More problems for in dash IBOC radios

[jhardis]

By as early as 1998..

The Petition for Rulemaking was filed in October 1998, and the first wave of public comments were received in December 1998. I don't know very much about what happened before that. (Maybe I should read your thesis. ) What I do know is that the public comments in this cycle (and those that followed) indicated strong support for the IBOC system from both broadcasters and CE manufacturers, both individually and through their trade associations. I have no reason to believe that this support was insincere.

- Jonathan

 

[TheBigA]

I have no reason to believe that this support was insincere.

I'm just trying to figure out why the electronics industry seems to be trying to kill off the OTA radio. You go to stores that specialize in electronics, and it's hard to find any radios. People who want to buy them can't find them. That's not because of Clear Channel or CBS. It's because the electronics industry stopped creating new and innovative radio devices that retailers want to sell. My suspicion is the industry got a taste of big money from XM and Sirius, and now expects that will be normal procedure. The Sprint deal isn't helping. If they don't get their millions in extortion money, they'll let the radio cease to exist. I'd like Congressional hearings on the subject, because the airwaves those radios receive belong to the American public. By killing off radios, they are forcing the public and radio owners to move their content to devices that will cost money to receive rather than the free airwaves. The process has already begun. In my opinion, this is a federal crime.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

I have no reason to believe that this support was insincere.

I'm just trying to figure out why the electronics industry seems to be trying to kill off the OTA radio. You go to stores that specialize in electronics, and it's hard to find any radios. People who want to buy them can't find them. That's not because of Clear Channel or CBS. It's because the electronics industry stopped creating new and innovative radio devices that retailers want to sell. My suspicion is the industry got a taste of big money from XM and Sirius, and now expects that will be normal procedure. The Sprint deal isn't helping. If they don't get their millions in extortion money, they'll let the radio cease to exist. I'd like Congressional hearings on the subject, because the airwaves those radios receive belong to the American public. By killing off radios, they are forcing the public and radio owners to move their content to devices that will cost money to receive rather than the free airwaves. The process has already begun. In my opinion, this is a federal crime.

I am wondering why the RADIO industry is trying to kill off radio! The formats they program are getting worse and worse, to the point that I seldom listen to the radio any more. My wife leaves it off in the car. My daughter listens to her iPod. I don't even bother to DX - because nothing I can DX has a format I care to listen to. Radios sit gathering dust while I do other things. I complain about the intrustion of foreign language radio, I'm called a bigot. I complain there are no oldies / classic hits, I am labelled an outmode - not worthy of advertising dollars. A relic, that in an enlightened society would be euthanized (yeah - I watched the Twilight Zone marathon). I complain about the radical liberal NPR, I'm not progressive enough. I complain about right wing talk radio, I too liberal. I complain about sports radio, I'm called a homosexual. I complain about hip-hop, I'm a bigot again. I complain about country, I'm not American. I say I enjoy Radio Disney, I'm called a weirdo. I complain about explicit top-40 lyrics, I'm labelled an outmode again.

Long live oldies radio, classical music radio, smooth jazz radio! Long live local DJ's caring about audiences, station owners who put the service in public service! Radio used to be fun, relevant, entertaining. Now it is a juke box for left wing right wing sports wing boring talk, slob sports, foreign languages, bad music formats, and commercials one third of each hour. If radio is omitted from the dashboard, never put in phones, not sold in stores, not a product people want - the radio industry won't even have a clue as to why. Perhaps - if they had put formats on the air people actually wanted to hear - things would be different. By squeezing every last dollar they can from the stations, they also squeezed the life out of it, leaving a dead, empty shell. Corporations will move on to their next victim like the aliens on Independence Day / leaving radio cold, dead, irrelevant, and largely forgotten.

 

[TheBigA]

Long live oldies radio, classical music radio, smooth jazz radio!

All of those formats are still on the radio. Oldies is among the top rated formats in most cities. Classical music is available on hundreds of non-commercial stations. Smooth jazz is on HD2 in a lot of markets.

The truth is over 239 million people still listen to OTA radio. Over 92% of the public. So the problem isn't with the formats. But go into a Radio Shack and tell me how many radios you see on the shelves. That's not because of the station owners.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Long live oldies radio, classical music radio, smooth jazz radio!

All of those formats are still on the radio. Oldies is among the top rated formats in most cities. Classical music is available on hundreds of non-commercial stations. Smooth jazz is on HD2 in a lot of markets.

The truth is over 239 million people still listen to OTA radio. Over 92% of the public. So the problem isn't with the formats. But go into a Radio Shack and tell me how many radios you see on the shelves. That's not because of the station owners.

Not Houston. HD-2 has so many issues, not the least of which is lock time (assuming you aren't coming from their HD-1) and the bad antennas on car radios.

I hear stats all the time. The truth is radio listenership is decreasing, losing market share to iPods, Pandora, satellite, streaming, and TV / home theater. Radio is in dire danger of becoming irrelevant to listeners. They will stream it, because radios are not available / don't work / too much interference / mo local format they want. I've fought the battle over format since before I was a teenager. Stations program what they think you want to hear, not what you actually want to hear. Midland - redneck country, censored top-40. So I DX'ed. Michigan - horrible oldies station, so I DX'ed. Florida. No Christian rock station. So I DX'ed one. Dallas, actually had decent radio, but a couple of the good rim shot FMs got jammed by stupid translators carrying AM. So I got satellite and streamed. Houston - no oldies, no smooth jazz. No DX target available. All I really have is satellite and streaming. HD-2 lock times and dead silence until lock are so annoying as to be untenable. There is classical over the air, there is Christian CHR over the air. Christian rock is such a deep fringe target I am more likely to get San Antonio and Ft Worth on the frequency, so no real DX opportunity there either.

I suppose I should re-program my brain to speak foreign, blindly follow left wing / right right talk, like talk about football (bor-ring), not care about bigoted sexually explicit lyrics, etc. so radio will be entertaining again. Anybody got a hack code for a brain?

 

[diymedia]

The Petition for Rulemaking was filed in October 1998, and the first wave of public comments were received in December 1998. I don't know very much about what happened before that. (Maybe I should read your thesis. ) What I do know is that the public comments in this cycle (and those that followed) indicated strong support for the IBOC system from both broadcasters and CE manufacturers, both individually and through their trade associations. I have no reason to believe that this support was insincere.

- Jonathan

One of the things I've been most surprised about this entire saga is the disjuncture between what happens in policy-land versus what happens in the real world. As you have also discovered, much of what is said in policy-land can come across as quite sincere when the real-world indicators paint a very different story.

Don't read the thesis, it's pedantic as hell...wait for the book! Due out in January/February.

 

[TheBigA]

I hear stats all the time. The truth is radio listenership is decreasing, losing market share to iPods, Pandora, satellite, streaming, and TV / home theater. Radio is in dire danger of becoming irrelevant to listeners.

The device is irrelevant, because the companies that make the devices haven't done anything new in over 25 years. But when it comes to the content, listeners still choose OTA stations. Why? Because even with voicetracking and syndication, there's more human contact that you get with ipods, Pandora, and other internet stations. You want more formats? There aren't enough frequencies in most towns to accommodate all the genres of music people want. That's why they came up with HD. But there are problems with that solution, so the companies are forced to stick with the most popular formats. The reason jazz and classical is moving to non-commercial is because the formats simply aren't as popular as what they're playing now. It sounds like your issue is mainly about personal taste. Because radio is already providing the most popular formats people want.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Because radio is already providing the most popular formats people want.

What people want according to management, corporations, and focus groups. There is a huge difference between pre-conceived focus group conclusions, pre-conceived management and corporate concensus - and what people want. The days of listener input have ended. We get slop designed for the lowest common denominator of intelligence in the market. Anybody not fitting into a narrowly focused demographic is labelled a misfit, have no taste or at least unpopular taste, and marginalized any way they can marginalize us. People do not like to be put into molds that are supposed to fit everybody. People will tend to break out of those molds forcefully if necessary. They will hear what they want to hear, not what people say they ought to want to hear. The growing unrest with radio is driving iPods, which have NO local content, NO announcers, none of what people say are the advantages of OTA radio. The trickle of listeners defecting is going to become a torrent, because radio is so bland and boring that fewer and fewer people can stand it. HD radio won't save it. Kick the corporations out, kick the focus groups out, kick the lawyers out. Then maybe radio will improve.

 

[TheBigA]

Kick the corporations out, kick the focus groups out, kick the lawyers out. Then maybe radio will improve.

Listen to non-commercial public radio. No corporations, no focus groups, and no lawyers. Is that what you want?

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Kick the corporations out, kick the focus groups out, kick the lawyers out. Then maybe radio will improve.

Listen to non-commercial public radio. No corporations, no focus groups, and no lawyers. Is that what you want?

Left wing propaganda. As mindless as right wing propaganda. CORPORATION for "public" broadcasting. What a joke. The left public. No worse that the right public listening to Rush. I have this thing called a BRAIN and can think for myself. I do not respond to propaganda from either side. They insult my intelligence and are not worthy of my trust. I'd de-fund the whole thing given a choice.

 

[diymedia]

It weren't for NPR's crash-development and impressive regulatory lobbying campaign for multicasting, that wouldn't have been a feature of HD Radio.

 

[TheBigA]

They insult my intelligence and are not worthy of my trust. I'd de-fund the whole thing given a choice.

There's a lot more to non-commercial radio than NPR. Lots of classical, jazz, and folk music not available anywhere else.

It sounds like the only radio you want is a station you own that you can program to yourself. That's not really radio.

 

[hubcity]

Not to mention classic-style alternative. (cough.)

 

[satech]

It weren't for NPR's crash-development and impressive regulatory lobbying campaign for multicasting, that wouldn't have been a feature of HD Radio.

Indeed, it was a late addition -- the very first HD Radios on the market, including some radios factory-installed in BMW cars, did not feature FM multicasting (HD2/HD3 channel) capability.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

There's a lot more to non-commercial radio than NPR. Lots of classical, jazz, and folk music not available anywhere else.

It sounds like the only radio you want is a station you own that you can program to yourself. That's not really radio.

Your first point is sure right. Actually, an NPR station here has an eclectic format on an HD-3. Unfortunately, the bad compression artifacts so evident when a station runs an HD-2 get exponentially greater for HD-3. The average person may not notice compression when there is only an HD-2, but the addition of HD-3 degrades everything so badly even an average listener can tell the difference. It is curious, because the same station runs classical on HD-2, but they acquired a dedicated stick for their classical format - why bother leaving it on HD-2?

As for wanting to program my own station - not true. I just want the variety of formats that flourished in the pre-PPM rating era.

 

[Ai4i]

I suppose I should re-program my brain to speak foreign, blindly follow left wing / right right talk, like talk about football (bor-ring), not care about bigoted sexually explicit lyrics, etc. so radio will be entertaining again...

You mean radio prolefeed.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

I suppose I should re-program my brain to speak foreign, blindly follow left wing / right right talk, like talk about football (bor-ring), not care about bigoted sexually explicit lyrics, etc. so radio will be entertaining again...

You mean radio prolefeed.

Very appropriate reference. In my lifetime, I have seen television descend to the level of another classic movie - Fahrenheit 451. Books were banned and burned, firemen did not put out fires, they burned books. But television was a continuous "reality" show that starred everybody in a rotation fashion. Reality TV was unknown in 1966. But now - the mindless programming of Fahrenheit 451's fictional TV network is the norm with every episode of the Kardashians, every big brother episode, etc. Radio is following suit with the piddle, drivel, and swill of talk show callers expressing their own uneducated point of view. All they have to do is get lucky enough to have their call answered, and promise not to curse on the air, and they can exhibit their ignorance to their heart's content. Sports is even worse, with devotion to teams and athletes reaching a religious ferver than even religious stations would envy.

When radio gets to the point that ALL stations are broadcasting this stuff, then the only sane and educated people will be the ones who do NOT tune in. I was shocked when I did a DX test of different radios, to discover that the same talk show was available on half a dozen different stations in nearby cities. Left wing or right wing does not matter. Both sides are essentially infomercials for a political point of view, disparaging everyone who differs. Just like sectarian preachers on religious radio. Both sides make me sick to my stomach with their pitiful intellectual content.

 

[MRFLASHPORT]

Long live oldies radio, classical music radio, smooth jazz radio!

But go into a Radio Shack and tell me how many radios you see on the shelves. That's not because of the station owners.

I don't see this conspiracy in the electronics industry. RadioShack is now "The Shack" and doesn't sell much of anything but cellular phones now. Same with Best Buy- why? Because they make an insane amount of profit, the carriers pay out residuals on every new activation. WalMart sells more cellphones than any other electronic device they carry. People want them. They can't get enough Twitter and FB, so much so they crash their cars with these things in front of their faces 24/7/365. They can't take a dump without their cellphone.

Go out to eat and notice how people, families- don't even TALK to each other. They sit quietly like zombies with their face down into some device, endlessly playing some stupid game or on FB, twitter, etc. Radio is off their minds when they exit the car. If radio ever loses real estate in the dashboard, it's DONE.

Big Box retailers don't carry RADIOS because the dumb masses of cellphone heads don't want them. The electronics industry is producing them, Sangean introduces new models every year, if people didn't buy them, companies like CCrane wouldn't be in business.

What this country and society needs is a RESET button. No, I don't mean mass genocide, so NSA and FBI stand down- but unplug the cellphone FNE for one week and let people start interacting with each other again. When they realize how the telecom cartels are a bunch of thieves, maybe our quality of life will improve. Maybe people will start talking to each other face to face. Maybe they will stop crashing into each other on the roads. Maybe kids will actually dust off those radios and tune in like we all wish they would. Maybe you can go into a public place without people constantly being face down into some electronic device wasting their lives away...

I know, I'm dreaming.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Maybe you can go into a public place without people constantly being face down into some electronic device wasting their lives away...

The point you are missing is that the users of these devices are still interacting with people. They have just used the web to narrow down everybody in the country to just those who are most similar in terms of likes and interests. I do the same thing.

On a more radio oriented note - I use the internet to get the exact station I want. Whether it is originally over the air or not. The internet is equalizing all radio stations to the same nationwide audience. A niche format in one market that was barely making it now has the potential of a national and international market, and their potential audience is every person on earth who happens to enjoy that niche format. This is a good thing, because it allows niche formats to flourish. Bad for the monopolies because their stranglehold is broken. If people don't like radio mediocrity in their home town, they can now get better programming over the internet. All that is required is for the service to become more reliable.

 

[KB1OKL]

I have no reason to believe that this support was insincere.

I'm just trying to figure out why the electronics industry seems to be trying to kill off the OTA radio. You go to stores that specialize in electronics, and it's hard to find any radios. People who want to buy them can't find them. That's not because of Clear Channel or CBS. It's because the electronics industry stopped creating new and innovative radio devices that retailers want to sell. My suspicion is the industry got a taste of big money from XM and Sirius, and now expects that will be normal procedure. The Sprint deal isn't helping. If they don't get their millions in extortion money, they'll let the radio cease to exist. I'd like Congressional hearings on the subject, because the airwaves those radios receive belong to the American public. By killing off radios, they are forcing the public and radio owners to move their content to devices that will cost money to receive rather than the free airwaves. The process has already begun. In my opinion, this is a federal crime.

I am wondering why the RADIO industry is trying to kill off radio! The formats they program are getting worse and worse, to the point that I seldom listen to the radio any more. My wife leaves it off in the car. My daughter listens to her iPod. I don't even bother to DX - because nothing I can DX has a format I care to listen to. Radios sit gathering dust while I do other things. I complain about the intrustion of foreign language radio, I'm called a bigot. I complain there are no oldies / classic hits, I am labelled an outmode - not worthy of advertising dollars. A relic, that in an enlightened society would be euthanized (yeah - I watched the Twilight Zone marathon). I complain about the radical liberal NPR, I'm not progressive enough. I complain about right wing talk radio, I too liberal. I complain about sports radio, I'm called a homosexual. I complain about hip-hop, I'm a bigot again. I complain about country, I'm not American. I say I enjoy Radio Disney, I'm called a weirdo. I complain about explicit top-40 lyrics, I'm labelled an outmode again.

Long live oldies radio, classical music radio, smooth jazz radio! Long live local DJ's caring about audiences, station owners who put the service in public service! Radio used to be fun, relevant, entertaining. Now it is a juke box for left wing right wing sports wing boring talk, slob sports, foreign languages, bad music formats, and commercials one third of each hour. If radio is omitted from the dashboard, never put in phones, not sold in stores, not a product people want - the radio industry won't even have a clue as to why. Perhaps - if they had put formats on the air people actually wanted to hear - things would be different. By squeezing every last dollar they can from the stations, they also squeezed the life out of it, leaving a dead, empty shell. Corporations will move on to their next victim like the aliens on Independence Day / leaving radio cold, dead, irrelevant, and largely forgotten.

If you want radio to be fun again why don't you get a ham license? You get to broadcast, put up your own antennas, get your own call sign, talk to who you want, DX, the best part is you create it, you are not a passive listener, you are actually running your own radio station. There are many niches in ham radio, me I collect the old boatanchors which actually double as very good AM DX machines, much better than just about anything you can buy today unless you want to spend some serious cash.