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HD Radio opponents-Not ignorant, just unbiased.

I'm wondering how all you guys have time for these long-winded posts, and can still find time to make a living?

Or is someone making a living by doing this?
 
Chuck said:
I'm wondering how all you guys have time for these long-winded posts, and can still find time to make a living?

Or is someone making a living by doing this?

How long does it take you to type a paragraph? It takes me a minute or two... and perusing these subjects forces one to learn and research, so it is very beneficial.
 

Analog AM is inferior. In persons 12-34, about 6% of the population uses it... about one out of every 17 people even uses it. 16 out of every 17 does not! In 12-44, only 10% uses analog AM. 9 out of every 10 persons from 12 to 44 does not use AM.

In other words, in another few years, when most of the 45-54's no longer listen, AM will be dead.

Who cares about bandwidth then? The rest of us realize that there is nearly no listening to stations via skywave and none in fringe areas, so occupying somewhat greater bandwidth has no loss and great gains. HD is backward compatible with analog AM, and offers an opportunity to regain some of the younger listeners who will come as programming for them returns to AM.

[/quote]

You still haven't explained to me why analog AM is inferior to digital, only that a small percentage of a certain demographic of people listen to it. Obviously you are one of those who think HD radio will save AM.

But I have to ask, if AM were digital but still carried the same programming would this young demographic suddenly see the error of it's way and flock, en masse, to it?

I think we know the answer to that.

db
 
dbdigital said:
You still haven't explained to me why analog AM is inferior to digital, only that a small percentage of a certain demographic of people listen to it. Obviously you are one of those who think HD radio will save AM.

But I have to ask, if AM were digital but still carried the same programming would this young demographic suddenly see the error of it's way and flock, en masse, to it?

I think we know the answer to that.

Analog AM sucks, partly because the bulk of existing radios suck. Whatever the reason, persons under 45 or so just don't listen to AM. However, companies like Clear Channel, Bonnneville and others have recently moved or started simulcasting AM news talk formats to FM, believing that the existing programming has storng 30+ appeal, but the 30-45 segment will not put up with AM.

Apparently a good deal of research has been done, inclding testing of the format appeal among this younger groups when heard in better quality. Bonneville has moved an AM format to FM in Washington... in fact, no small deal since the station was #1 in billings and audience! In Phoenix, they bought a $60 million dollar FM to simulst the existing AM format. And in Salt Lake, they now simulcast the venerable KSL on an FM. Clear Channel is now moving AM formats to FM, because of the quality issue... the latest being WNLS in Tallahassee.

So what we have is that a commitment of several hundred million has been made to put existing AM formats on FM to capture 30-44 listening. That means the owners believe the current formats are viable if the quality is better.

Were there more HD radios, the formats can be nehanced by the much clearer, cleaner digital AM HD sound. For the moment, we will see more and more news talk or soports formats move to FM.

Since aach market only has a couple of viable AMs outside of NY, Chicago and LA, all it takes is a couple of HD AMs to make the band viable, as a whle, again.
 
DAVID SPINNED: "Let's try again. Apparently you are not in radio, and do not understand the terminology...You back your allegations with links to free "Amusement" sites that have no validity, like radio-locator."

You may know who I am if I told you, but that is NOT the point of this discussion of HD Radio. The Radio-Locator maps are drawn using engineering data from the FCC, as is stated on Radio-Locator's website. Anyone who knows anything about ground conductivity can see the effects of it being displayed on those maps.

DAVID WROTE: "Yep, I think a lot of AMs are useless. I think many low power ones should go a way...and get rd of those that have to have 8 or 10 towers to protect all the surrounding stations they are coexisting with. Bt even that will not save AM, I fear."

You have stated elsewhere that you believe AMs should be licensed for 100kw and even 200kw to cover their markets. You argue for brute force as opposed to finesse. CAM-D is a way to finesse many of AMs problems without bankrupting most smaller broadcasters. 8 or 10 tower arrays are a RARITY and only exist in the large markets you think are the only viable places for AM. The vast majority of small market stations are 1 tower non-directionals (you can't create a directional pattern with only 1 tower) followed by 2 tower directionals.

DAVID WROTE: "...the adding of tons of smaller FMs under Docket 80-90 worsened service in mostly rural America by adding a thousand or so new FMS in the early 90's."

So now you favor tripling the bandwidth of all AMers with HD to worsen the situation for the AM band. Your real purpose is to bankrupt a lot of AMers and shut them down that way.

DAVID WROTE: "KNX's focus in traffic is to serve LA and Orange County listeners, as stated in a recent talk radio conference by David G. Hall..."

Of course his FIRST priority is the L-A and Orange County Metro. In terms of service to outside markets after some adjustments he made early-on, then back-tracked on, David G. Hall has not changed what his predecessors established decades ago. CBS Radio's weaker KFWB does not do traffic reports for major incidents way outside the L-A Metro in Barstow, Indio, Blythe, Escondido and the like because with their 5kw signal, they cannot be heard there AT ALL. These are areas where you say 50kw KNX is completely "unlistenable" by your definition of the word. You are regarding many of those who are getting the information as DXers. That was my point.

I'm way too busy to keep up this pace of discussion. Keep spinning away. If they didn't already, I think broadcasters visiting here have a better picture now of the arguements pro and con HD Radio - and how iBiquity fans are spinning the facts.
 
vsa said:
DAVID SPINNED: "Let's try again. Apparently you are not in radio, and do not understand the terminology...You back your allegations with links to free "Amusement" sites that have no validity, like radio-locator."

You may know who I am if I told you, but that is NOT the point of this discussion of HD Radio. The Radio-Locator maps are drawn using engineering data from the FCC, as is stated on Radio-Locator's website. Anyone who knows anything about ground conductivity can see the effects of it being displayed on those maps.

DAVID WROTE: "Yep, I think a lot of AMs are useless. I think many low power ones should go a way...and get rd of those that have to have 8 or 10 towers to protect all the surrounding stations they are coexisting with. Bt even that will not save AM, I fear."

You have stated elsewhere that you believe AMs should be licensed for 100kw and even 200kw to cover their markets. You argue for brute force as opposed to finesse. CAM-D is a way to finesse many of AMs problems without bankrupting most smaller broadcasters. 8 or 10 tower arrays are a RARITY and only exist in the large markets you think are the only viable places for AM. The vast majority of small market stations are 1 tower non-directionals (you can't create a directional pattern with only 1 tower) followed by 2 tower directionals.

DAVID WROTE: "...the adding of tons of smaller FMs under Docket 80-90 worsened service in mostly rural America by adding a thousand or so new FMS in the early 90's."

So now you favor tripling the bandwidth of all AMers with HD to worsen the situation for the AM band. Your real purpose is to bankrupt a lot of AMers and shut them down that way.

DAVID WROTE: "KNX's focus in traffic is to serve LA and Orange County listeners, as stated in a recent talk radio conference by David G. Hall..."

Of course his FIRST priority is the L-A and Orange County Metro. In terms of service to outside markets after some adjustments he made early-on, then back-tracked on, David G. Hall has not changed what his predecessors established decades ago. CBS Radio's weaker KFWB does not do traffic reports for major incidents way outside the L-A Metro in Barstow, Indio, Blythe, Escondido and the like because with their 5kw signal, they cannot be heard there AT ALL. These are areas where you say 50kw KNX is completely "unlistenable" by your definition of the word. You are regarding many of those who are getting the information as DXers. That was my point.

I'm way too busy to keep up this pace of discussion. Keep spinning away. If they didn't already, I think broadcasters visiting here have a better picture now of the arguements pro and con HD Radio - and how iBiquity fans are spinning the facts.

The rado-locator maps are totally whacked in some cases, totally exaggerated in all cases, and pretty useless overall except as a start. Of course they use FCC data, but they generally only contemplate for saltwater, not for differences in local conductivity.

Example: 1150 AM spent way over a million bucks to move from Montecito to Industry at the KTNQ towers. The result, due to conductivity, was so bad that they are redesigning Montecito and moving back. They are already fixing up the building (I got an 872 as a souvenir of the old transmitter for KRKD) for the move. What happened is that the ground condutivity was worse than the FCC maps indicated, and they did not gain what they thought... the condutivity gets worse and worse as you move East out of LA.

So, the only way to find out the coverage on a station in areas of irregular conductivity is to measure. I have gotten changes in licensed values for several directionals by showing lower measured contours than the max licenced values, allowing me to put more power in the "bad" areas.

I look at the real coverage, as measured with a field strength meter, for KTNQ and the raido.locator map and laugh. Reality is totally different, althought he maps do have the lobes and nulls on the right radials. But the signal is nothing like what they show.

I look at the FM maps for KRCD and KRCV and compare them to real Langley-Rice maps and I can only dream of covering what the radio locator maps show. We would pay $200 million to cover what the fake maps show. In other words, they are just absurd. Which is why they are labeld as they are... for entertainment use only.

I said that AM SHOULD HAVE BEEN licensed in the 30's for higher power. There is no way, with international agreements, that this will happen now. It is unfortunate. Locals should have been 5 kw, regionals 50 kw and clears shouldhave been 250 to 500 kw, not the craze flea power things used by the FCC to promote localism... when cities grew, and trade areas took over the "home town" concept due to better highways, most AMs in the 50's even did not cover the real markets. Again, I did not recommend a change now... I said the error was made 70 years ago. You do not read very well, or you read what you want to see... I have not quite figured that out yet.

I have places in the Desert and in Northern Arizona, so I am very interested in the traffic to Barstow, to Needles, to Banning and such. I don't get much from KNX except the entrances and exits to LA,a nd the Las Vegas report. Since KNX is pretty unusable in a car beyond the entrance to the Victor Valley and to Banning daytime, and significantly less at night, there is no way they can even be heard with any clarity in Blythe or Barstow or whatever. The daytime KNX signal does not do well inland, do to its westerly location and, again, ground conductivity. At night, the Obregon station rips it up as near in as Redlands and the pass to the Victor Valley most nights at sunset. You can not "DX" it if it is being overridden by a Mexican signal.

They are serving LA listeners who have LA diaries. In fact, as I said, we have the same traffic provider...

Ibiquity users, over 1000 of the biggest stations in the US, are not "fans" of HD. They are, like me, fans of radio. We are broadcasters who feel we are doing something positive to make free terrestrial radio useful for many more years by improving quality and doubling the FM choices. We also recognize there is a trade off: out of market stations on AM and FM adjacent channels will not be listenable and night skywave on AM will be obstructed in most cases.

Well, there is so little documented listening to fringe signals outside each station's market that there is no loss there. There is a gain in the quality, on AM and FM. So we trade something of no value for something of potentially huge value. Terrific deal for radio. And on AM, only a handful of stations, maybe 1% of all AMs, get any really consistently usable skywave. Since this is not much used, again by measurement (especially since it is at night when AM listening is its lowest) there is no loss at all to 99% of all AMs, and a minimal, low impact one to the other 50 or so staitons.

Now, go back to radio-locator. I see you are no longer contradicting my straight-from-Arbitron numbers any more! And you realized that XETRA gets no LA numbers because it is bad, not becaue it is jammed. You are a slow learner, but eventually, if I state the facts over and over and over, you get it. Cume is not share, cume is not share, cume is not share...
 
vsa said:
DAVID SPINNED: "Let's try again. Apparently you are not in radio, and do not understand the terminology...You back your allegations with links to free "Amusement" sites that have no validity, like radio-locator."

You may know who I am if I told you, but that is NOT the point of this discussion of HD Radio. The Radio-Locator maps are drawn using engineering data from the FCC, as is stated on Radio-Locator's website. Anyone who knows anything about ground conductivity can see the effects of it being displayed on those maps.

DAVID WROTE: "Yep, I think a lot of AMs are useless. I think many low power ones should go a way...and get rd of those that have to have 8 or 10 towers to protect all the surrounding stations they are coexisting with. Bt even that will not save AM, I fear."

You have stated elsewhere that you believe AMs should be licensed for 100kw and even 200kw to cover their markets. You argue for brute force as opposed to finesse. CAM-D is a way to finesse many of AMs problems without bankrupting most smaller broadcasters. 8 or 10 tower arrays are a RARITY and only exist in the large markets you think are the only viable places for AM. The vast majority of small market stations are 1 tower non-directionals (you can't create a directional pattern with only 1 tower) followed by 2 tower directionals.

DAVID WROTE: "...the adding of tons of smaller FMs under Docket 80-90 worsened service in mostly rural America by adding a thousand or so new FMS in the early 90's."

So now you favor tripling the bandwidth of all AMers with HD to worsen the situation for the AM band. Your real purpose is to bankrupt a lot of AMers and shut them down that way.

DAVID WROTE: "KNX's focus in traffic is to serve LA and Orange County listeners, as stated in a recent talk radio conference by David G. Hall..."

Of course his FIRST priority is the L-A and Orange County Metro. In terms of service to outside markets after some adjustments he made early-on, then back-tracked on, David G. Hall has not changed what his predecessors established decades ago. CBS Radio's weaker KFWB does not do traffic reports for major incidents way outside the L-A Metro in Barstow, Indio, Blythe, Escondido and the like because with their 5kw signal, they cannot be heard there AT ALL. These are areas where you say 50kw KNX is completely "unlistenable" by your definition of the word. You are regarding many of those who are getting the information as DXers. That was my point.

I'm way too busy to keep up this pace of discussion. Keep spinning away. If they didn't already, I think broadcasters visiting here have a better picture now of the arguements pro and con HD Radio - and how iBiquity fans are spinning the facts.

The rado-locator maps are totally whacked in some cases, totally exaggerated in all cases, and pretty useless overall except as a start. Of course they use FCC data, but they generally only contemplate for saltwater, not for differences in local conductivity.

Example: 1150 AM spent way over a million bucks to move from Montecito to Industry at the KTNQ towers. The result, due to conductivity, was so bad that they are redesigning Montecito and moving back. They are already fixing up the building (I got an 872 as a souvenir of the old transmitter for KRKD) for the move. What happened is that the ground condutivity was worse than the FCC maps indicated, and they did not gain what they thought... the condutivity gets worse and worse as you move East out of LA.

So, the only way to find out the coverage on a station in areas of irregular conductivity is to measure. I have gotten changes in licensed values for several directionals by showing lower measured contours than the max licenced values, allowing me to put more power in the "bad" areas.

I look at the real coverage, as measured with a field strength meter, for KTNQ and the raido.locator map and laugh. Reality is totally different, althought he maps do have the lobes and nulls on the right radials. But the signal is nothing like what they show.

I look at the FM maps for KRCD and KRCV and compare them to real Langley-Rice maps and I can only dream of covering what the radio locator maps show. We would pay $200 million to cover what the fake maps show. In other words, they are just absurd. Which is why they are labeld as they are... for entertainment use only.

I said that AM SHOULD HAVE BEEN licensed in the 30's for higher power. There is no way, with international agreements, that this will happen now. It is unfortunate. Locals should have been 5 kw, regionals 50 kw and clears shouldhave been 250 to 500 kw, not the craze flea power things used by the FCC to promote localism... when cities grew, and trade areas took over the "home town" concept due to better highways, most AMs in the 50's even did not cover the real markets. Again, I did not recommend a change now... I said the error was made 70 years ago. You do not read very well, or you read what you want to see... I have not quite figured that out yet.

I have places in the Desert and in Northern Arizona, so I am very interested in the traffic to Barstow, to Needles, to Banning and such. I don't get much from KNX except the entrances and exits to LA,a nd the Las Vegas report. Since KNX is pretty unusable in a car beyond the entrance to the Victor Valley and to Banning daytime, and significantly less at night, there is no way they can even be heard with any clarity in Blythe or Barstow or whatever. The daytime KNX signal does not do well inland, do to its westerly location and, again, ground conductivity. At night, the Obregon station rips it up as near in as Redlands and the pass to the Victor Valley most nights at sunset. You can not "DX" it if it is being overridden by a Mexican signal.

They are serving LA listeners who have LA diaries. In fact, as I said, we have the same traffic provider...

Ibiquity users, over 1000 of the biggest stations in the US, are not "fans" of HD. They are, like me, fans of radio. We are broadcasters who feel we are doing something positive to make free terrestrial radio useful for many more years by improving quality and doubling the FM choices. We also recognize there is a trade off: out of market stations on AM and FM adjacent channels will not be listenable and night skywave on AM will be obstructed in most cases.

Well, there is so little documented listening to fringe signals outside each station's market that there is no loss there. There is a gain in the quality, on AM and FM. So we trade something of no value for something of potentially huge value. Terrific deal for radio. And on AM, only a handful of stations, maybe 1% of all AMs, get any really consistently usable skywave. Since this is not much used, again by measurement (especially since it is at night when AM listening is its lowest) there is no loss at all to 99% of all AMs, and a minimal, low impact one to the other 50 or so staitons.

Now, go back to radio-locator. I see you are no longer contradicting my straight-from-Arbitron numbers any more! And you realized that XETRA gets no LA numbers because it is bad, not becaue it is jammed. You are a slow learner, but eventually, if I state the facts over and over and over, you get it. Cume is not share, cume is not share, cume is not share...
 
David,

It don't have the kind of available time to spin and respin here the way you do. You are either unemployed or are being paid to spend ALL of your time 24-hours-a-day writing these repetitive diatribes. I think it is plain where you stand.

I will copy and paste a very important point I made earlier one more time here:

--------------------------
Here's the word from KMXE's chief engineer as he told me personally. Some HD equipment had fried awhile back - not very different from your KTNQ's HD equipment that also fried. After a forced return to analog while they awaited a new unit, the new owners (also the owners of the Los Angeles Angels) agreed with their CE's advice and have decided to keep KMXE analog-only for the forseeable future. They have increased the audio bandwidth well beyond HD's 5khz. They are very pleased with the results since they dumped HD. The decision had NOTHING to do with HD suitability. Their CE says HD is a big disappointment and also causes way too much adjacent channel noise. He says HD Radio is not even close to what had always been promised!

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

A technology has to be pretty awful for a station to first spend the kind of money they must do to go HD, then to feel happy about dropping it!

Every "off-the-record" conversation I've had with radio engineers in Los Angeles, the verdict is unanimous so far. HD Radio is a dog!
 
vsa said:
David,

It don't have the kind of available time to spin and respin here the way you do. You are either unemployed or are being paid to spend ALL of your time 24-hours-a-day writing these repetitive diatribes. I think it is plain where you stand.

I will copy and paste a very important point I made earlier one more time here:

--------------------------
Here's the word from KMXE's chief engineer as he told me personally. Some HD equipment had fried awhile back - not very different from your KTNQ's HD equipment that also fried. After a forced return to analog while they awaited a new unit, the new owners (also the owners of the Los Angeles Angels) agreed with their CE's advice and have decided to keep KMXE analog-only for the forseeable future. They have increased the audio bandwidth well beyond HD's 5khz. They are very pleased with the results since they dumped HD. The decision had NOTHING to do with HD suitability. Their CE says HD is a big disappointment and also causes way too much adjacent channel noise. He says HD Radio is not even close to what had always been promised!

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

A technology has to be pretty awful for a station to first spend the kind of money they must do to go HD, then to feel happy about dropping it!

Every "off-the-record" conversation I've had with radio engineers in Los Angeles, the verdict is unanimous so far. HD Radio is a dog!

KMXE, a station with a new owner with no radio experience and no ratings because of it (anyone who bases a straategy on Hispanics listening to baseball in Spanish is totally whacked) is hardly the poster child for HD.

Nearly every significant FM in LA is on HD. All the significant AMs are on or will be... like KFI when it gets rebuilt... the HD strategy does not require everyone be on, and only needs the major players in the top markets to get momentum. If you take the top staitons in the top 100 markets, you cume over 75% of the US population... with less than 1000 stations.

The word around our engineers is that it sounds "great" on both AM and FM. In fact, we put our second HD2 on the air yesterday on KLVE, LA's #1 FM station. You would think that a company that can have 3 stations in the top 5 in 25-54 might have some knowledge of radio and what people want, wouldn't you? Or are you going to take the word of some crippled AM trying to get into LA from out in the IE that has never, in 12 years, been profitable????

When Clear Channel, Infinity, Univision, PBS, and many other large broadcasters are behind HD, it would give an indication that it is not going away and is very much part of a strategy.
 
DavidEduardo did espouse the following truth:

When Clear Channel, Infinity, Univision, PBS, and many other large broadcasters are behind HD, it would give an indication that it is not going away and is very much part of a strategy.

Yup, there is a strategy alright. The strategy is for Ibiquity to get as much market penetration as it possibly can so that it can have that public offering it needs in order to reimburse its high-rolling investors. It is now going on close to ten years and these people want to see a return on their money. The pressure is getting more intense now.

It is also no surprise that Infinity (CBS) is "behind HD" since CBS was instrumental in getting Ibiquity off the ground in the late 1990s. As for the others, well Ibiquity has gone after the "big players" since they need them if they are going to get that "market penetration". This is being done regardless whether or not this technology merits it. The reason that it is not important whether or not the technology merits it is because they have committed too many resources to the development of it and they will NOT let it fail. They can't let it fail. To do so would mean that a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money and they are going to do everything they possibly can to make sure that doesn't happen.

As the more enthusiastic HD supporters on these message boards will tell you (paraphrased): "HD is here to stay and it is going to save AM and FM from being banished to the halls of obsolescence". Well yes, HD IS here to stay (unless there is an industry-wide rebellion which COULD be a possibility :) but I highly doubt that it is going to "save" anything without the programming to go along with it.

Somewhere along the way, broadcasters have forgotten how to employ talented people to produce a quality product.

Cal
 
They can broadcast away, but with no consumer interest (i.e., no HD radios in households, and with no interest from automobile manufactures), large fees to iBiquity, costs of upgrading hardware, poor coverage/reception with complaints from listeners, and competition from Wi-Fi, cell phones, satellite radio, etc., it will be an uphill battle to sustain the high costs of HD/IBOC radio broadcasting - for example, WLW has turned off their HD/IBOC exciter, and MAY experiment with it in the future, including other radio stations, as well...

http://www.hear2.com/2006/07/more_mixed_pres.html
 
SayNoToIBOC said:
They can broadcast away, but with no consumer interest (i.e., no HD radios in households, and with no interest from automobile manufactures), large fees to iBiquity, costs of upgrading hardware, poor coverage/reception with complaints from listeners, and competition from Wi-Fi, cell phones, satellite radio, etc., it will be an uphill battle to sustain the high costs of HD/IBOC radio broadcasting - for example, WLW has turned off their HD/IBOC exciter, and MAY experiment with it in the future, including other radio stations, as well...

SO your point is about ONE radio station?
 
vsa said:
One more time YET AGAIN. Under your reasoning, if an AM station changes formats and languages and fails to pull numbers in its first book, it deserves to be jammed. AM 690 has pulled a 1 share as recently as last year in Los Angeles. That proves they have a viable signal in the metro. What's so difficult here for you to understand?

Look, I know you are an advocate for those who plan to thin out the AM band, and reserve it only for a few large markets where a few surviving big-signal stations would then be allowed to double their power. Admit the truth.

Again, you think of even a +15 mv/meter signal as being unlistenable. That criteria for protection would achieve your goals to effectively kill off the AM band.

You continue to get your facts wrong. KMXE 830 is non-directional days and is directional at night with 3 towers aimed toward Los Angeles and Orange County. If you can't get this simple truth correctly, why should anyone buy anything else you write here. The information is posted at this FCC website location:

As for 70 percent of the metro being outside of the night-time interference free contour, this link shows that assertion to be untrue as well:

http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=KMXE&service=AM&status=L&hours=N

I went ahead and got true maps for XEPRS, KMXE (night) and XETRA.

KMXE at night has an interference fre contour that does not go more than a few miles East of the transmitter, curves at Covina, then intersects Downey and Torrance. Nothing to the north, NW or West of this line has a listenable signal. To the South and SW, it intersects Murrieta and San Clemente, pretty much covering all of the OC at night, but less than 25% of LA County. Since it is in Spanish, it misses 70% of the Hispanics in the Metro.

XEPRS is same pattern day and night. In OC, it has a 10 mv/m that extends a couple of miles inland for thelength of the coast. It has no 10 mv/m over a HDHA in OC. In LA County, it covers the Long Beach promentory on the South side with a 10 mv/m and then has no other 10 mv/m coverage of LA county at all. This one is useless for the LA market.

XETRA is a bit worse, overall. The 10 mv/m extends a tiny bit more inalnd in the OC, catching half of the Santa Ana HDHAs before sharply curving out to sea. It has a 10 mv/m nowhere in LA County, falling short by about 5 miles... another one that can not hope to compete in the LA metro.

So, your examples of stations being interferred with are irrelevant, as the usable signal of XETRA and XEPRS covers only a tiny, oceanside swatch of the market, and is totally uncompetitive. KMXA at night only covers a tiny part of LA county with the FCC define interference free night contour... so it is an OC propostion only. In other words, ahighly marginal facility.
 
DAVID WROTE: "I went ahead and got true maps for XEPRS, KMXE (night) and XETRA."

Don't think that people didn't notice that you ignored KMXE's 50kw non-directional DAYTIME coverage. After all, HD Radio is a daytime-only technology and most listening is done during the day. 

DAVID WROTE: "...with a 10 mv/m and then has no other 10 mv/m coverage of LA county."

Doesn't the FCC refer to an AM station's PRIMARY signal as being down to 5mv/m? It is not 15 or even 10.
 
DAVID WROTE: "I see you are no longer contradicting my straight-from-Arbitron numbers any more! And you realized that XETRA gets no LA numbers because it is bad, not becaue it is jammed. You are a slow learner, but eventually, if I state the facts over and over and over, you get it."

I just got tired of going round-and-round with you and had to get some work done. You can't get it through your head that radio stations have a right to have their primary signal protected, not jammed. The success, or lack of, of a stations format or ratings has nothing to do with it. Besides, last year when the same XETRA 690 75kw signal ran a standards format, it usually beat your own KTNQ 1020. Amazing that a station with a so-called unworthy and unlistenable signal beat you in 12+ numbers.

Also, you had stated that KTNQ returned last week to HD broadcasting. As of today, I still hear no HD exciter. False alarm or did you too decide to drop HD Radio? On some better radios, I have noticed that low-level HD hissing is usually not completely cancelled-out on the host AM station. Ouch!!
 
vsa said:
DAVID WROTE: "I see you are no longer contradicting my straight-from-Arbitron numbers any more! And you realized that XETRA gets no LA numbers because it is bad, not becaue it is jammed. You are a slow learner, but eventually, if I state the facts over and over and over, you get it."

I just got tired of going round-and-round with you and had to get some work done. You can't get it through your head that radio stations have a right to have their primary signal protected, not jammed. The success, or lack of, of a stations format or ratings has nothing to do with it. Besides, last year when the same XETRA 690 75kw signal ran a standards format, it usually beat your own KTNQ 1020. Amazing that a station with a so-called unworthy and unlistenable signal beat you in 12+ numbers.

Also, you had stated that KTNQ returned last week to HD broadcasting. As of today, I still hear no HD exciter. False alarm or did you too decide to drop HD Radio? On some better radios, I have noticed that low-level HD hissing is usually not completely cancelled-out on the host AM station. Ouch!!

KTNQ will be back, again, shortly. We had some concerns about the hardware, such as the hard drive in the HD generator which is not in a RAID configuration and which caused the orignal problem. We decided to get the HD2s on KSCA and KLVE running first, and then install the HD on KRCD and KRCV in the interim.

XETRA, as I mentioned, has nearly no primary signal in the LA market, all of it in Coastal Orange County. KTNQ is Spanish, where a 1 share is actually a 4 share of Spanish langauge listening.... XETRA in Spanish has zero in LA, Zero in San Diego and Zero in Tijuana. It is not that it can not be heard, it is that nobody wants to hear them. Add in that KTNQ is not a ratings driven format... it is a network sales driven format... and your comments can be seen to be irrelevant.

Actually, XETRA is 77 kw daytime, 50 kw nights.
 
DAVID WROTE: "XETRA...It is not that it can not be heard..."

As you FINALLY admit, it CAN be heard. However, it can now only be heard with iBiquity's water sprinkler sound-effects on top of it, streaming from KSPN 710 - actually from 690, 700, 720 and 730.

You're quite the spinner, David. A 1 share is really a 4 share, etc. Bravo! I noticed that you did not address the 5 mv/m primary signal issue. This time you gave us no description of XETRA 690's 5 mv/m contour which covers a goodly amount of the L-A Metro - same for XEPRS 1090.

Look, I too wish HD Radio would work. Unfortunately, it's a dog. Sometimes when large amounts of money get thrown into the mix, people tend to lose their perspective and excuse all kinds of problems in order to rationalize their backing of a bad system.
 
[DAVID WROTE: "XETRA...It is not that it can not be heard..."

>> No, I said that it did not generate ratings because it could not be heard, but because nobody wants to listen, in Tijuana, San Diego or the small part of the OC it covers.

As you FINALLY admit, it CAN be heard. However, it can now only be heard with iBiquity's water sprinkler sound-effects on top of it, streaming from KSPN 710 - actually from 690, 700, 720 and 730.

> I heard it in Ohio in 1960. That does not mean it has enough signal to generate ratings in LA, as, right now, it is in Spanish and the coastal OC area it covers with enough signal to get ratings is almost totally non-Hispanic.

You're quite the spinner, David. A 1 share is really a 4 share, etc. Bravo!

-> Arbitron issues an Hispanic book in LA. KLVE has nearly a 20 share in it. This is because it is a Hispanic only rating. Hispanic ad agencies use the Hispanic book, where KTNQ has had as high as a 10 share in the recent past as a talk station.

I noticed that you did not address the 5 mv/m primary signal issue. This time you gave us no description of XETRA 690's 5 mv/m contour which covers a goodly amount of the L-A Metro - same for XEPRS 1090.

-> 5 mv/m is not enough signal to get ratings in LA. The noise floor requires around a 12 to 15 mv/m signal to generate diary returns. We have studied this, and so has Arbitron. Outside the big signal areas, stations do not get significant listening.

-> Even if the 5 were listenable, wihich it is not, neither station comvers much of the market with the 5.

-> We track the diaries against coverage constantly. On FM, outside the 64 dbu, we might as well not be on the air. On AM, outside the 10, and mostly, outside the 15, nothing is gained.
 
Boy, that stupid FCC, defining a primary AM signal as being 5 mv/m. By your reasoning, the AM band is practically empty. We can probably TRIPLE the number of stations on the dial. Hmmm, co-incidentally, that's what HD-R would do if it was widely adopted, isn't it?

Changing FCC coverage and interference rules to match diary responses is a recipe for limiting listener choices.

In the Oxnard-Ventura, CA Metro, KFI scores a 3 share with a signal that generally ranges between 5 and 10 mv/m. Someone ought to tell those diary-keepers that they aren't supposed to be able to pick up the signal there.

Multicultural Broadcasting recently had Arbitron publish a Chinese listening study in L-A too. Big deal. KIRN could pay for an "Iranian" book and score a 100 share in it. Quit mixing and matching your definitions.
 
vsa said:
Boy, that stupid FCC, defining a primary AM signal as being 5 mv/m. By your reasoning, the AM band is practically empty. We can probably TRIPLE the number of stations on the dial. Hmmm, co-incidentally, that's what HD-R would do if it was widely adopted, isn't it?

Changing FCC coverage and interference rules to match diary responses is a recipe for limiting listener choices.

In the Oxnard-Ventura, CA Metro, KFI scores a 3 share with a signal that generally ranges between 5 and 10 mv/m. Someone ought to tell those diary-keepers that they aren't supposed to be able to pick up the signal there.

Multicultural Broadcasting recently had Arbitron publish a Chinese listening study in L-A too. Big deal. KIRN could pay for an "Iranian" book and score a 100 share in it. Quit mixing and matching your definitions.

I have been very specific. In the LA metro, there are few diary mentions in home and at work for any AM outside the 10 mv/m countour. And most are in the 15. This is the listener telling us where they listen, not my opinion.

I also specifically said that in big, noisy towns like LA, something over a 10 mv/m is a bare minimum to listen.

Ventura / Oxnard is not a big town. It is nowhere nearly as noisy, and the bulk of the KFI listening in Ventura Coutny, by ZIP code analysis is either along the coast (signal near 15 mvm) or in the Thousand Oaks area (adjacent to LA Coutny) where the signal is also over 10 mv/m.

KFI is a bad example. Part of Ventura County is like the IE: an LA bbedroom community.

Even in smaller markets, a 5 mv/m signal or better is necessary to get any showing in ratings. It has been proven over and over by Arbitron diarykeepers... real listeners.

I don't care about FCC labels on coverage, which are used mostly to determine inter-staiton protection. I care about what the klistener can hear with a good enough signal to actually tune in and lsten too. The FCC protects the 54 on FM... listeners seldom listen outside the 64 cbu contour... You are talking about FCC terms, and I am telling you how listeners actually use radio.

Oh, and for night coverage, very few stations, save ones like KFI (of which there are only 24 in the US) have vastly reduced night coverage when compared to daytime coverage. For example, KMXE, the dog station you like to refer to, has, if I recall, either a 10.2 or a 11.2 mv/m interference free night contour. So, below that strength, nobody will listen as it is going to bde interferred with frequently by co channel stations. All the LA directionals have high interference frees... 9.81 mv/m for KTNQ, and similar for 1110, 710, 570, 980, etc. Even a B clear, KNX, has considerable night interference as close in as parts of the IE.
 
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