HD was Highly Disappointing for WHAT

[Play Freebird]

There's a thread running on the Philadelphia board about the demise of WHAT AM 1340:

http://boards.radio-info.com/smf/index.php?topic=180489

This station sold for $5 million four years ago, back when unsuspecting buyers had been led to believe that IBOC would actually help to return AM to its former glory. Shortly after that sale, an IBOC exciter was installed and programming changed to something called "Skin Radio", kind of an alternative rock format. It went nowhere -- so the unproductive IBOC was shut off and the format changed again to adult standards. So now, WHAT (one of Philadelphia's pioneer broadcast licenses) is reportedly being offered again at a fire sale price.

If iBiquity's legal people took the high road, they would refund WHAT's IBOC license fee -- but I'll bet that will never happen.

 

[mmnassour]

Any idea what the asking is?

 

[Don Juannn]

If iBiquity's legal people took the high road, they would refund WHAT's IBOC license fee -- but I'll bet that will never happen.

So, IBOC was to blame for the stations demise?

 

[mmnassour]

No, simply a way to fool an uninformed buyer, apparently.

 

[nd2023]

All of us knew that AM HD would never salvage the AM band in its current form. It in fact is making the AM band worse with IBUZ from stations hundreds of miles away interfering with local stations. Nobody has HD radios and lives within sight of the tower of an AM station in HD.

 

[tomservo]

Nick, that's not true. AM HD can work and people can listen. It just doesn't work well enough to be viable. The truth is ugly enough, no need to fudge it.

As for WHAT, I can't blame HD for the failure of that station. Anybody who was stupid enough to think that HD would work on such a flea power license in such an area of poor ground conductivity was just asking for failure. And on top of that, putting a music format on, then using HD is a double whammy of stupid. All the listeners are analog and music already sounds bad enough on most car radios, no sense in making it sound bad on 100% of them.

Skin Radio would have failed with or without HD. It was a risky idea on a marginal signal in a huge market. HD is simply polishing a turd in this case.

 

[Don Juannn]

No, simply a way to fool an uninformed buyer, apparently.

That's right...nobody else understands HD....just the Haterz...they're the only ones!

 

[Tom Wells]

No, simply a way to fool an uninformed buyer, apparently.

That's right...nobody else understands HD....just the Haterz...they're the only ones!

No, there is an increasing body of those who acknowledge that any potential benefit for AM application is not
attainable with the scheme as implemented.

There are haterz self apponted and haterz who are truly wronged.

There are those who could read the fatal flaws in the AM concept before it was ever physically formed and working.
That doesn't make them haterz, but realists.
The stumblingblocks to good data transmission in MW are many.
The first thing is, when trying to move the "same" amount of data in an inherently wider-band mode, it needs to be in spectrum with more resolution, so the bandwidth has a higher capacity than the MW analog in this case.
2 to 3 mhz isn't very busy these days.
The data alone needed to be on a channel exactly x.x mhz higher and auto-tracked dual reception of the two frequencies.
The user should have been allowed to select either or allow auto switching.
The in-band idea is just complety wrong for AM MW, that's all.
I never said it can't work, I just keep point out reasons why it's too much wishful thinking, too little regard for natural law.
I don't hate iboc, but the ether itself certainly seems enjoy to making it look foolish compared to analog.

 

[Iused2nothat]

This station sold for $5 million four years ago, back when unsuspecting buyers had been led to believe that IBOC would actually help to return AM to its former glory.

"Unsuspecting buyers" with $5 million to spend? I find that to be an "unlikely" scenario. For $5 million I would expect some "due diligence".

I don't think you can/should blame Ibiquity for someone else's bad business decisions.
After reading the thread, it sounds like the station is programmed for a demographic that it does not cover, whether it is "Skin Radio" or "nostalgia".

 

[Don Juannn]

No, simply a way to fool an uninformed buyer, apparently.

That's right...nobody else understands HD....just the Haterz...they're the only ones!

No, there is an increasing body of those who acknowledge that any potential benefit for AM application is not
attainable with the scheme as implemented.

And every chief engineer, every head of engineering, every FCC technical person, every owner, every programmer who looks at that same data and come to a differing conclusion....they're all had a wool pulled over on them?

You are the only ones that see things clearly?

 

[satech]

And on top of that, putting a music format on, then using HD is a double whammy of stupid. All the listeners are analog and music already sounds bad enough on most car radios, no sense in making it sound bad on 100% of them.

Please tell that to Radio Disney. They insist not only on using IBOC, but also contricting their analog AM audio to a miserable 4.5 kHz bandwidth, which sounds like absolute garbage -- about as "hi-fi" as NOAA Weather Radio.

Thankfully RD's Philadelphia affiliate (640 WWJZ) has dumped IBOC and returned to transmitting good-sounding wideband analog AM audio. That still doesn't make Justin Bieber and the Jonas Brothers enjoyable to listen to, but at least it doesn't make your ears bleed anymore!

 

[Tom Wells]

No, simply a way to fool an uninformed buyer, apparently.

That's right...nobody else understands HD....just the Haterz...they're the only ones!

No, there is an increasing body of those who acknowledge that any potential benefit for AM application is not
attainable with the scheme as implemented.

And every chief engineer, every head of engineering, every FCC technical person, every owner, every programmer who looks at that same data and come to a differing conclusion....they're all had a wool pulled over on them?

You are the only ones that see things clearly?

Don, careful of all the "every's. We both know better. There have always been people on every possible side of this
technology, I said there was a growing body who recognize the AM version, at least, is just too much wishing when tested in the real world. Even those who really, really wanted it to work are asking where the towel bin is.

Pulled the wool is a strong term, and not appropriate here.
More like "roll the dice" and see if we can make this stick and make a lot of money.

Of course we all know ibiquity has required signing some sort of keep-mum documents, which include "non-defamation".
Is that standard in all business contracts? That would seem odd.
It also indicates that everyone enters with a full awareness that this is a divisive technology from the get-go.

 

[Don Juannn]

No, simply a way to fool an uninformed buyer, apparently.

That's right...nobody else understands HD....just the Haterz...they're the only ones!

No, there is an increasing body of those who acknowledge that any potential benefit for AM application is not
attainable with the scheme as implemented.

And every chief engineer, every head of engineering, every FCC technical person, every owner, every programmer who looks at that same data and come to a differing conclusion....they're all had a wool pulled over on them?

You are the only ones that see things clearly?

Don, careful of all the "every's. We both know better.

Pulled the wool is a strong term, and not appropriate here.

More like "roll the dice" and see if we can make this stick and make a lot of money.

Wow...a sane response! Thanks!

Of course we all know ibiquity has required signing some sort of keep-mum documents, which include "non-defamation".

Do we know this? I don't know this.

 

[Savage]

We know this, and now, so do you: iBiquity licenses include a "best-efforts" clause mandating that licensees do everything they can to promote the technology. It has been widely interpreted on the corporate level as prohibiting any public negative commentary, for fear of attracting acceleration of the contract obligations and possible legal action. That's why middle management keeps it zipped about criticizing IBOC. They're afraid of being fired.

As far as "pulling the wool" goes, the history of business is rife with uncountable really bad ideas which consumed huge stacks of capital and careers when they went bust. Every venture includes the potential for both risk and reward - lucrative rewards or annihilation.

Just because a group of people believe in HD, that doesn't necessarily it has much merit - or any, for that matter. And judging from the public response from eight years of muscular promotion and hype, it appears the marketplace has voted HD off the island. The AM version is a universally-recognized debacle and the FM's fortunes are dimming rapidly. The vaunted "digital power hike" has proven to be a nonfactor, and interference problems and poor coverage continue to plague HD except in a handful of ideal situations. Plus the benefits - modest relief from multipath and a tiny handful of low-quality subchannels - aren't enough to motivate listeners to invest in it.

 

[Tom Wells]

Speaking of great ideas that never caught on, I'm listening to the radio just now on a Blaupunkt Richmond circa 1982 with ARI.
What was ARI and why didn't it catch on here? I bought another one of these new in '82 and still have it in the car.
ARI ( Automatic Radio Information) was supposed to be able to turn down the audio on a cassette I might be listening to,
then bring up a particular radio station, which "by zones" would alert with traffic information.
Or priority-switch to same, when an alert was issued.

Each receiver has a jack where the ARI module would presumably have been plugged in.
I had a promotional brouchure which even showed how the NYC metro area would have been zoned.
The ARI system never happened here. It would have been opt in only. No mandate.
Even worse, such a system, that seems to fit well into the european culture that spawned it, fits the american model of radio no better than the average Italian suit fits the American figure.

Stations in the USA didn't want it, they already had implemented various traffic info systems.
USA consumers never noticed, except a few Blaupunkt (and maybe Becker) customers, who spent little time
wondering about the built-in feature that never worked.
I recall that the adapter for a digital tuned radio was different, and "more active".
Seems the analog model had some pushbuttons, maybe they had to be pretuned, and selected to a zone of importance to user.

If you find this info pretty boring, you have a good taste of what the public's interest in HD is like.

Not even a footnote do they care, unless they're a way-out first-adopter, and some HD FM sub really speaks to their soul,
or if they are an old coot and their AM newstalk station is "all snowy-sounding now...don't why, maybe it the lights...".

If the FCC had the soul of the Wizard of Oz, they'd give ibiquity a chance on an oboc (out of band other channel) digital system for AM and apologize for having been so "short-sighted" as to have let them or anyone attempt an in-band AM solution.

 

[Play Freebird]

Speaking of great ideas that never caught on, I'm listening to the radio just now on a Blaupunkt Richmond circa 1982 with ARI.
What was ARI and why didn't it catch on here? I bought another one of these new in '82 and still have it in the car.
ARI ( Automatic Radio Information) was supposed to be able to turn down the audio on a cassette I might be listening to,
then bring up a particular radio station, which "by zones" would alert with traffic information.
Or priority-switch to same, when an alert was issued.

ARI (Autofahrer Rundfunk Informationssystem in German), which used a 57 kHz subcarrier, was superseded by RDS -- a system that not only handles traffic information, but can transmit station IDs, format types, text, paging, enable AF tuning, and more. ARI was developed in the early '70s as a somewhat proprietary Blaupunkt technology, but the advantages of open-source RDS soon won the contest. Yes, there is a lesson to be learned from this.

If the FCC had the soul of the Wizard of Oz, they'd give ibiquity a chance on an oboc (out of band other channel) digital system for AM and apologize for having been so "short-sighted" as to have let them or anyone attempt an in-band AM solution.

I agree, but unfortunately it's not very often that the FCC admits its mistakes. If 76-88 MHz is completely out of the question, even 26 MHz would be an improvement. Yes, that band is affected once in a while by skywave, but not every night -- which is the big problem with mediumwave.

 

[Don Juannn]

I thought you were going to ignore me Savage...yet you keep coming back for more!

LOL!

Where is the "best-efforts" clause you are referring to?

http://www.ibiquity.com/i/2010%20Form%20SLA-B.pdf

 

[tomservo]

Of course an out of band solution would have been ideal. In a way, the broadcasters got what they deserved for not embracing a whole new digital broadcast band. Instead, they insisted on protecting their existing licenses and trying to add more stations, too, and it's a half-assed disaster because of greed and fear of new independent competition.

 

[nd2023]

Shouldn't it be against the first amendment to restrict anti-IBUZ speech by broadcasters?

 

[tomservo]

The First Amendment only applies to the government.