So I Was Thinking...

[dbdigital]

Beyond all the HD/IBOC bashing, personal attacks, smartass comments, etc. on this board, I was wondering what the honest opinion was of those of you that regularly post about the future of the AM broadcast band, say ten years from now?

AND, if you were responsible for turning the loss of listeners or interest in the band around, what would you do? That is, from a programming and technical aspect assuming the modern hurdles of terrestrial/impulse noise, areas of the U.S. with poor ground conductivity, bad receivers in modern cars, and lack of content that interest people younger than 40.

As has been mentioned, the first thing is to rid ourselves of the notion that bringing digital sound to AM is going to save it. I have a young co-worker who listens to her favorite music on her cell phone. We aren't raising a nation of audiophiles here. Convenience and "something new" seems to be what motivates them. On the other hand, a few of her friends drive Ford Falcons and Rambler Americans. What was once old is now new again. So a new generation of listeners might discover AM if it's programmed right, they find it on their own and think it's 'cool'.

In this regard, I think AM needs to be where FM was in it's early days before the corporate greedweasels got a hold of it...a place to go to hear music and other 'stuff' mainstream radio, AM at the time, wasn't playing. FM was the place to be if you wanted to hear album cuts, world music, hardcore jazz and left-wing talk.

So AM has to offer unique programming. I don't know how successful it is, but the station in San Francisco airing podcasts is certainly different. The salvation of AM, at least in the short term, may also lie in more local or community programming. Certainly in rural and small communities many AM stations do well and turn a profit. Ethnic programming is also successful.

I suppose this will all be moot as WiMAX becomes more common and internet radio take over. But that's a ways off. For now, programmers need to be more creative to lure new listeners and stop thinking of AM as a poor step child and a dumping ground for programming no one wants to hear.

db

 

[700WLW]

I did read on the Internet that AM talk shows are doing quite well...

 

[dbdigital]

I did read on the Internet that AM talk shows are doing quite well...

True. So we have talk shows, sports, ethnic, religious and local/community as the successful staples of AM. Is that enough to save the AM band? Will it attract younger listeners and does that even matter?

Ofcom, the British FCC, has a long range plan to basically 'blow up' the FM/AM bands as they exist now; ending analog FM broadcasting and allocating the band to new services and converting AM to digital-only audio broadcasting. On the surface, it seems an outrageous idea but in terms of efficient use of the spectrum it makes sense.

Might this be a future for terrestrial radio that the U.S. should consider?

db

 

[700WLW]

But as with here, the UK may have trouble generating enough interest to convince comsumers to buy new digital radios - since Eureka is a failure in Canada, I would hope so in the UK, too...

 

[hipporadio]

Beyond all the HD/IBOC bashing, personal attacks, smartass comments, etc. on this board, I was wondering what the honest opinion was of those of you that regularly post about the future of the AM broadcast band, say ten years from now?

AND, if you were responsible for turning the loss of listeners or interest in the band around, what would you do? That is, from a programming and technical aspect assuming the modern hurdles of terrestrial/impulse noise, areas of the U.S. with poor ground conductivity, bad receivers in modern cars, and lack of content that interest people younger than 40.

Kelly... Yours is a WELL put question... I guess the "AM industry" has been trying to deal with this from as far back as the 80s. I owned TWO AM stations (and two FMs)... We "broke sweat" and "dirtied clothes" building "flat" AM antenna systems to achieve excellant AM transmission. I remember a very old and talented "AM guy" telling me once--"It's 50-percent in the antenna"... So I took his advice--CUSTOM building AM antenna ATUs in stock Kintronics boxes. I remember those days in sleet storms welding the output of our new ATU to the tower, and watching as a tower crew strung-up the folded unipole on one of our "difficult" AM antenna systems. On one station, we had a 70s Harris MW-1 which we TOTALLY rebuilt (the other was a later SX-1 which was "easier")... At the end--both had better then "theoretical" mVs at 1km and outstanding audio. All this--to be rewarded with TERRIBLE recievers save the very few GE SuperRadios, Carvers, and Denon (NRSC) tuners.

Today, I see VERY FEW of these fine engineers in practice--many today seem to aspire to technical excellence by flipping a switch on the I-Buzz PC which (in digital) produces audio reminiscent of RealAudio 2.0 on the net circa 1996 while that once-exceptional analog signal is degraded. The payoff--less then ONE-percent in the metro can hear this audio abortion while that RF signal clobbers FIRST and SECOND-adjacent signals well beyond what the FCC once set as a "distance" point for technical spacing and "predicted interference".

REPEAT AFTER ME (like you're taking the oath in a college frat)--AM DOES NOT EQUAL FM in MANY respects... I doubt the broad public REALLY expects that... WHY has Talk Radio done so well--despite the "FM vs AM syndrome"? I have seen many "surveys" where the public routinely reports the "problem" with AM is PROGRAMMING--Interesting, because TWO decades later we seem to NOW have the same problem with pristine FM radio while MILLIONS of 20 and 30-somethings listen to 128kbps Apple iStore mp3 and 64kbps WMA internet files with NO COMPLAINT about "audio quality"... Are we attempting to hang a wrongly-accused criminal?

The "verdict" may be out on FM IBOC--or the need for it... But in the AM world--it is defective and destructive. The FCC should OUTLAW its use on this "natural resource" known as the AM band!

 

[clouseau]

Hippo,

You are so right. EVERTHING in every survey I have ever seen shows ...

Programming #1.

Band or Fidelity #2

Of course if there are two stations the same then Fidelity wins out.

WHich I guess shows that if FM wants to "Wipe Out" AM , they need to act like AM's best stations.

Fortunately for AM, FM isn't about ready to do that.

Clouseau

 

[SUPERCASTER]

Let me reiterate, Black Shire, that what you call that “over-crisp sound” is not an innate characteristic of FM but an artifact of bad analog processing. And yes, an analog of this form is distortion (if you’ll pardon the pun) is also an artifact of most digital processing.

The following comment really surprised me: “When an FM Disc Jockey would crumple a piece of paper within range of the microphone, it sounded like a crackling flame from a wooden match--that's an example of the "over-crisp" FM sound that I find grating. The same sound on an AM station sounded...well, normal, like a piece of paper being crumpled and nothing more or different.”

In fact, with ungimmicked FM, the opposite is true. As Lawrence Lessing put it in his biography of Maj. Armstrong, the inventor’s first public demonstration of FM in Nov. 1935 made the difference very clear. One of Armstrong’s colleagues, broadcasting in ungimmicked mono FM to the lecture hall over his amateur station, didn’t stop with demonstrating the superiority of FM for both music and voice. He also demonstrated that two sound effects widely used in network radio drama – crinkling cellophane to simulate the sound of a raging fire, and pouring a glass of water close to a mike to created the sound of a waterfall, were far from convincing over FM.

So why did you hear what you heard in the early Seventies, and why do you still hear something wrong with FM today?

By 1970, most FM stations had both converted to stereo and converted to solid state technology, at least in the studio. What’s more many records were being mastered with solid state electronics by that time. Let’s consider the later factor first.

In Sept. 1972, Russell Hamm delivered his landmark paper, “Tubes vs Transistors: Is There an Audible Difference?” at the Audio Engineering Society convention in New York. He found two chief differences: (1) the spectral distribution of harmonics, and (2) innately less linear transistor amplifiers (and even more non-linear IC op-amps) used excessively large amount of inverse feedback. The latter yielded good results on steady-sate test signals, but allowed the amplifiers to produce gross amounts of short-term “transient intermodulation distortion,” or TIM, making the reproduction harsh and grating to the early on real-world musical sounds, especially those with lots of transient energy. (Hamm’s paper appeared the the Journal of the AES, Vol. XXI, No. 4, May 1973.)

Solid state sound began to improve markedly in the 1980’s. But I surmise that your early exposure to the poor quality of an early solid state amplifier handling high frequency content made a lasting impression.
As for the continuing problem of harsh FM sound, that’s a result of most stations’ unenlightened approach to audio processing.

Some observers were noting this back in the Seventies. I’ll just quote below from a source I think you’d have trouble finding: a guest editorial in “The Audio Amateur” (VIII: 4; Dec. 1977) by Roy H. Trumbull, under the title, “The Decline and Fall of FM.”

A chief engineer at an FM station, Trumbull notes that the problem began when stereo both made FM stations suddenly look financially viable, and forced the stations to cut back slightly on the modulation levels to accommodate the stereo subcarrier. This gave rise to all sorts of non-linear limiters, and even exciters with compromised frequency response curves that barely met the existing lax FCC audio standards.
He concluded his essay with this paragraph:

“One morning at 4 a.m. I was driving along on a trip to get some parts so I could get my 10kW stereo transmitter back on the air before 6 a.m. As I rolled along I was listening to our old unlimited auxiliary transmitter with its exceptional low end response. The music sounded so good and so much like the sound I’d grown up with that I began to wonder: ‘Is this trip really necessary?’”

NOTE TO SUPERCASTER: Nobody is more opposed to iNiquity’s trash technology that I am, let’s be fair about one thing: The capture effect that you cited allows almost any FM receiver to reject a desired station’s own I-BUZZ signals, since these are more than 20 dB below the level of the analog FM signal (and even a terrible FM receiver has a capture ratio of 6 dB or less). The problem comes when you’re trying to get a distant, weak signal on a receiver with very good selectivity, and can’t because the I-BUZZ from a nearby first-adjacent is actually jamming the station you want.
I’ve never heard of I-BUZZ interfering with mono reception of the host analog signal, though it can ruin stereo reception on certain solid-state tuners with very wide IF’s and keyed oscillators that produce a replacement 38-kc carrier with lots of harmonic content (see “HD Radio Self-Noise,” http://users.tns.net/~bb/hdrsn.htm).

I never said HD digital interfered with a strong mono FM signal, just the stereo subcarrier, adjacent channel jamming, and more noise when tuning from station to station. How many FM's are broadcasting only in mono?
Not many, by my count.

 

[radioskeptic]

So I was thinking… Let’s get back to Kelly’s original question.

First, on the issue of programming, I’ll quote dbdigital (Reply No. 20):

“I have a young co-worker who listens to her favorite music on her cell phone. We aren't raising a nation of audiophiles here. Convenience and "something new" seems to be what motivates them. On the other hand, a few of her friends drive Ford Falcons and Rambler Americans. What was once old is now new again. So a new generation of listeners might discover AM if it's programmed right, they find it on their own and think it's 'cool'.

“In this regard, I think AM needs to be where FM was in it's early days before the corporate greed weasels got hold of it...a place to go to hear music and other 'stuff' mainstream radio, AM at the time, wasn't playing. FM was the place to be if you wanted to hear album cuts, world music, hardcore jazz and left-wing talk.”
I couldn’t agree more. And FM ignores the older demographics too. (See Phyllis Stark’s column, “Why Dad Hates the Radio, And Other Stories, ”posted this week at http://www.radio-info.com/content/column.php?rcID=19.)

But to make music formats work, we’ll have to make AM audio as good as possible -- for the analog listener -- because, as Tom Wells has pointed out in other threads on this board, the medium wave band is inherently ill-suited to digital transmissions. So the first step would be turning off the IBOC!

As for analog AM stereo, it would be better to abandon C-Quam, with its platform wobble and vulnerablitiy to multipath and phase problems, and use Leonard Kahn’s independent sideband system instead, since C-Quam receivers could still get Kahn stereo broadcasts in mono. And forget the AM mask for daytime broadcasting, too. There’s no reason to limit audio bandwidth during the day.

The stereo difference AM (actually double sideband suppressed carrier) signal on analog stereo FM has response to 15 kHz, and the (suppressed) subcarrier frequency is only 38 kHz. So it’s clearly no problem to generate that kind of audio bandwidth in the AM band. The problem is with some antenna systems.

In Reply No. 24, hipporadio said, “I remember a very old and talented "AM guy" telling me once —‘It's 50-percent in the antenna’...”

That’s so true. Antennas, like any other components with reactance, have a “quality factor,” or “Q.” And this is a much more significant factor in AM than in FM. An FM station at the bottom of the band, broadcasting only an analog signal, has sideband components no more than 0.115 percent above and below the carrier frequency. With IBOC, all the energy in the antenna is no more than 0.171 percent off the carrier. BUT AN AM STATION WITH A CARRIER FREQUENCY OF 1500 KHZ AND 15-KHZ MONO ANALOG AUDIO HAS SIDEBAND COMPONENTS UP TO 1 PERCENT ABOVE AND BELOW ITS CARRIER, AND ONE OPERATING AT 600 KHZ HAS COMPONENTS UP TO 2.5 PERCENT OFF ITS CARRIER FREQUENCY.

And that’s a big difference. Obviously, if the Q is the same, an AM antenna designed for a low frequency will have less audio bandwidth than an equivalent antenna for a higher frequency. But with good design, it’s still possible to get good bandwidth at the low end of the band. After all, if they can transmit I-BUZZ -- with its 50-kHz of noise and distortion -- at all, 15-kHz audio should be a snap.

The only real problem is with directional patterns, which can complicate things even more, especially at the low end. But even in the worst cases, fairly flat response to 6 or 7 kHz (within the directional pattern) should be possible.

At night, however, it would be wise to restrict audio to 5 kHz or even little less, with a steep roll-off beyond that point in order to minimize adjacent channel “monkey chatter.” AM has no protected contour, but the “principal community contour” for AM’s 74 dBu (while it’s only 70 dBu for FM’s), and distant adjacents’ skywaves can be a problem beyond the 74 dBu! . A 7 kHz component from a first adjacent is only 3 kHz from your carrier, and creates a 3-kHz noise! Let’s eliminate those noises by restricting nighttime, and only nitgttime, bandwidth.

But these changes in broadcast standards would be useless without the availability of high quality receivers with two, or perhaps three, bandwidth positions for AM.

And all of that would be for naught unless the FCC amends Part 15 to cover devices that cause easily preventable interference to AM.

Case in point: An engineer friend found that AM on his new car radio practically useless when the car’s engine was running, but it worked very well with the engine off. The noise was coming through the electrical system from microprocessors under the hood. With some effort, he was able to locate the culprits and, through shielding and bypassing them, eliminate the noise with compromising their function. BUT WHY WASN’T THAT DONE AT THE FACTORY? And why doesn’t the FCC require that? Just more proof that AM gets no respect!

With better, more varied programming, aimed at currently underserved audiences, and with the above technical improvements – and with a promotional campaign costing perhaps one-tenth of what the industry is now spending to promote a medium-wave digital system that sounds worse than the primitive internet audio of a decade or more ago – AM could have a bright future.

But without those things, it’s probably doomed.

 

[700WLW]

"Case in point: An engineer friend found that AM on his new car radio practically useless when the car’s engine was running, but it worked very well with the engine off. The noise was coming through the electrical system from microprocessors under the hood. With some effort, he was able to locate the culprits and, through shielding and bypassing them, eliminate the noise with compromising their function. BUT WHY WASN’T THAT DONE AT THE FACTORY? And why doesn’t the FCC require that? Just more proof that AM gets no respect!"

That's interesting - last night I was in Rockville, Md. around 6:00 P.M. to 7:00 P.M., waiting for one of my kids, with the car turned off; I scanned across the AM band, and could easily get WLW and WSB. When the traffic light would change, about 100 feet away, I would get electrical interference, but with the car running (2005 Toyota Matrix) there is never any electrical interference. I had my $10 hand-held Sony ICF-S10MK2, and sitting under street lights, all I could get was electrical interference; at home, this is never a problem, unless the dimmer light switch is on, or I get too close to the VCR, or TV. I thought there must be some shielding/electonics for the car radio, but obvioulsy, not for hand-held radios. Wasn't there some related problem, with in-dash HD radios ?

 

[Kelly]

Many of you had great responses, thanks.

In a little radio oriented newsletter from a friend/vendor of transmission equipment I read an interesting line that made me chuckle:

"Every time there is a funeral in the U.S., AM radio loses another listener."

 

[arnoldevns]

I'm going to try to answer the original question.
1. Put a lot more local programming on the air. That could be more talk shows, more news, more sports, or more local DJ's playing music programmed locally for the local audience. Whatever is done, it needs to be local and it needs to be good.

2. Promote, promote, promote! Run ads on TV, plaster the market with billboards, yard signs, e-mail, lapel pins, mailings, etc.. Don't let up after the first six months, keep it going. Run contests, do anything you can to make sure EVERYONE knows you're out there. Stations just don't do that much anymore that I've seen.

3. Regardless of how you decide to broadcast your station (HD or not) make it sound as good and clean as possible. There are way too many sloppy broadcasters out there - regardless of whether they're in HD. Some stations sound like they're piped in on a tin can and string. If the sound is not good to the listener, they won't stick around no matter what you broadcast.

 

[700WLW]

I'm going to try to answer the original question.
1. Put a lot more local programming on the air. That could be more talk shows, more news, more sports, or more local DJ's playing music programmed locally for the local audience. Whatever is done, it needs to be local and it needs to be good.

2. Promote, promote, promote ! Run ads on TV, plaster the market with billboards, yard signs, e-mail, lapel pins, mailings, etc.. Don't let up after the first six months, keep it going. Run contests, do anything you can to make sure EVERYONE knows you're out there. Stations just don't do that much anymore that I've seen.

3. Regardless of how you decide to broadcast your station (HD or not) make it sound as good and clean as possible. There are way too many sloppy broadcasters out there - regardless of whether they're in HD. Some stations sound like they're piped in on a tin can and string. If the sound is not good to the listener, they won't stick around no matter what you broadcast.

"Promote, promote, promote !"

What a joke - I even read on another board that HD Radio should be promoted at state fairs ! Any "technology" that has to be constantly promoted and "pushed" onto the public isn't worth a damn ! This really cracks me up ! HD Radio is such a loser !

 

[Chuck]

"Promote, promote, promote !"

What a joke - I even read on another board that HD Radio should be promoted at state fairs ! Any "technology" that has to be constantly promoted and "pushed" onto the public isn't worth a damn ! This really cracks me up ! HD Radio is such a loser !

That's not really an issue of just HD radio. Radio has always been a business of promotion. To be successful stations must promote themselves. If they are any good, big stations throw money and unsold avails at promotion. Small stations tend to use guerilla marketing techniques. Good promotion is part of what makes radio exciting.

Back in the 1950's, I remember when a major radio station did a remote for a week at my hometown's local super market. They hauled in a trailer that had a studio built in to it. That was amazing stuff to a 12 year old. They did the morning show and PM drive from the parking lot of our local A&P!. Every kid in town went there on their bicycle to see the broadcasts.

I was not a fan of that particular station before that event, but after the visit, I kept my radio glued to that station. You see, I'd actually seen the people whose voices came out of the speaker of my six transistor radio. That was very cool. And it worked.

By their nature, radio stations need promotion to be really successful. Good promotion is very hard to do. Stations that are great at it become the legends.

 

[700WLW]

I am not in the broadcast business, but any technology, or industry, that has to constantly promote itself, obvioulsy, has issues - just look at what happened with the PS3, people were lined up days before it came out; no one was lined up at Radio Shack, the night before Black Friday. I just think, this whole HD Radio thing is such a joke, and can't see how anyone thinks it is going to be successful.

 

[Chuck]

Promoting your radio station and HD radio are separate issues. Successful radio takes promotion. HD radio takes a miracle of physics.

 

[Tom Wells]

Sucessful technologies require promotion no more than addictive drugs need promotion.
People (edit)-ing built their own radios ( several times over! ) when the tech was new!

They needed no prompting. The strengths of the medium remain. It becomes a matter of faith and personal integrity
within the medium.

It is the bean counters who call into question the valuation, prompting misguided industry perception-devaluation.
And HD IBOC is a "mode", but not radio, unless born into its own private spectrum.
Its prescence clouds the continued usefulness of AM MW, which will persist whether we choose to make use of it or not.

 

[arnoldevns]

I'm going to try to answer the original question.
1. Put a lot more local programming on the air. That could be more talk shows, more news, more sports, or more local DJ's playing music programmed locally for the local audience. Whatever is done, it needs to be local and it needs to be good.

2. Promote, promote, promote ! Run ads on TV, plaster the market with billboards, yard signs, e-mail, lapel pins, mailings, etc.. Don't let up after the first six months, keep it going. Run contests, do anything you can to make sure EVERYONE knows you're out there. Stations just don't do that much anymore that I've seen.

3. Regardless of how you decide to broadcast your station (HD or not) make it sound as good and clean as possible. There are way too many sloppy broadcasters out there - regardless of whether they're in HD. Some stations sound like they're piped in on a tin can and string. If the sound is not good to the listener, they won't stick around no matter what you broadcast.

"Promote, promote, promote !"

What a joke - I even read on another board that HD Radio should be promoted at state fairs ! Any "technology" that has to be constantly promoted and "pushed" onto the public isn't worth a damn ! This really cracks me up ! HD Radio is such a loser !

You really should re-read what I posted. I was not suggesting a way to fix HD radio. I was suggesting ways to fix AM radio as a whole - which is what the original question was about.