STOPIBOC.COM NEWLY REVISED, INCLUDES COMMENTS AND CONFESSIONS

[Savage]

As if anyone needed more proof that IBOC is being measured for its casket, you can find it at newly revised www.stopiboc.com.

Be sure to check out the new "comments and confessions" page, a smattering of over 200 expressions of alarm and disgust from industry professionals about the scourge of HD Radio. And for those who dismiss HD opponents as "Luddites," "naysayers" and - most pathologically hated of all - "DXers," the list of StopIBOC Alliance members includes:

Over 200 industry pros including contract engineers, consulting engineers and other station personnel.

The chief of a major market 1-A 50kw station (NOT Watt Hairston, BTW.)

Several members of stations owned by the HD Alliance, who dare not oppose HD within their own companies for fear of retribution by top-level management.

So you can see: not only does HD threaten existing use of radio by the overwhelming majority of analog listeners, it's creating dissension and morale problems at stations.

 

[sbe1]

If it's going to be buried, be sure to pound a silver stake through it's heart so it cannot come back again. Maybe a cremation would be better

 

[Carmine5]

I suspect that one of the engineers who has entered your "confessional box" is from Crawford.

He mentions that his employer is "an avid IBOC supporter and has implemented 24-hour HD on its AM stations." He also says that his employer is not Citadel. Plus I can't imagine that all of the engineers who work for Crawford are thrilled with IBOC, in spite of what they say in their newsletters.

The radio engineers I've talked to are like artists. They're proud of the quality of the signal they are able to craft and jealously guard it against anything that would degrade it. So I imagine that it must rankle any of them to see their signal degraded by interference, either from another station or by their own plant--particularly by their own plant because of some corporate policy.

C5

 

[KB1OKL]

Great reading, this is part of a great one even though it's an FM:

Turning it off of course results in a flodd of phone
calls and e-mails....NOT!. I shut down two weeks ago....not a single
person has called. We cover 5 states with the FM....not one call. All
I'm doing is making Ibiquity money and paying extra power cost.

;D

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Realistically - there is huge momentum behind this thing. We will be saddled with it for years to come. In about 20 years, the numbers of stations using it will be dwindling similar to AM stereo today. That is probably how long we will have iHash on AM and FM (after the rubber stamp from the FCC). I'd like to think things would change under a new administration, but neither Democans nor Republicrats care about the issue, and whether it is Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum in the white house, we will have more lawyers appointed to the FCC that rubber stamp whatever iBiquity wants.

 

[Tom Wells]

WBBM-AM 780 in Chicago is crystal clear this morning on my return from Fargo.... :

 

[Savage]

With respect, rbruce - I'm not so sure. I know that we're still winding down through the half-life cycle of C-QUAM, but there is an important difference. C-

 

[Savage]

....phooey. Hate when it does that.

....QUAM is relatively benign. It doesn't hurt pre-existing mono service, represents no maintenance headaches such as constantly diddling with the delay to match analog to digital and firmware updates, and once bought doesn't cost anything. It also generates no listener complaints from self-interference.

I predict that HD will die a quicker death because of the interference, annoyance and cost. Sooner or later operators are gonna have that moment of truth in the GM's office: "Once again, just WHY are we doing HD Radio??"

Plus there's the emotional component. I think HD is the most hated technical "development" in the history of the radio industry. From years of conversations with CEs and consultants, I would observe that the vast majority of them don't just want to power the iBiquity Decepticon down. They want to yank it from the rack, hurl it into the parking lot, smash it repeatedly with a maul and back over it a few times with the station van. They want to make sure it doesn't regenerate itself like "Christine."

 

[Savage]

Forgot to mention: every indicator says that station conversions have just about stopped, no major countries are adopting IBOC as a digital standard (except Mexico, regionally and tenatively, because of fears of competition from US border stations) and the radio sales are abysmal. That means iBiquity's revenue stream is shrinking, not growing, and the company hasn't done anything but burn through capital at an accelerating rate.

When iBiquity goes banko, who is going to support the whopping 1700 or so Decepticons out there?

 

[rbrucecarter5]

When iBiquity goes banko, who is going to support the whopping 1700 or so Decepticons out there?

The companies selling the equipment will maintain it. I hope a lot of your predictions are right, but the way most people live is paycheck to paycheck in deep debt - and they won't stand up to the GM of the station as long as his mind is set on HD.

The power increase is a different matter. First, stations spend a couple of hundred thousand to convert to HD. Some of those installations are now 5 years old, and the financial benefit to the station is - what? A few dozen to a few hundred HD listeners out of tens of thousands? No ads until now on HD-2 FM, self interference on AM, plus seek / scan receivers that lock onto noise.

Now - the power increase looms. But for the vast majority of stations, it is a major equipment overhaul, and another couple of hundred thousand dollars, increased energy bill, the potential to self-jam FM in the image of AM. As HD costs loom close to half a million dollars for some stations, for a few dozen or few hundred listeners - I don't see even the most ardent supporters of HD spending more money on it.

I just wish that they are quick to shut down. I enjoy a couple of HD-2 stations in the area, but in my opinion they are doomed because - when they go down for a couple of days - nobody notices but me. I hope the HD-2 channels live on as streams as streaming audio comes to cars.

 

[Play Freebird]

When iBiquity goes banko, who is going to support the whopping 1700 or so Decepticons out there?

You'll probably see some IBOC encoders for sale cheap in the flea market at the Rochester Hamfest in a couple of years. Salvage the power supply, gut the rest, and use the box for a ham project.

I've been told that the first-generation "Dexstars" have been declared obsolete by the manufacturer (after just four years), so some of these may have already been taken out of service.

Remember the days when a transmitter was designed to run for 25+ years? And with proper care, could operate reliably much longer? AFAIK, the alternate-main analog transmitters at Channel 10 in Philadelphia are well over 30 years old and still look like new. When I spend money on a big ticket equipment item, that's what I expect.

 

[Tom Wells]

This afternoon on the way home I noticed another Chicago AM had just turned off the iboc for some reason since this morning.
WSCR 670, is now cleread up...
I don't when 1390 gave up, but they're clean now, as are 1300 disney whatever, and 1690 WVON.....
Since WLS 890 turns theirs off at sunset, there now only one night HD AM .....

AM 720 is the now the last AM HD night stinker in Chicago.

And they're hissing on the Cubs game.

 

[4dude]

I shut down two weeks ago....not a single
person has called. We cover 5 states with the FM....not one call.

Good for you,im proud of you for realizing this is nothing but garbage compromising the airwaves!!

I hope your station continues to grow... Do you guys stream?? (I think we should all listen )

 

[rbrucecarter5]

AM 720 is the now the last AM HD night stinker in Chicago.

And they're hissing on the Cubs game.

Now THAT I really don't understand - a large number of people take radios to the game - and the seven second delay would be intolerable for people listening in the stands!

 

[Savage]

Most AM-HD stations turn the IBOC exciter off for ball games. Not here in Rochester, though, where we share the Red Wings minor-league schedule with a secondary CC station. We get the daytime games, and after every one, we get heartfelt thank-you calls and e-mails from listeners, expressing gratitude that we don't use that **x##x!** delay thing.

Curiously, even though the CC AM on 1280 turns IBOC off at night because of antenna bandwidth issues, they don't dump the analog delay, even for the ball games. Guess it's too much work.

 

[TheBigA]

they don't dump the analog delay, even for the ball games. Guess it's too much work.

I can't tell you how many times I've been watching a live sports event on TV, and heard plain as day the loud expletive shouted by a player or manager. One night, a fan found one of the crowd mics at a game and took the opportunity to run through his complete obsene vocabulary. It took a few minutes before the audio engineer could isolate the offending microphone and shut it off. All through it, the announcers stumbled through, trying to make the best of a bad situation.

This is not to say that's why they leave delay on. Who knows if someone's manning a dump button back at the studio. Probably not.

 

[audioguy]

WBBM is still clean as of tonight (has been for several days)! 8)

As far as I can tell, WSCR is turning their polluter on and off, seemingly randomly.

WGN is still hissing away. Carollo loves it.

 

[ve3jf]

This afternoon on the way home I noticed another Chicago AM had just turned off the iboc for some reason since this morning.
WSCR 670, is now cleread up...
I don't when 1390 gave up, but they're clean now, as are 1300 disney whatever, and 1690 WVON.....
Since WLS 890 turns theirs off at sunset, there now only one night HD AM .....

AM 720 is the now the last AM HD night stinker in Chicago.

And they're hissing on the Cubs game.

WGN went on record as opposing nighttime AM HD operation in comments filed with the FCC, and now they're the only Chicago station doing it? Oh, the irony...

 

[Savage]

I've heard the argument that the encoding delay imposed by IBOC "is really a good idea" because of alleged incidents involving obscenities from fans at ballgames, so you have a de facto protective delay. It's a specious argument, not only because it's ridiculous to state the baseball sounds SOOO much better in digital, but for reasons I'll get to in a moment, no practical degree of obscenity protection exists. I know on-air nasties happen sometimes, but I've never actually heard it - not once. This is from a station that carries over 100 college hoops games, two or three dozen college football games, minor league baseball, basketball and lacrosse....season after season.

The problem of crowd mikes picking up obscenities can easily be minimized by careful placement of those mics.
You suspend them where the ambient stadium noise tends to cover up any single voice.

I know several years back there was an incident with the Detroit Tigers' "bleacher creatures" where a group of fans got organized enough (despite having achieved a high level of collective intoxication) to have scores of fans chanting in very loud unison, a lewdly graphic parody of the beer commercial "tastes great, less filling!" (Something like "eat ****, **** you!") This was somewhat vexing briefly to WJR but they just turned off the crowd mic until the rowdies could be ejected.

It took the audio engineer "a few minutes" to isolate the mic picking up the obscenities? Some audio engineer. I'd fire him immediately if he didn't get it off in twenty seconds.

Your assumption is correct that the average sports board operator isn't going to listen to the program closely enough to catch and dump a sudden expletive, but even if he does, the obscenity will still air. Think about it. The delay is generated by the iBiquity Decepticon out at the transmitter, not an obscenity delay at the studio. Last I checked HD exciters don't have "DUMP" buttons. So even if there's HD-imposed delay the f-bomb will still air because the op doesn't have any means of getting back to real-time. (But it will sound SO MUCH BETTER in pristine digital!)

If live-sports fan obscenities are such a problem, why don't analog stations routinely use delay on games?

 

[clouseau]

Re: HD Delay

I've heard the argument that the encoding delay imposed by IBOC "is really a good idea" because of alleged incidents involving obscenities from fans at ballgames, so you have a de facto protective delay. It's a specious argument, not only because it's ridiculous to state the baseball sounds SOOO much better in digital, but for reasons I'll get to in a moment, no practical degree of obscenity protection exists.

Savage is totally correct here. The "HD Delay" isn't really usable as an obscenity delay because you can't practically "Dump to live". You may know your going to broadcast a no no, but you can't really do anything about it besides shut down. I suspect, with the HD delay at the transmitter site, most stations could not simply "Dump to straight through analog", quickly. While it is technically possible, you really should use a separate delay, IMHO.

Clouseau