Possible FM IBOC Power Increase?

[BobOnTheJob]

There's serious talk about raising the FM IBOC injection level from about 1% to 10%! On top of that, it's been proposed to extend the bandwidth of the signal. As it is now with 1% injection and the current bandwidth (which trashes about 50% of the adjacent channel), I am personally aware of 1 class A on an adjacent channel that was crystal clear at 39 miles on most any car radio & now is nothing but pure hiss--signal gone. That same station has perhaps 20db stereo s/n at 27 miles. You'll have to take my word that WORX, 96.7 Madison,IN sounded good on I-275 in northern KY years ago before 96.5 fired up IBOC from the WLW tower north of Cincinnati. But you can verify for yourself that the signal is not just trashed, it is G O N E where it was once very listenable. So what? Madison Indiana has countless commuters who work in greater Cincinnati...the day that the IBOC came on 96.5, those commuters were forced to leave their local station & choose a Cincinnati signal...did they go back to their local on the way back home? Doubtful...I witness on an ongoing basis what happens when the local music stations air a ball game...the radio gets switched & it is often days before it goes back where it was. If a commuter has to switch stations daily, chances are that commuter will write that station off as being more trouble than it's worth--all through no fault of the station! This is with 1% IBOC...imagine what will happen to adjacent channel signals at 10% injection. I tell ya folks, we should dump this IBOC turkey & focus on FMExtra--which covers better, sounds better, costs less, has no licensing fees & creates no interference.

 

[Savage]

It's hilarious how people discuss the 10% FM-HD digital injection proposal like it's a screwdriver adjustment.
Nothing could be father from the truth.

Increasing digital from 1% to 10% will require rebuilding entire transmitter plants in most cases. You're talking about new transmitters, antennae, TX lines, increased HVAC and utility feed requirements, as well as replacement of existing iBiquity gear - presumably with new licensing fees to boot. Given the current economic forecasts for the industry this prospect is ludicrous except for the biggest billers in the biggest markets.

And all that additional capital outlay is certain to generate - as BobOnTheJob has so aptly noted - major interference issues. Consultants are already griping about the second-adjacent problems with ONE PERCENT DIGITAL injection. When TEN PERCENT hits, you'll be hearing a howl about adjacent issues - as well as self-interference with the analog signal - which will dwarf the current brouhaha about HD-AM.

Ten percent FM IBOC may finally be the silver bullet that kills this stupid system. Or so we can hope.

 

[LinoNYC]

There's serious talk about raising the FM IBOC injection level from about 1% to 10%! On top of that, it's been proposed to extend the bandwidth of the signal. As it is now with 1% injection and the current bandwidth (which trashes about 50% of the adjacent channel), I am personally aware of 1 class A on an adjacent channel that was crystal clear at 39 miles on most any car radio & now is nothing but pure hiss--signal gone. That same station has perhaps 20db stereo s/n at 27 miles. You'll have to take my word that WORX, 96.7 Madison,IN sounded good on I-275 in northern KY years ago before 96.5 fired up IBOC from the WLW tower north of Cincinnati. But you can verify for yourself that the signal is not just trashed, it is G O N E where it was once very listenable. So what? Madison Indiana has countless commuters who work in greater Cincinnati...the day that the IBOC came on 96.5, those commuters were forced to leave their local station & choose a Cincinnati signal...did they go back to their local on the way back home? Doubtful...I witness on an ongoing basis what happens when the local music stations air a ball game...the radio gets switched & it is often days before it goes back where it was. If a commuter has to switch stations daily, chances are that commuter will write that station off as being more trouble than it's worth--all through no fault of the station! This is with 1% IBOC...imagine what will happen to adjacent channel signals at 10% injection. I tell ya folks, we should dump this IBOC turkey & focus on FMExtra--which covers better, sounds better, costs less, has no licensing fees & creates no interference.

You didn't really come here to ask a question as your question mark would indicate, ofcourse not you would ask over on the engineering board where you normally post.
.
You came here to make a statement.

People "punch out" and "in" all the time, they change stations not just for ballgames but to avoid commercials, escape DJ banter etc.

It's easy to set presets these days, if your station is worth coming back to, they will.

.I witness on an ongoing basis what happens when the local music stations air a ball game...the radio gets switched & it is often days before it goes back where it was.

How do you "witness" such short term changes? PPM?

Lino

 

[radioskeptic]

Lino said:

AM lost the youth (and most other music listeners) back in the mid-seventies to FM stations that played exactly the same music, had the same formatics and even some of the same DJ's.

Wrong, Lino. If we define "youth" as the 18-24 demo -- and perhaps a handful of kids in the upper end of 12-17 -- AM actually lost that audience to FM beginning in the late Sixties with the implimentation of the 50-50 rule, requiring AM-FM duopolies to be separately programmed at least half the time, and later full-time.

Many stations began experimenting with "underground" rock as early as 1966, and within a couple of years were doing it full-time on FM. It never appealed to me, though I was in the demo, but it worked well with many of my contemporaries.

And it soon filtered down to the high school set at large, at least those who were trying to prove that they were too "cool" to listen to Top 40.

But in the Seventies -- by which time fairly good FM portables were ubiquitous, and aftermarket auto FM was affordable -- true Top 40 came to FM, along with big money, and some new Top FM's finally manged to take away the stodgier AM top 40 stations' audiences. Ditto for country et al.

Of course, this tells me that you don't understand programming ternds, or the social trends that beget them, any better than you understand technology. And the fact that you're practically "the last man standing" in defense of AM IBOC tells us everything we need to know about your understanding of the technical side of radio -- or your lack of it!

 

[Len14043]

There's serious talk about raising the FM IBOC injection level from about 1% to 10%! On top of that, it's been proposed to extend the bandwidth of the signal. As it is now with 1% injection and the current bandwidth (which trashes about 50% of the adjacent channel), I am personally aware of 1 class A on an adjacent channel that was crystal clear at 39 miles on most any car radio & now is nothing but pure hiss--signal gone. That same station has perhaps 20db stereo s/n at 27 miles. You'll have to take my word that WORX, 96.7 Madison,IN sounded good on I-275 in northern KY years ago before 96.5 fired up IBOC from the WLW tower north of Cincinnati. But you can verify for yourself that the signal is not just trashed, it is G O N E where it was once very listenable. So what? Madison Indiana has countless commuters who work in greater Cincinnati...the day that the IBOC came on 96.5, those commuters were forced to leave their local station & choose a Cincinnati signal...did they go back to their local on the way back home? Doubtful...I witness on an ongoing basis what happens when the local music stations air a ball game...the radio gets switched & it is often days before it goes back where it was. If a commuter has to switch stations daily, chances are that commuter will write that station off as being more trouble than it's worth--all through no fault of the station! This is with 1% IBOC...imagine what will happen to adjacent channel signals at 10% injection. I tell ya folks, we should dump this IBOC turkey & focus on FMExtra--which covers better, sounds better, costs less, has no licensing fees & creates no interference.

According to the signal map for WORX, I-275 is well outside their protected contour and it is likely that 96.5 bleeds into WORX at that point. When I'm north of Cincinnati and when our local on 103.5 goes off the air, the smooth jazz station on 103.5 can be heard quite well. According to your logic, the 103.5 in Cincinnati interferes with the 103.5 in Columbus.

http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WORX&service=FM&status=L&hours=U

 

[LinoNYC]

Lino said:

AM lost the youth (and most other music listeners) back in the mid-seventies to FM stations that played exactly the same music, had the same formatics and even some of the same DJ's.

Wrong, Lino. If we define "youth" as the 18-24 demo -- and perhaps a handful of kids in the upper end of 12-17 -- AM actually lost that audience to FM beginning in the late Sixties with the implimentation of the 50-50 rule, requiring AM-FM duopolies to be separately programmed at least half the time, and later full-time.

Many stations began experimenting with "underground" rock as early as 1966, and within a couple of years were doing it full-time on FM. It never appealed to me, though I was in the demo, but it worked well with many of my contemporaries.

And it soon filtered down to the high school set at large, at least those who were trying to prove that they were too "cool" to listen to Top 40.

But in the Seventies -- by which time fairly good FM portables were ubiquitous, and aftermarket auto FM was affordable -- true Top 40 came to FM, along with big money, and some new Top FM's finally manged to take away the stodgier AM top 40 stations' audiences. Ditto for country et al.

Of course, this tells me that you don't understand programming ternds, or the social trends that beget them, any better than you understand technology. And the fact that you're practically "the last man standing" in defense of AM IBOC tells us everything we need to know about your understanding of the technical side of radio -- or your lack of it!

Please, save the crap history "lesson" and stick the condecension......I'll be 52 this year and remember the what and when. In the mid sixties I was a model and also did some tv, My Father was a major art dealer here in NYC, my influences were all from adults. When WOR-fm went rock in Aug 1966 I heard about it, it wasn't that interesting at first, they just segued records for two months (no dj's) and weren't stereo 'till later that year.

While most of my contemporaries knew about FM by the late 60s AM's decline was slow and fitfull. WABC saw this and added album cuts for a couple of years (1970- early 72) but the real decline occured in 1974 with the refocused WXLO (former WOR-fm) and the rise of Disco.

What happened then-on is not worth bothering with.

AM lost it's younger audience and it's future because of sound quality.

As for my being "the last man standing" in defense of am iboc, don't confuse that with some sort of victory....the others are just too smart to keep hammering at blockheads on a messageboard.

Lino

 

[dxho]

It's hard for me to ascribe the death of AM to the rise of the 'new' medium of FM in the 60s. It wasn't so much the stereo sound (which I did appreciate)- it was the music AM never played. I would have listened to a phone if that's what it took.

 

[SUPERCASTER]

LinoNYC said:

AM lost it's younger audience and it's future because of sound quality.

Even if that was absolutely true (it isn't) how does HD Radio help?
By cutting AM fidelity in half, adding interference and annoying hiss, then peddling expensive new HD radios to try to restore the lost quality is a "Crazy Eddie" solution. (A quote with which any New Yorker should be able to relate).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yYGoO5imyY
www.pocketcalculatorshow.com/crazyeddie/