before DVB-T was invented. It's an Innovator's Dilemma.

Obviously, by the time ATSC deployment was finished in 2009, DVB-T existed. But a lot of broadcasters had made their DTV investments long before 2009. Some even in the 1990s, so changing horses would have been very unpopular.

 

[Greg Strickland]

Engineers have said that one or two ATSC 3.0 television stations could utilize their data to provide "CD quality" audio broadcast service of all existing AM and FM broadcast stations in a market.

From my view as a radio broadcaster, that makes the ATSC 3.0 TV station my landlord and gatekeeper to the audience.
I don't like that, just as I don't like the vehicle dashboard toll keeper.

Besides that, the broader issue as always is the device used by the consumer to hear the content.

Right now, smartphones and vehicle dashboards are becoming increasingly controlled by gatekeepers, who intend to be paid by content creators for inclusion on the device. An auto manufacturer may want all the advertising income from "their" dashboard, rather than providing a platform for content creators (such as broadcasters) to reach "their" customers inside the vehicle.

This reduces to the basic question of "when is something you buy, actually yours?"

For example- I bought a GE refrigerator. Will GE soon (via the Internet) seek to monetize for themselves the things I buy to put in the refrigerator? And if I don't buy GE groceries, will they turn up the refrigerator temperature to 55 degrees? Or will GE charge food manufacturers to be inside the GE refrigerator?

This gets complex with intellectual property (that is frequently expressed in a non-physical way). The composer, publisher, artist and download/record company don't really think that just because you paid for a CD/download/sheet music that you can do what you like with it? Correct? I can't blame a composer for wanting to get paid, but where does the line stop downstream?

The above is a very old question. The difference is with the Internet, two-way connection enables monitoring of what consumers do. This is a game changer, in favor of the gatekeepers.

Once again- I say one-way over-the-air broadcasting has an important, good characteristic, and I hope consumers realize it when making choices. I support over-the-air radio broadcasting 100 percent.