The end is near and then...

[clouseau]

For the better part of a year we have been subjected to the ever increasing "Noise Floor" of the "Buzz Saw, destructive, defective, Iniquity" folks, telling us how there is going to be doom, gloom, lawsuits, public outrage, etc... when nighttime HD starts on AM. And now here we are just a few days away and my how the spin has changed.

I've seen numerous references in the last few days about how "Most stations won't turn it on at night", "Don't look for it to be bad YET because only a scattered few stations have the capability" or my personal favorite from the conspiracy whack jobs, "Ibiquity & Broadcasters KNOW it will be terrible, so they're going to phase it in over time and hope no one notices." Right... I spent all this money on this system, but I'll just turn it off for half the day. I can see THAT happening...

Kinda reminds me of the evangelical preacher that definitly proclaims the end of the world will be on Sept, 14th, 4 years from now, so support this church now and send in your money. Now the date is approaching and we've got the caveats. I even read "If you are expecting a big difference when you tune around on the AM band on the first night, you'll be disappointed." Isn't that what Tom Ray said??? Some of the "Doom & Gloom" folks seem to now be predicting there will be fewer problems than the pro crowd predicts. I for one am still a little concerned, but I haven't changed my position. Others seem to have rolled over faster than Britney Spears at a Las Vegas Nightclub.


Then again, we also have that New York "34 db listening" getting top 10 ratings, so I guess anything is possible.

Clouseau

 

[calstymes]

clouseau aptly repeated:

my personal favorite from the conspiracy whack jobs, "Ibiquity & Broadcasters KNOW it will be terrible, so they're going to phase it in over time and hope no one notices."

1) I am not a whack job (well by some definitions) but thank you for compliment!
2) Engineering personnel at the large radio companies DO know that the AM broadcast band is going to sound decidedly different when they leave HD on at night and they WILL phase it in over time. Now maybe they'll ultimately decide to do it all at once anyway but it will be on some evening when nobody is expecting it and it WON'T be on Friday, September 14.

Kinda reminds me of the evangelical preacher that definitly proclaims the end of the world will be on Sept, 14th, 4 years from now, so support this church now and send in your money.

Now don't be an alarmist! Not much of anything is going to happen on September 14. Not enough stations are going to keep their HD on after sunset.

Now the date is approaching and we've got the caveats. I even read "If you are expecting a big difference when you tune around on the AM band on the first night, you'll be disappointed." Isn't that what Tom Ray said??? Some of the "Doom & Gloom" folks seem to now be predicting there will be fewer problems than the pro crowd predicts.

Ok, you obviously still think that everyone is lighting up HD at night all at once and nothing is going to convince you otherwise. It's ok. It makes no difference to me.

Hopefully from your listening post in 5-land you'll realize that this won't be the case, at least with the stations owned by the large radio conglomerates. (I would hope that) you will know this by Saturday morning.

 

[Chuck]

I haven't seen a recent HD-AM scoreboard, but the last I looked there weren't that many AM's actually on the air. Perhaps there are a few hundred? There is something like 4700+ licensed AM stations in the US. Just by numbers, the evening of September 15 will be an non-event to most people, at least as far as radio is concerned.

 

[clouseau]

1) I am not a whack job (well by some definitions) but thank you for compliment!

No, I'm afraid not. Your posts are missing the obligatory "Buzz Saw, destructive, defective, Iniquity". You also are devoid of the secondary characteristic "problematic, obsolete, needless or 'the Titanic 2000 of broadcasting'". You just don't quite qualify

'the Titanic 2000 of broadcasting'. I don't care who you are... THAT's Funny!!

2) Engineering personnel at the large radio companies DO know that the AM broadcast band is going to sound decidedly different when they leave HD on at night and they WILL phase it in over time. Now maybe they'll ultimately decide to do it all at once anyway but it will be on some evening when nobody is expecting it and it WON'T be on Friday, September 14.

The Clear Channel guy I know does not have any AM HD responsibility so he did not know of any Corp decision on this one way or another. When pressed by me about "Doesn't this seem weird you wouldn't have head anything," he replied, "Not Really". Strange company.

I would figure that if a station has night facilities which match day HD facilities, they would leave it on. However MANY of the stations do NOT have their night plants ready to go. So I would suspect you ARE correct. We will have far fewer NIGHT HD's than Day. I question how many who are "Ready" will hold back, though.

Now don't be an alarmist! Not much of anything is going to happen on September 14. Not enough stations are going to keep their HD on after sunset.

I've heard that somewhere.

Ok, you obviously still think that everyone is lighting up HD at night all at once and nothing is going to convince you otherwise. It's ok. It makes no difference to me.

Now don't get testy. I'm merely pointing out what we agree is going to happen. Not a whole lot.

Hopefully from your listening post in 5-land you'll realize that this won't be the case, at least with the stations owned by the large radio conglomerates. (I would hope that) you will know this by Saturday morning.

We will all know Saturday morning. BTW, you do know I used to use my Ham Call sign in my Sig, right? I'm not very hard to figure out.

All The Best

Clouseau <- Not the poster's "Real" name

 

[4dude]

Enough stations have it and will keep it on 24/7 unfortunetly to screw up the whole band......

 

[semoochie]

There are 3 stations and 1 more expected in the next week that are HD on AM in my area. The flamethower is ready to go and the other 3 don't have to change patterns. I expect all 4 to just stay on after the 14th.

 

[Tom Wells]

WLS 890 in Chicago will be interesting to watch. They have been shutting off the HD about an hour before the others at sundown.
I can't think of a good reason why, unless 880 in NY has been impacted already. I have heard WLS booming in like a local
many times in late afternoons/sunset in CT, NH, NY, VA.

Maybe they won't be running it at night. Has everybody got a good radio to watch the train wreck?
I am saddled with a really poor radio this week, and may be on a long drive home when the fun starts.
At least I'll hear it with the average crappy radio as most Americans, not the "much better" AM radios I have chosen to own.
This vehicle's radio has OK high end response but has only half the sensitivity I consider "normal".
It sounds like it really needs the AM trimmer cap adjusted, but I am becoming aware that such things don't exist in new vehicle radios,
and we should all apparently just be happy to have an AM section that's effectivley broken when it's new.

I have a fine view from my place in the handbasket. I'll probably be in darkest Wisconsin when this hits.

 

[RememberWHEN]

Regarding WLS & night operation of IBOC: Talked to an upmost reliable source yesterday while in Chicago and they are indeed going with it at night. I asked the source to tell me his candid opinion of IBOC, if he felt comfortable doing that. I quote, "On FM, I consider IBOC bad science. On AM, I consider IBOC science fiction."

 

[calstymes]

clouseau verily posted:

1) I am not a whack job (well by some definitions) but thank you for compliment!

No, I'm afraid not. Your posts are missing the obligatory "Buzz Saw, destructive, defective, Iniquity". You also are devoid of the secondary characteristic "problematic, obsolete, needless or 'the Titanic 2000 of broadcasting'". You just don't quite qualify.

Dag nabbit!

The Clear Channel guy I know does not have any AM HD responsibility so he did not know of any Corp decision on this one way or another. When pressed by me about "Doesn't this seem weird you wouldn't have head anything," he replied, "Not Really". Strange company.

Nope. Not strange at all.

Ok. Here's what you can tell your friend at Clear Channel who doesn't seem to know what is going on at the very topmost engineering level of the company.

Tell him that the reason he hasn't heard anything is because their top engineering guy(s) is(are) trying to figure out a good "strategy" for starting up AM HD at night without pissing off the entire country. I'll let you conjecture on what that might mean.

I would figure that if a station has night facilities which match day HD facilities, they would leave it on. However MANY of the stations do NOT have their night plants ready to go. So I would suspect you ARE correct. We will have far fewer NIGHT HD's than Day. I question how many who are "Ready" will hold back, though.

As I said before, many will be "holding back". Being "ready" makes no difference whatsoever.

Ok, you obviously still think that everyone is lighting up HD at night all at once and nothing is going to convince you otherwise. It's ok. It makes no difference to me.

Now don't get testy.

Me testy? With you? Never! You are a great sport and you don't brag. Two great things in my book!

I'm merely pointing out what we agree is going to happen. Not a whole lot.

Yes, but for obviously different reasons.

Hopefully from your listening post in 5-land you'll realize that this won't be the case, at least with the stations owned by the large radio conglomerates. (I would hope that) you will know this by Saturday morning.

We will all know Saturday morning.

Yes you will know. I won't know, however, because I won't be be listening. I don't really care and I am not in a position to listen.

BTW, you do know I used to use my Ham Call sign in my Sig, right? I'm not very hard to figure out.

No actually I didn't know that. I don't know your amateur radio callsign. Another entirely different non-ham individual (one who has never posted here) informed me as to your whereabouts.

RememberWHEN reported:

Regarding WLS & night operation of IBOC: Talked to an upmost reliable source yesterday while in Chicago and they are indeed going with it at night.

Hey, it's Citadel (formerly Disney, CapCities and ABC)! What would you expect? They have always marched to the sound of their own drums.

I asked the source to tell me his candid opinion of IBOC, if he felt comfortable doing that. I quote, "On FM, I consider IBOC bad science. On AM, I consider IBOC science fiction."

Fascinating reading! No doubt there will be people here who say that you made that up. So be it. I know you're telling the truth!

 

[K4WRF]

quote, "On FM, I consider IBOC bad science. On AM, I consider IBOC science fiction."

I can confirm that quote with one small correction "On AM, I consider IBOC BAD science fiction".

w/

 

[4dude]

I cant believe all these idiotic stations are going to muck up the AM band FOR WHAT????????

No one listening in DX land is going to be able to hear them!! (Most stations IBOC pilot wont be strong enough) So the only thing it is going to do is: SCREW UP OUR ANALOG LISTENING AND THAT SUCKS!!!!!!!

 

[semoochie]

It's been 2 hours and 11 minutes on the east coast. Does anyone hear anything yet?

 

[LinoNYC]

As of 4:10am here in NYC only WOR is digital.

The NYC iboc AMs are WNYC 820, WFAN 660, WOR 710, WCBS-am 880

Stations that seem to have discountinued iboc: WPAT-am 930, WZRC 1480?, WADO 1280 -off since the beginning of the year.

Interestingly WINS 1010 is off-air perhaps they are getting their plant ready for iboc.

Lino

 

[calstymes]

LinoNYC reported:

As of 4:10am here in NYC only WOR is digital.

Fascinating! I tried to tell you.

The NYC iboc AMs are WNYC 820, WFAN 660, WOR 710, WCBS-am 880

Stations that seem to have discountinued iboc: WPAT-am 930, WZRC 1480?, WADO 1280 -off since the beginning of the year.

Fascinating!

Interestingly WINS 1010 is off-air perhaps they are getting their plant ready for iboc.

Perhaps they are.

 

[Savage]

So: after FOUR years, the iBiquity (THINK that's right) cabal has converted a rip-roaring 7 AM stations to IBOC, three of which have already turned it off, in market #1. And my records show 22 AMs licensed to NYC, plus 26 more in Long Island, Poughkeepsie-Kingston, and Middletown-Monticello NY/NJ.

Well, well, well! Quite a success story!

And like the Cox AMs, WHAT, KFI and other cases, the reasons why station management is trying The Second Coming Of AM Radio and then are rejecting the system....remain a little murky. I'm SURE it has to do with...well, nobody wants to pee-in-the-picnic-basket-of-progress?

Personally I'm going with: IBOC sounds like crap, doesn't work well in digital mode, and degrades analog reception unacceptably. But that's just ME, right? (Explains over 6000 reads/300 posts on this board concerning the IBOC-AM controversy in the past month. To say nothing of the coverage in RW, Inside Radio, fybush.com, and local daily paper here.)

 

[LinoNYC]

So: after FOUR years, the iBiquity (THINK that's right) cabal has converted a rip-roaring 7 AM stations to IBOC, three of which have already turned it off, in market #1.

It's actually near 5 years (WOR) first in 2002.

Of the three that turned it off, only one, WADO is a bit of a surprise they are 50K w/new plant.

The other two are 10Ks with relatively weak signals and their ethnic audience probably is more inclined to be listening on a beat-up boombox in a commercial kitchen.

And my records show 22 AMs licensed to NYC, plus 26 more in Long Island, Poughkeepsie-Kingston, and Middletown-Monticello NY/NJ.

The real point here is that the system requires strong signals and unless the next generation of receivers is much more sensitive the pea-shooters out in the sticks would be better saving their money untill such time as they are permitted to go full digital.


Lino

 

[hipporadio]

LinoNYC reported:

As of 4:10am here in NYC only WOR is digital.

Fascinating! I tried to tell you.

...And I suspected the same, Cal!

I also heard IBOC “hash” under WSB on 750, but couldn’t tell who the offender was [smeone thought it was 740 CHWO in a test-mode]. 760 WJR appeared to have it off, and 730 is a 103-Watt-Wonder with NO “HD”. WOR was definitely ON, and its trespass into the yards of WGN and WLW was noticeable – but no more so than the dull come-‘n-go murmur of the neutered co-channel night services peeping-up. KMOX on 1120 appears to have “jumped the gun”—failing to even turn it off at local sunset. At 10PM [EDT], they ID’d: "1120 KMOX and KMOX-HD – St Louis"; and their digital sidebands were apparent on 1110 and 1130.

What is more-interesting is WHO DIDN’T power the Buzz-Saw back up at midnight... We’ll just have to give this drama several more scenes to act out... Then we can start speculating on all the clandestine “non-interference agreements” [for some “consideration” of course] that the flame-throwing IBOC full-timers begin negotiating with their neighbors – and YOU KNOW that’s going to surface as a “new revenue” source. :

 

[calstymes]

LinoNYC stated:

Savage concluded:

So: after FOUR years, the iBiquity (THINK that's right) cabal has converted a rip-roaring 7 AM stations to IBOC, three of which have already turned it off, in market #1.

It's actually near 5 years (WOR) first in 2002.

And it is actually eight stations. You forgot WABC 770 in your original post.

Of the three that turned it off, only one, WADO is a bit of a surprise they are 50K w/new plant.

You may have mistakenly interpreted the lack of IBOC on WADO recently as an indication that they abandoned it. Unfortunately, they haven't abandoned it (it would be great if they did). In fact, they had to ship their IBOC generating equipment back to its maker for servicing. This seems to happen a lot with this equipment. But anyway, I believe they have now received their equipment back and they will be ready to fire it up full time soon. This should please the IBOC consumers on this here message board.

 

[Play Freebird]

The real point here is that the system requires strong signals and unless the next generation of receivers is much more sensitive the pea-shooters out in the sticks would be better saving their money untill such time as they are permitted to go full digital.

And I doubt much can be done to improve poor AM digital "sensitivity" by changing receiver design, the bigger issue is noise immunity. In many areas, the medium-wave band has a high noise floor (this noise is generated outside the receiver), and the digital modulation scheme used to transmit data on the primary sidebands (64 QAM) has a hard time overcoming the interference. For a technical discussion of the tradeoffs involved, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon-Hartley_theorem

If a pea-shooter has the fortunate opportunity to acquire one or more FM translators that reach its core audience, this would be a much more prudent investment than tying up that money in iBiquity's "solution". FM sounds far superior to AM IBOC, there are no skywave issues, and the receivers are already in the hands (and dashboards) of listeners. RDS offers artist/title display capability and much more.

Stations in congested areas that don't have this opportunity should push the FCC hard for FM translator secondary use of TV channels 5 and 6. A precedent has already been set (FM Channel 200, 87.9 MHz), the scope simply needs to be expanded. If approved, expanded-band FM receivers will be introduced at minimal expense, as there are no royalty issues. With a simple programming change, many of today's receiver chips can receive the Japanese band that begins at 76 MHz.

 

[semoochie]

I don't hear much of anything and what I hear isn't much of anything! All I hear is the sidebands of the local stations!