Next IBOC in Boston

[mgpt6]

My humble predictions for next IBOC signals in Boston in 2007.
1)WODS and WBMX -FM. already have licsense from Ibuquity.
2) WKOX-AM 1200; Clear Channel group, when on the air with new tower in Newton.
3) WRKO and WEEI -AM. Entercomm. Red Sox like the idea of digital.
With those stations , all the major group owned stations will be IBOC.
Maybe in 2008, WFNX maybe IBOC, and perhaps one of the Salem owned AMs. (probably 590 AM which has their best signal.)
Dont see any other non-commercal FMs going IBOC anytime soon that arent already IBOC now.

 

[webcastboy]

An important thing to remember is that a corporate-owned station does not operate in a vacuum...decisions as major as installing HD Radio are done entirely at the corporate level. The issues with iBiquity licensing and the HD Radio Alliance alone mandate that, never mind just the raw costs. So while Entercom locally stands to gain something by installing HD Radio on WEEI and/or WRKO...that may or may not fit in with the national corporate plan for AM HD Radio.

 

[JustinT]

My humble predictions for next IBOC signals in Boston in 2007.
1)WODS and WBMX -FM. already have licsense from Ibuquity.
2) WKOX-AM 1200; Clear Channel group, when on the air with new tower in Newton.
3) WRKO and WEEI -AM. Entercomm. Red Sox like the idea of digital.
With those stations , all the major group owned stations will be IBOC.
Maybe in 2008, WFNX maybe IBOC, and perhaps one of the Salem owned AMs. (probably 590 AM which has their best signal.)
Dont see any other non-commercal FMs going IBOC anytime soon that arent already IBOC now.

The WODS/WBMX-FM situation is ridiculous. They should be on soon, but hey, we were saying that a year ago.

An e-mail to CC a while back confirmed that the new 1200 will go on the air with HD. Beasley also has a few AMs running HD; though I couldn't find any of their brokered AMs to be running HD, it would seem like a component that they would include in a completely new installation.

To the best of my knowledge, and as webcastboy hinted, no Entercom AMs are currently running HD. No Salem stations are running HD either. But I seem to recall that someone from Phoenix Media said that they did want to put HD on 101.7 once everything at OFC was up and running, so WFNX could possibly be turning on HD in the not-too-distant future.

 

[webcastboy]

The WODS/WBMX-FM situation is ridiculous. They should be on soon, but hey, we were saying that a year ago.

Why is that so ridiculous? I mean, I want to see stations convert to HD Radio as much as anymore (probably moreso) but it's not like they're losing hordes of listeners from being on analog-only. And they're doing a decent job giving PAD via RBDS, too.

 

[raccoonradio]

Couple questions about HD:

--under HD (AM) radio, would there be no static during thunderstorms?

--is the signal slightly delayed? I think it is on TV--even when viewed on analog receivers.
Example: a couple weeks back I went to a NH Fisher Cats game in Manchester and when it ended
I ate up at the Strange Brew Tavern downtown; Red Sox game (4 pm start) was on Fox but they didn't
really have the sound up so I listened on my Walkman (WKBR 1250 local affiliate these days) and the TV
was delayed by a few seconds. You could almost turn to the guy next to you and say, "I think Big Papi's
gonna hit one over the monster seats"--and presto, he does

So--in the future when AM is in HD and you're AT Fenway watching the game, listening on a Walkman
, Dice-K throws strike 3 to the batter but on the
radio it takes a few seconds for them to describe it...? (i.e., there would ALSO be a delay on radio.)
(as I understand it regular radios will pick up the signal, it just won't be in HD...so whether or not you
have an HD walkman, when such a thing comes out if it's not out already--it'd still be delayed right?)_

 

[Eli Polonsky]

Couple questions about HD:

--under HD (AM) radio, would there be no static during thunderstorms?

You wouldn't hear static as we know it, however, I would guess that if a lightning flash is strong enough to overcome the signal, it could cause it to briefly drop out for a moment.

--is the signal slightly delayed?

There's a delay of about eight seconds inherent in the processing to produce a digital signal. Because of this, most stations that run HD also intentionally put a delay on their analog signal so that it matches their digital signal.

The reason for that is because if you're listening to an HD station and the signal is not consistenly coming in strong enough for the receiver to stay locked onto digital, the receiver will revert back to analog when it's not receiving the digital strongly enough. On an HD car stereo it may switch back and forth from digital to analog as you move through different areas if you're on a stations digital fringe (much closer than their analog fringe). Delaying the analog so that the program is at the same time as the digital makes these transitions smooth. The receiver loses digital fidelity when it switches to analog, but at least the program is coming through at the same time.

One station that is currently not doing it properly (delaying their analog) is WGBH. Their digital is a number of seconds behind their analog, so when the receiver locks onto digital, you hear the last few seconds that you just heard on analog over again.

 

[raccoonradio]

Thanks for the explanation...

>>Because of this, most stations that run HD also intentionally put a delay on their analog signal so that it matches their digital signal.

that's what I figured. So if you're at a Sox game and you have WRKO or WEEI doing the game, in HD but also receivable in analog and you're listening on an analog Walkman, now you'll have a delay...

 

[JustinT]

The WODS/WBMX-FM situation is ridiculous. They should be on soon, but hey, we were saying that a year ago.

Why is that so ridiculous? I mean, I want to see stations convert to HD Radio as much as anymore (probably moreso) but it's not like they're losing hordes of listeners from being on analog-only. And they're doing a decent job giving PAD via RBDS, too.

Yeah, I guess it's not really a huge problem and most listeners would never know, but we're approaching a year and a half since the HD plan was unveiled. A 1.5 year delay on anything is never good.