More "True Confessions" from Radio owners.

[KB1OKL]

This from Kelly Walingford, he's the President of Wallingford Broadcasting Company and the Immediate Past President of the Kentucky Broadcasters Association: He seems to think that The Stroob and co's greed caused the stillbirth of HD:


I knew HD was doomed from the start. I was part of a large group gathered at our State Convention in 2006 at Lake Barkley State Park to hear a KBA-assembled panel of experts do a seminar about HD. When iBiquity and the equipment reps got to the anticipated cost for HD, I could see they had lost the audience. It was the same look referenced when headlights catch a deer off guard. I boldly rose to my feet and asked the panel if they realized they were asking broadcasters for an investment in an unproven technology that would rival or exceed the original cost of a whole radio station. I then asked the question that sent the entire room into a frenzied standing ovation and propelled my name into Kentucky broadcasting infamy: "Why so greedy?"

From Radio Ink"

http://www.radioink.com/Article.asp?id=2632826&spid=24698

 

[mmnassour]

"Infamy"? More like the Hall of Fame!

And FWIW, the comments at the end of the article are truly damning.

 

[tomservo]

I can take solace in knowing some real radio people also agree the fees are a deal killer (one among many, to most…)

It's voodoo-territory, to quote a famous local meteorologist, but I have a vision of HD supplanting streaming in car radios. The car radio could switch between internet stream and local digital signal on the fly, saving users precious megabytes of data in the city, and continuing to allow them to enjoy their format of choice out of the market.

It should be easy enough to match up the iHeartRadio or Radio.com feed via in-radio app with what's available locally off the air. Heck, I think there's some sort of sync algorithm that could be devised so that analogue, HD and the internet feed needn't be in millisecond-perfect sync. Let the radio link them seamlessly with sheer processing power. It can be done.

 

[Tom Wells]

Of course it can be done.
The idea is that you, I, and everybody else will pay through the nose for the archtitecture to make it happen.
I'm not going to pay for it, because it's a needless duplication of existing bandwidth.
I'm also not going to pay for a "custom gas generator" for my house which will lovingly mix nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide,
and other trace gases to create a perfectly balanced gaseous mixture for my interior spaces.
As long as "air" is free for the having, and I can open a door, or window, I will accept that which Providence arranged.


For the same reason OTA "only" works in the market, streaming "only" works in the market.

There are simply not enough people to justify lots of bandwidth overhead in rural areas.

I've never been anyplace (traveling) where there was enough signal coverage to stream anything.
There's only enough signal to keep trying over and over again.

 

[taylorengineer]

But Tom: Would you like a receiver with more capabilities?
Zach is on to something. A hybrid approach integrating IBOC, analog, and wireless IP offers capabilities unmatched by each method alone. Advertisers and sales folk will love the capability to pinpoint receiver locations and provide location/demo specific ads in the mobile environment. Listeners will appreciate hearing ads which are relevant to them either due to demographics or location.
Listeners would also be able to choose audio from a "menu" of choices and decide when and where these elements will play in their playlist.
You can probably imagine other possibilities. But one thing you can be sure of is receiver technology is going to change - for better or worse.

 

[diymedia]

I could see there being some problems with an IP/HD hybrid receiver. The primary one being latency over the IP network, which can be quite variable considering on the path packets take from the server to your car, the general traffic-load on the network-nodes between server and car, etc.

How would you synchronize the two data feeds? I guess buffering would allow some sort of crutch.

 

[JH_Radio]

all of the audio needs to sound the same for this to work well, IMO .
I can't see this working too well on AM.
would they have something that can detect the user is on AM, is local but the noise flore is horible due to storms? then what. it'd switch to the FM sub feed or translator?

 

[rbrucecarter5]

I said it before, and I'll say it again - band-aids on the Titanic. NObody on here uses HD-2's more than I do, they are the only bright spots in the dismal Houston radio dial. So if anybody would want it to succeed, it would be me. There were probably technical things that could have been done prior to rolling out that would make the system more robust - like putting the sidebands IN the channel instead of beside it. That would have been a good idea for a lot of reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with DX. Now, it is too late. The unreliability of the system is out there for consumers to see. Word of mouth and apathy have doomed the system, I have a C-Quam section on my attic shelf, I will soon need a shelf for HD.

The idea of a hybrid system looking for the best delivery for subchannels is interesting, but the handovers concern me. Even the handover from analog to HD on HD-1's is not seamless, and annoying. Multiple handovers during a song might not be a pleasing solution to consumers. Especially from something as compromised as AM HD to something much better like wi-fi.

 

[JohnnyElectron]

They need a confession about the article in yesterdays' "Radio" magazine that claims an HD radio is sold every 6 seconds. My math says that's 10 a minute, 600 an hour, 14,400 a day; I find those numbers hard to believe as that's over 5 million per year! 80% of cars sold do NOT have HD, so how do they get 5.25 million HD radios in circulation in a year when they've got about 20 million total if you could iPad dongles?

The fees killed HD. The technology killed HD. There is so much more that can be done with analog FM and analog stereo AM RECEIVER standards that would be 10x better than foisting HD onto radio station owners.

 

[Ai4i]

So then, how does one get the commission to revisit Eureka-147, the right digital system?

 

[Kent]

Good luck with that! Eureka's a superior system from a technological standpoint, but that doesn't mean it's good. It's really only been even remotely successful in the U.K. and, maybe, Australia. Canada's experiment with Eureka on the L-band planned on a 20 to 40 year transition period and was still an abject failure. Receivers collected dust on shelves while stations in large cities had to install 5 or more transmitter pods only to still be unable to cover the entire city. It was so bad Canada's experimenting with HD!

If we were to do Eureka here, we'd either have to have a set transition with no interim period or find another band. Doing Eureka on FM with a transition period would require a companion channel for every station, and there aren't enough frequencies in most large and major markets. Finding another band means we'd need to find a system that would still serve everybody. I don't know how you'd even begin that task. As it stands today, you can travel from New York to San Francisco and hear at least one station the entire way. Accomplishing that with an out-of-band system seems impossible.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Good luck with that! Eureka's a superior system from a technological standpoint, but that doesn't mean it's good. It's really only been even remotely successful in the U.K. and, maybe, Australia. Canada's experiment with Eureka on the L-band planned on a 20 to 40 year transition period and was still an abject failure. Receivers collected dust on shelves while stations in large cities had to install 5 or more transmitter pods only to still be unable to cover the entire city. It was so bad Canada's experimenting with HD!

If we were to do Eureka here, we'd either have to have a set transition with no interim period or find another band. Doing Eureka on FM with a transition period would require a companion channel for every station, and there aren't enough frequencies in most large and major markets. Finding another band means we'd need to find a system that would still serve everybody. I don't know how you'd even begin that task. As it stands today, you can travel from New York to San Francisco and hear at least one station the entire way. Accomplishing that with an out-of-band system seems impossible.

Isn't Eureka 1.5 MHz wide? Seems like that would be even worse than the HD channel bandwidth. Just because an idea is European, it doesn't mean it is necessarily good. I have to deal with the fall out of Pb free solder all the time, tin whiskers, cold solder joints, etc. BAD European idea that we got saddled with. I hear a lot about Eureka, but it would seem to be more applicable when you have a national network with a lot of sub channels. That would be great for NPR, but what about the rest of us who don't listen to NPR that much? I mean, they do classical in my market, an interesting rock format - but there are a dozen other HD-2's in the area that have nothing to do with NPR. If you force Eureka on the whole country, I'm afraid diversity in programming would go away. I'm stuck with having to put up with HD's limitations, unreliabilities just to get the programming I want. Now, somebody wants to implement a bland, homogenized, government approved network all over the country? NO thanks!

 

[Kent]

I know Eureka is wider than HD, but I don't know exactly how wide. That's why I said we'd have to have companion channels, like we did with TV, if we were to transition Eureka on the FM band. From a technical standpoint, it will work anywhere above 30 mHz, but that doesn't mean it works in the real world.

I would assume you could get more subchannels if you ran Eureka, but, without an analog signal, you should be able to get 6-8 channels with HD. Even with analog, you can get 4 subchannels with HD now.

 

[Ai4i]

Eureka receivers can also, as Sirius and XM receivers do, combine signals from various transmitter sites, in both real time and delayed, put them all together, and form an uninterrupted audio stream. I have no idea how my various XM sources come and go, because I have at least one with which to work, statistically 100% of the time. Too, with DAB, one can view what is on any of the channels to see what is playing without leaving the one currently being heard. And, if one has NASH-FM, BLOOMBERG, KISS, INFINITI NEWSTALK, BEASELY SPORTS, NPR, CLASSICAL 24, or any other data that can be encoded, the radios find the corresponding local station anywhere. Lastly, L band is likely the best one to use because it has acceptable range but dies extremely quickly at the horizon, minimizing the area in which it is not usable but can cause QRM. In other words, a city or primary contour can almost touch that of the next station on the same "bouquet" channel.

With two stations in an area, each would need to spend more money for DAB bouquets than for traditional FM transmitters, but where a dozen stations exist, the cost is much less per station, even multi-site.

The closest approximation we will have to this is probably Ludwig, if it ever launches.
Ludwig transmits digital audio over UHF TV stations to portable and mobile devices.
Commercially funded, they are considered a subscription service to avoid any objectionable language issues.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Eureka receivers can also, as Sirius and XM receivers do, combine signals from various transmitter sites, in both real time and delayed, put them all together, and form an uninterrupted audio stream.

That is exactly what scares me. It assumes there is an audio stream you actually WANT to hear nationwide. Maybe the NPR folks would want it, but I'd rather have what we have now, thousands of stations across the country with semi-unique formats, and I can choose which one I want by hearing over the air or streaming or whatever. Eureka is probably great for state radio networks. Not so great for private enterprise. If I want nationwide coverage, I'll listen to satellite, where there are at least a couple of hundred channels. A few of them I actually want to listen to.

 

[local oscillator]

rbruce, I couldn't agree more. For those of us who bemoan the "homogenization" of radio brought on by consolidation, the last thing we would want to see implemented is technology that makes the "homogenization" easier.

 

[K6JHU]

The only 'National' service is Sirius/XM. There is no reason for a Eureka transmitter in Eureka to carry the same program services as a Eureka transmitter in Troy.

 

[tomservo]

rbruce, I couldn't agree more. For those of us who bemoan the "homogenization" of radio brought on by consolidation, the last thing we would want to see implemented is technology that makes the "homogenization" easier.

Isn't radio kinda homogenized already, at least in the smaller rated markets?

My local Clear Channel CHR sounds exactly the same as the one in the next town up. I know, because during tropo I can hear them both at night. Same songs, same national slate of commercials, same jocks. Only the station's identity and local commercials are different.

Most of the small town FMs in my region are satellite/voicetracked by a big company like Dial Global. Sure the jock inserts are "localized" along with commercials, but it's the same music fed nationwide.

Even the major markets suffer homogenization in the form or shows like Tom Joyner or Ryan Seacrest.

Not that Eureka need be national, as K6JHU pointed out… but radio is kinda like that, anyway. The unique stations seem to be outnumbered by the quasi-networks of consolidation.

 

[Ai4i]

Actually SXM wanted to offer localism through the terrestrial repeaters, but that was nixed.
A DAB system could be as regional as desired, using as many or as few sites as desired, still local breaks would always be used.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Isn't radio kinda homogenized already, at least in the smaller rated markets?

Sure is, but out of all the stations licensed, there are still a lot of real gems out there. A national network - if mandatory - would destroy all vestiges of creativity, localism, and - I dare say - listener interest.

Things we know work - analog FM, enhanced by adaptive IF bandwidth and diversity antennas. Analog AM, enhanced by C-Quam and better audio chains. Where the industry ought to be focusing is getting AM and FM into cell phones, lobbying the FCC for better interference regulations and enforcement, and thinning down the herd of ridiculous station glut - like that on the nighttime AM band, and the increasing clutter of translators on FM that make no sense - like translators for AM and thousands of translators for one church, or for NPR. Clean up the band of too many allocations, too much interference from unregulated household devices, and analog radio might have a chance as a delivery method for music, especially when it has to compete with all the new alternatives out there.

I could speak heresy like - take over the longwave and shortwave bands for domestic broadcasting to alleviate station glut, but I'll keep my mouth shut. Those obsolete services have a lot of fans out there - but not nearly as many as before when popular shortwave services started going web only or FM.