LPFM goes digital

[Carmine5]

Interesting tidbit from Inside Radio. WIOE-LP, Warsaw, IN is the first LPFM to add HD Radio using an auxiliary site as the location for their digital transmitter.

According to the item:

"The FCC's given him special authority to use ten watts of digital power, instead of the one watt the 100-watt LPFM would normally be allowed."

http://www.insideradio.com/pdheadlines.asp?phid=558243&PT=Today's+Top+Stories

C5

 

[Chuck]

Interesting tidbit from Inside Radio. WIOE-LP, Warsaw, IN is the first LPFM to add HD Radio using an auxiliary site as the location for their digital transmitter.

According to the item:

"The FCC's given him special authority to use ten watts of digital power, instead of the one watt the 100-watt LPFM would normally be allowed."

http://www.insideradio.com/pdheadlines.asp?phid=558243&PT=Today's+Top+Stories

C5

That's interesting. I'd be curious to know how the coverage works. At one watt, it would be useless. 10 might be worthwhile. If this is to work on LPFM and translators, I think it needs to have a minimum power level of some kind 10 watts is probably about as low as should be considered. That has been one of my objections to the system all along, other than interference worries and a "user-unfriendly" licensing system.

I'll bet Ibiquity cut a deal with the LPFM on licensing costs. I’m intimately familiar with the economics of LPFM broadcasting. The "FM" part means "forget money." Of course, making money was never the intention of the service.

 

[Carmine5]

Chuck;

I was hoping that with your deep knowledge of the LPFM scene, you can fill us in on the details. I know iBiquity has said that HD Radio wouldn't work with LP-10 stations (the digital signal would be just slightly above Part-15 levels). But I highly doubt we will ever see that service materialize anyway.

They did indicate it would work with LP-100. Has there been any solicitation from manufacturers (or anyone else) to get LPFMs on board with HD?

C5

 

[Chuck]

Chuck;

I was hoping that with your deep knowledge of the LPFM scene, you can fill us in on the details. I know iBiquity has said that HD Radio wouldn't work with LP-10 stations (the digital signal would be just slightly above Part-15 levels). But I highly doubt we will ever see that service materialize anyway.

They did indicate it would work with LP-100. Has there been any solicitation from manufacturers (or anyone else) to get LPFMs on board with HD?

C5

In a word, "No." I did get the postcard from Ibiquity telling me that it was my last chance to sign up at the $15,000 licensing level, and if I missed the opportunity, it would cost me $25,000 in the future. That has been it as far as I know. Not many LPFM stations have $15,000 much less $25,000.

At last summer's Texas Association of Broadcasters Convention, there was the usual presentation by Ibiquity. Actually, those who were there will tell you it was not at all “the usual,” since the presenter seemed to be having health problems as we watched. We were all genuinely worried about the guy.

Anyway, after things got back to normal, I mentioned that I couldn't see this working at the -20db level on either LPFM or translators. I also mentioned that I doubted that many LPFM stations have the money to spend to find out. It is a pretty expensive science project for a broadcaster on a very limited budget. Even if we could afford the hardware, the $25,000 licensing fee would be a deal killer. Their representative said that they might be able to work something out regarding the fee. Maybe so. At the time, there was nothing to work out with the power level though. We'd have less than a watt of HD and I simply can't imagine that being worth a $50,000 investment. There are much more productive things that could be done at far less cost.

We left the conversation with "he'd get back to me." I haven't heard a word, but I do have his card somewhere. Maybe I should dig it out.

On the other hand, we did try FMeXtra on our station, and it performed quite well. It was better than I expected. Unfortunately, I think the DRE people have a death wish. The price seems to have jumped from $8500 to $15,000, and they want you to buy a couple of hundred Aruba radios as part of the deal. I think that totals about $19,000.

I like FMeXtra, and I think they deserve to make a profit on their technology, but I don't see the justification for raising the price so much. What I saw looked like a two rack space Dell computer with a very special audio card. It was running XP, and said "Dell" on the front of it. Maybe at retail that is worth about $1000. So is the audio card and software it takes to run it worth an additional $14,000? I don't think so.

If I were them, I'd offer the system to lots of broadcasters for about $4000 as a special introductory offer. That should more than double their money, but more importantly it would get a lot of them in actual use. They might consider limiting the special offer to non-commercial stations, at least for now. That would give them something to hang their hat on for a later price increase. In any case, I'd rather sell 2000 of these things for $4000 than a couple of hundred at $15000. If you do that, it puts five million more dollars in your pocket.

 

[clouseau]

I can supplement Chuck experience with my own "HD on translators" experience.

I had an extensive exchange with Kitsa Lee of Ibiquity about a year ago. As best I can tell from the iBiquity site, she appears to be one of two sales people for the system. iBiquity's position on translators was interesting.

First off, they really didin't know what a translator was. They had the mistaken idea that all translators were owned by their primary stations. After a couple of email exchanges and a few links to the FCC, I was able to get them to understand that a translator is not necessarily owned by it's primary (amd in the case of translators in the commercial band, often times prohibited)

Next we moved on to "Practicality of license fees". They were receptive to the difficulty a $15k+ license fee would be for a station which is often constructed for under $10K. They alledgedly did some research, and determined that they were not allowed to vary the price of the license fee based on FCC rules, which required all stations to pay the same.

They also stated if the translator primary was HD, then the translator could pass through the HD without a license. In this particualr situation, it was not. I asked if the primary "WAS" licensed for HD could the translator buy HD equipment under the primary's HD license, and then utilize the subchannels independantly of the primary while continuing to translate the primary analog and HD-1. (Perhaps for an extra fee) I pretty much got "Duh, what was that again?" Followed by "Every station utilizine HD technology needs and HD license". They then suggested I contact the FCC about the fee inequity. They also asked if we wanted to sign up before the fee went over $15K. We passed.

I seems to me that iBiquity feels they have bigger fish to fry than translators and LPFMs. When I mentioned to the sales gal that there were over 6000 lpfms and translators in the US on the air now with another 4-5 thousand applied for, she was amazed. Not as amazed as I was that they didn't even know about them, but that's another story.

Needless to say, we did NOT contact the FCC.

Clouseau

 

[Savage]

Hold the phone, Inspector. Do I understand that iBiquity's saleslady told you THE FCC sets the license fees for HD implementation from iBiquity??

How dumb is this?? If iBiquity came up with special pricing for LPFM's and NCEs think how many exciters they might be able to sell. The "special" status of these smaller FMs provides the perfect cover for iBiquity to sell scads of equipment, get it into circulation, get more HD on the air and justify the lower LP/NC costs to avoid protest howls from full-signal commercial operators.

"But.....NOOOO......"

Goes to show what I've always said: HD people (in this case, iBiquity) appear not to know much about the radio industry they want to sell stuff to.

 

[Chuck]

Hold the phone, Inspector. Do I understand that iBiquity's saleslady told you THE FCC sets the license fees for HD implementation from iBiquity??

How dumb is this?? If iBiquity came up with special pricing for LPFM's and NCEs think how many exciters they might be able to sell. The "special" status of these smaller FMs provides the perfect cover for iBiquity to sell scads of equipment, get it into circulation, get more HD on the air and justify the lower LP/NC costs to avoid protest howls from full-signal commercial operators.

"But.....NOOOO......"

Goes to show what I've always said: HD people (in this case, iBiquity) appear not to know much about the radio industry they want to sell stuff to.

I think, at least so far, both Ibiquity and DRE have failed in "Marketing 101." They are missing some very basic sales techniques. The gentleman I spoke to at DRE was nice enough, but seemed pretty uninterested in selling his product, despite the fact that I started the conversation with "I'm interested in putting FMeXtra on our station." Try saying “I’m interested in buying a new car,” at an auto dealership and see if you get out alive.

The Ibiquity response seems to be even worse, completely ignoring 8000 or so potential customers. Whenever I’ve mentioned translators, they have said “They don’t need a license if they are passing through the HD signal of the originating station.” That’s true, but as far as I can tell, there is nothing prohibiting the translator from having HD encoding equipment on site, as long as it passes through the primary signal of the originating station. Inexplicably, the FCC has been allowing (even encouraging) translators to rebroadcast HD-2 signals in analog. It seems there are several interesting loop-holes that could be used by those who figure them out. Ibiquity seems to be completely oblivious to this. Perhaps they don’t understand their own product? They certainly don’t seem to understand all of the Radio business. There is much more to it than just the top 20 stations in the top 100 markets. So far, that seems to be all that’s been on their radar.

In fact the responses I've had from various Ibiquity representatives at trade shows has been "You'd be silly to put it on your small station." I think they are correct, but rightly or wrongly, it helps enforce the point of view that "HD is only for big stations." It doesn't take a lot of thought to conclude that if it is "only for big stations, then it is at the expense of smaller stations." Any way you slice it, it looks like an exclusive club. Some people think that has been the intent all along.

OK, Inspector, I'll put on my tin foil hat now....

 

[Carmine5]

Hold the phone, Inspector. Do I understand that iBiquity's saleslady told you THE FCC sets the license fees for HD implementation from iBiquity??

How dumb is this?? If iBiquity came up with special pricing for LPFM's and NCEs think how many exciters they might be able to sell. The "special" status of these smaller FMs provides the perfect cover for iBiquity to sell scads of equipment, get it into circulation, get more HD on the air and justify the lower LP/NC costs to avoid protest howls from full-signal commercial operators.

"But.....NOOOO......"

Goes to show what I've always said: HD people (in this case, iBiquity) appear not to know much about the radio industry they want to sell stuff to.

I think, at least so far, both Ibiquity and DRE have failed in "Marketing 101." They are missing some very basic sales techniques.

That is certainly part of the problem. HD Radio has, indeed, been badly marketed.

There are two scathing articles on HD Radio. One is from the WSJ.

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB122575904804195337-lMyQjAxMDI4MjE1NDcxNTQ5Wj.html

"Some industry veterans say HD Radio's rollout was bungled and fear that the window of opportunity is rapidly closing as other audio entertainment options, like Apple Inc.'s iPod music players, become entrenched. "If they don't get [HD Radio] going right now, they're going to lose it," says Bill Figenshu, a Skytop, Pa., consultant to radio and other media companies."

I'm sure several here will enjoy Mr. Struble's responses to the issues presented in the WSJ piece.

The other article is from a former HD Radio apologist/booster. Converts can be the most enthusiastic supporters for the other side.

http://digital-am-fm.com/2008/11/more_on_hds_stalled_status.html

The author states some other problems with the HD Radio rollout:

"Too little, too late. The early chips clearly didn't meet the needs of the audio industry, or were too expensive. Radio station conversions slowed way down. We're still somewhere in the 10 to 15 percent range, and very little of the secondary and subsequent digital FM channels offer anything interesting beyond conventional broadcast."

Both articles cite the leap frogging of portable internet devices and software as spelling the possible end of HD Radio.

C5

 

[clouseau]

Hold the phone, Inspector. Do I understand that iBiquity's saleslady told you THE FCC sets the license fees for HD implementation from iBiquity??

How dumb is this?? If iBiquity came up with special pricing for LPFM's and NCEs think how many exciters they might be able to sell. The "special" status of these smaller FMs provides the perfect cover for iBiquity to sell scads of equipment, get it into circulation, get more HD on the air and justify the lower LP/NC costs to avoid protest howls from full-signal commercial operators.

"But.....NOOOO......"

I think your a little ahead of what I said. It was iBiquity's assertion that the FCC mandates that all stations "Pay the same". At least that's how I understood it. Therefore, "If I wanted a reduction due to being a peanunt whistle", I would need FCC approval. I will say the "Go to the FCC" take is a non starter for me. While iBiquity indicated they wouldn't be opposed to lower fees for small stations or translators, they weren't interested in championing the cause. This also COULD be a blow off.

Goes to show what I've always said: HD people (in this case, iBiquity) appear not to know much about the radio industry they want to sell stuff to.

No argument there, Bob. Chuck hit the nail on the head. Neither iBiquity nor DRE seems to have a clue. As far as I know, both Chuck and I were/are willing Guinea Pigs. Unfortunalty it seems you have to mortgage the farm to see if it works for you. When I asked about low power implementation, I didn't get a reference of someone who used the system.
When I asked if they'd like a low power station to use as a reference, they were very interested in relaying my experience. Right after they got my $15K.

Clouseau

 

[jegrant]

I think that the HD2 > Analog Translator loophole could do a lot to improve format variety, add localism, increase revenue opportunities, allow for local emergency/weather info, etc.
But few seem interested in exploiting it, thus far.

 

[clouseau]

I think that the HD2 > Analog Translator loophole could do a lot to improve format variety, add localism, increase revenue opportunities, allow for local emergency/weather info, etc.
But few seem interested in exploiting it, thus far.

There's a few of us out here that would love to try it. However at their curent costs, I think it's their system or a lifetime supply of Crown Royal.

It's always a bad business plan to try and get the Crown money.

Clouseau