The Real Reason WSB-AM dropped IBOC/HD Radio

[littlejohn]

Well, don't let's degenerate into a whizzin' contest here. Or start up Dueling c.v.'s.
For the record, I am a proponent of Big White Puppydogs and old Mopar automobiles.
It's been my rather limited experience though that changes in RF levels are the result of >something<, and eventually I can find a guru who can 'splain to me what that change was in a logical manner. And, I got to admit, I'm at a loss to see how turning up a pair of carriers on a seperate RF system which are removed from the analog system by some frequency seperation, will affect the level of the analog system. Somebody is gonna have to give me other than anecdotal reason(s) as to why this might be. IBOC FM as a real product is new to all of us, and we're learning. So far as I can see it works. I'd like more power in the IBOC sidebands, and I'd like to keep a reasonable bitrate for the main channel audio. So far, The Powers That Be ain't asked my opinion in these areas (or very many others, either). But when they do, I got some suggestions.....

In my current situation, complaints are referred to either me or the D.E. for the market. I've gotten none on the stations to which we've added IBOC. In one instance, it's my opinion we improved coverage slightly, but nobody ever called you up because they >could< hear your station. We're quite sensitive to those who can't however. At times, all we can do is point them at the stream on the website. Such is the lot of less than Class C outlets in a geographically large market.

I am waaaaay more concerned about the PPM methodology than I am where the RF hits. That has the potential for much greater change fopr all of us. At least we can dump Thursday morning 7:41A Big Prizes, though. I hope.

 

[al_atl]

I'm guessing Rbrucecarter5 referred to Littlejohn as a "well known as a proponent of IBOC" because of Littlejohn's screen name. He may think Littlejohn here is the same person as Jeff Littlejohn, well known engineer for Clear Channel. That Littlejohn is indeed a well known proponent of IBOC...and restricting AM bandwidth to 5khz which I am very much opposed to. But that's a subject for another thread.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

: Anyone who counts on having a listener call to tell you they can't hear the station you are far from being a wise engineer.

I am going to call Charlatan on this one too.

A call from a listener in the fringes 120 miles away means that listeners on $5 clock radios, listeners on walkmans with the deplorable headphone wire antenna, listeners in homes with a lost dipole, or dipole crumpled up on the floor mingled with power cords will be having trouble hearing your station 20 miles away. So - you better pay attention when somebody reports your signal has changed for the worst. Because those urban listeners with cheap radios comprise a large part of your audience.

Of course you call anybody who is not an Ibiquity puppet a charlatan. I have nothing to lose by calling the kettle black. I'm not taking money from Ibiquity, my job doesn't depend on me being silent about the defects of the system, so I am free to speak the truth.

Any engineer in denial about the shortcomings of IBOC is not a good engineer, because engineering is all about science - and facts. Facts which the pro-IBOC side ignore, resorting to ad-hominen arguments like calling people "charlatans". According to the laws of debate - you just lost the moment you called me a name. I WIN.

I would be the first one in line to cheer on a digital system that didn't jam first adjacents (and second in the case of AM), turning stations into arrogant bad neighbors and bloated spectrum hogs. Or a system that requires users to become DX'ers just to get enough signal to decode the digital signal, because that just won't happen.

 

[the_widows_son]

Carter has no idea who or what he is talking about. His recent posts are more science-fiction than science. Yes listeners matter but once the signal leaves the tower you can't baby-sit every radio that it might reach. As for the shrinking FM contour I want to see facts, call signs, equipment and people involved.

I am not a puppet of anyone and frankly I am not a big fan of IBOC. But I believe digital radio is the future. IBOC is what we have so let's do the best we can with it. We must keep our industry growing and competitive. We can't live in the past for the sake of a DX or any other tomfoolery. XM, I pods, I phones and whatever they think of next are out to get us they should not get an advantage because we refuse to evolve.

 

[littlejohn]

>A call from a listener in the fringes 120 miles away means that listeners on $5 clock radios, listeners on >walkmans with the deplorable headphone wire antenna, listeners in homes with a lost dipole, or dipole >crumpled up on the floor mingled with power cords will be having trouble hearing your station 20 miles away. >So - you better pay attention when somebody reports your signal has changed for the worst. Becausethose >urban listeners with cheap radios comprise a large part of your audience.

I'd sell my seat in hell for a 140 mile away listener. Even though he neither appears in the ratings survey for the market nor buys from my advertisers. It would just be nice to have a signal which went that far. However, we find the 20 milers pick it up just fine. The bulk of them are on car and table radios... which is what listens to the radio these days, along with the occasional boombox.
I got to tell you though, out of five locally I've put on so far, plus a handful co-located and a couple out of the market, I just haven't seen one which has lost coverage on the main channel when the IBOC turned up.

>Of course you call anybody who is not an Ibiquity puppet a charlatan. I have nothing to lose by calling the >kettle black. I'm not taking money from Ibiquity, my job doesn't depend on me being silent about the >defects of the system, so I am free to speak the truth.


Excuseme, I haven't called you anything. Ibiquity gives out money? Where do I sign up for it? I missed my share somehow. Damn.

>Any engineer in denial about the shortcomings of IBOC is not a good engineer, because engineering is all >about science - and facts. Facts which the pro-IBOC side ignore, resorting to ad-hominen arguments like >calling people "charlatans". According to the laws of debate - you just lost the moment you called me a >name. I WIN.

Hanh? I still dint call you anything. Further, I haven't ignored any facts. I also haven't seen any loss of coverage. May I suggest you get hold of an old Bobby Bare song called 'The Winner' (I think it's on 'The Essential Bobby Bare' album) And give it a critical listen.

Or, if you're looking for a formal debate, pick pro or con, and put up your resolution. I remind you, FM IBOC is the subject, and loss of coverage of the analog signal thereby is the proposition. I'll further remind you, anecdotal evidence, unless it's repeatable, ain't gonna make the program. Have at it.


>I would be the first one in line to cheer on a digital system that didn't jam first adjacents (and second in the >case of AM), turning stations into arrogant bad neighbors and bloated spectrum hogs. Or a system that r>equires users to become DX'ers just to get enough signal to decode the digital signal, because that just >won't happen.

Uh, lookit, is it an ad hominem attack if we just put you down in the "I don't like it" column?

 

[kyscott]

A call from a listener in the fringes 120 miles away means that listeners on $5 clock radios, listeners on walkmans with the deplorable headphone wire antenna, listeners in homes with a lost dipole, or dipole crumpled up on the floor mingled with power cords will be having trouble hearing your station 20 miles away. So - you better pay attention when somebody reports your signal has changed for the worst. Because those urban listeners with cheap radios comprise a large part of your audience.

So are you proposing that you go into people's homes and offices and correct their mistakes? Hardly. When I get listener complaints I check out our equipment, take a field strength meter and check out the area, and check for pirates. That's it. I can't do anything about the radio that a listener purchases at WalMart. As long as our equipment is functioning properly and there is no outside influence to our signal, that's pretty much where it stops for me. A call from a listener 120 miles away is pretty much disregarded since none of the stations I work for has a B contour 120 miles away from the transmitter. If someone is listening 120 miles away, it's great they have taken the time to tune us in, however the chances of them being a regular listener is slim to none, and since we are not selling advertising targeted to listeners 120 miles away it is not a priority to my engineering staff.

People place cheap radios next to computers in their offices all the time. There's nothing we can do about that. When I have gotten a call from an office listener, all I can tell them is to move the radio around to make sure the computer/florescent lights/laser printer/fax machine/postage meter/time clock/dimmer switches/LCD projecter......well, you get the idea. There is so much in an office that can overpower the front end of a radio, you can't trace them all down.

 

[MRFLASHPORT]

from a listener's prospective, I think HD Radio sucks. I am sorry but overly compressed digital squeezed onto a narrow carrier cannot compete with the fidelity of wideband FM. I realize I am in the minority but if I am going to be forced to pay for radio, whether it be satellite (which is the most inferior sound I've ever heard quality wise) I expect quality. The type of radio systems I manage and work with are two-way narrowband FM, we are just moving to digital modulation (P25 C4FM/CPQSK) and while digital modulation does have advantages (weaker signal usually gives more intelligence under adverse conditions) it also has it's drawbacks. While I am not about to compare apples to oranges I will say that I don't think digital modulation of any type is ready for prime time. And furthermore I think this "need to vacate" spectrum is nothing but a farce as the FCC wants to make more money auctioning spectrum.

The Feds are the biggest spectrum hogs, especially in the VHF/UHF ranges. why don't they sell their unused allocations instead of replacing perfectly good working systems? I will do away with listening to both FM and AM if it goes to IBOC exclusively. Version 1.0 of anything is garbage software wise. Let the market dictate the demand and stop forcing people to replace working systems that actually sound good. FM radio can rival so-called "CD quality" if moderate signal processing is used. Overdriven compressor limiters and garbage going in on analog only sounds worse when put through a digital codec. I tried HD Radio, it sounded awful, and I've also tried both Sirius and XM- they sound worse than a 20 dollar Walkman cassette player with a pre-recorded tape. The compression artifacts are horrendous, and it's almost painful to listen to.

I guess I'll keep listening to the few AM and FM stations until they go dark- but IBOC isn't going to "save radio"

Good local programming and content would do that- no need to invest in a new broadcast standard to do that- but hey what do I know I'm just a two-way tech who loves radio...

 

[littlejohn]

Well, analog FM is still here for you to enjoy. For free.
If it's ever done away with, as your digital experience tells you, there will be a substantially wider bitstream to work with for digital, improving fidelity greatly.
As to cellular, the advent of digital, I'm tiold, allows a reduction in average carrier power of the portable, which translates to longer talk time on a given battery. And a greater number of phones oper channel. I got one in my pocket which workes everyplace I've tried it, gives an intelligible conversation, and cost me $19.95 at Wal-Mart. If I compare that to the panasonic monster I put in the comopany rides when cell came to Atlanta which cost a grand and didn't cover nearly as well - and needed an antenna on the roof, I'd say technology increases have improved the genre immesurably. And, when I compare that Panasonic EB101 to the IMTS boxes >it< replaced, the improvement was of the same magnitude.
If I was you, I think I'd embrace the new technology a little bit, and learn its good and bad points and how to work with it. Cos the option is, you're gonna get wadded up and cast aside like a gum wrapper professionally.

 

[MRFLASHPORT]

keep in mind what I deal with and support are MISSION CRITICAL applications where life safety is at stake if our systems fail. Digital (P25 IMBE) has been plagued with issues, the latest is the performance of the vocoder in firefighting hot zones. Apparently the engineers at DVSI never bothered to see how the average subscriber radio can handle loud background noise when fed to the encoder. What has been found is that unintelligible garble comes out on the other end, because the codec "thinks" all audio fed into the vocoder is noise- same scenario with an analog FM radio (or the digital FM radio programmed on an analog mode), no problem hearing the firefighter with the PPV fan running in his background, so long as he speaks over it. That's pretty serious in our business. A complete revamping of the codec means replacing millions of dollars of hardware- so much for embracing technology and being on the cutting edge. On top of that, while digital radio does have advantages in weak signals, I've found that P25 IMBE carriers go to crap around -110dbM- and the BER get so high all you get is a blip or bleep on the RX side. That's fine for your cellphone call that gets dropped, no one dies. But when a state trooper is fighting for his/her life rolling around on the ground screaming HELP or SIGNAL 63 no one hears a peep. An FM radio allows the DISPATCHER to hear and be the "DSP" and make out the words- without this nuance we are 100 percent dependent on software, DSP, etc to bring the message through.

In regards to cellular, the current digital mods and codecs are quite robust- they are also 2nd and 3rd generation hardware and software. The first IS-136 (TDMA aka digital AMPS) audio was horrendous, and I remember when Sprint turned up their IS-95 system in early 1997- talking on a CDMA phone back then- well I'd rather try to use HF SSB. Billions of dollars in revenue and demand forced the industry to roll out better technologies. But that also has shown limitations. For example, at&t on their 2g GSM systems use a codec known as AMR-HR, it makes GSM which otherwise on the full rate codec sound toll grade, go to crap with garble, missed syllables, and drop outs. That's what happens when you go for quantity and not quality. I've seem edited my Motorola Razr and disabled AMR-HR so I can actually carry on a conversation.

Bringing this back to digital radio, the demand has to be there. I just don't see people going out and buying IBOC 1st gen to replace perfectly good working equipment with an inferior sounding product just because "it's digital". The same game was played with TV ironically HD DOES blow NTSC away anyday, even on 480- but out of all my family members I am the only one who has actually gone out and adopted HDTV- and actually pay for true HD programming. This over compressed pixellated crap on most DOCSIS and DBS standard def makes me as nauseated as IBOC and sat radios audio does.

(I still think AMPS with compander enabled sounds better than any digital cell BTW. I had a Motorola series III bag phone back in the 1990's and you'd swear I was talking on a wireline. Almost inaudiable hand-offs, clean full range sound on both TX and RX paths...I will digress and say that the GSM base stations from Ericsson do sound just as good with a good quality subscriber unit. CDMA2000 tends to have toll grade audio on the handset, but on the other end it sounds muffled, fuzzy and unnatural.)

 

[tomservo]

I'm with you on most of your post, Mr. Flash Port.

I always thought AMPS was much clearer and cleaner than any of the digital codecs. It seems like my area's radio stations still use a landline or analog cell phone connection for their football remotes, but some more distant stations don't. They immedicately stand out with their sub-AM quality (and I mean sub-"modern" AM radio, not the wide bandwidth of yesteryear.)

I'm still looking for ways to disable AMR-HR on my SonyEricsson since switching to AT&T from T-Mobile (who still apparently uses full rate in most markets).

You're dead on about IBOC... Okay... Most casual listeners will perceive a benefit to both AM and FM IBOC, because they aren't discerning listeners... But that benefit will be in those extra channels on FM and text display on AM. Either way, it ain't worth $100 to most folks yet to upgrade a clock radio.

 

[littlejohn]

The beauty of re - doing a CODEC is, you upgrade the firmware to the new CODEC. I think we're on about the third major and fifth or sixth minor upgrade of the ISDN CODECs we use. Each better than the last. I wouldn't buy anything in the DSP realm which didn't have upgradeable software - and you shouldn't either. And some several years of healing cop's radios gave me the impression that the cop simply threw away ones that diodn't work, and din't much care why they didn't.
I think the IBOC business plan is worse faulted than the technology... and the technology will upgrade anyhow. But, the people who run these things are tryitn to answer the 'threat' from satellite delivered programming. For the average radio listener, that 'tthreat'is a paper sword. Making it sound as good as it can - which is going to take most of the bitstream - and achieving market openetration with receivers is the key I believe. Alas, they ain't asked me what I believe.

 

[MRFLASHPORT]

the problem with our industry is it is based on a standard of ONE company, DVSI, and manufacturers (mainly Motorola) who design much of the smarts in HARDWARE, you know the game, force people to buy more HARDWARE just like Bill and friends do in Redmond with every new release of Windows operating systems. You want 2000? More hardware. You want XP...new hardware, more RAM. Vista? Well an "designed for XP" machine crawls with only 512M of RAM. Get the picture? Motorola plays the same game. When the latest greatest comes out, it's replace every 3000 dollar portable with a new one, every Quantar gets replaced, embassy audio switches, 6809's, etc etc...all designed to keep the revenue flowing to the manufacturers. Oh it doesn't work? We'll fix it on the next revision...make your check payable to...

As far as IBOC and wanting to play in the same field as sat providers, well if people are content paying 12 bucks a month to hear horribly compression artifact ridden sound just to hear 20 more songs of their favorites, I can't blame the industry. However IBOC radios are in general, overpriced. And they usually are very under performing as far as RF devices- which is usually what happens when you leave RF design to IT people. No offense to any IT folks, but radio should not be an afterthought. Everything isn't based on 802.11x and isn't as simple as plopping down a 50.00 Linksys router when it comes to true RF engineering and design. I was very displeased with the 350 dollar IBOC radio I tried out, pretty sad when my GE "Great Awakening" 7-4870 "Computer Radio" from 1980 can receive better analog FM with a friggin line cord for an antenna and better AM with it's internal ferrite bar in a can versus a 350 dollar "state o' the art" allegedly high fidelity table radio. I've heard better sound from ghetto blasters built in the 1980's sold for less than 50 bucks at K-Mart. as a matter of fact, I've got an old Panasonic with an incredible front end on both FM and AM, blows away my GE Superradio II.

Maybe that's just it, I was testing with ver 1 hardware- but the IBOC units always seem to keep the RADIO part an after thought. But not much point if it can't get a signal. I think I'll wait for ver 2 or 3 stuff to show up...meanwhile I love the clean, crisp sound of FM (the Armstrong system!)- Dave FM has a superb sounding carrier. Is Dick Byrd still there? Sure sounds like it...sound is better than most on the dial, though V 103 has a good sound too. I will miss FM when it is gone...

 

[MRFLASHPORT]

I'm with you on most of your post, Mr. Flash Port.

I always thought AMPS was much clearer and cleaner than any of the digital codecs. It seems like my area's radio stations still use a landline or analog cell phone connection for their football remotes, but some more distant stations don't. They immedicately stand out with their sub-AM quality (and I mean sub-"modern" AM radio, not the wide bandwidth of yesteryear.)

I'm still looking for ways to disable AMR-HR on my SonyEricsson since switching to AT&T from T-Mobile (who still apparently uses full rate in most markets).

You're dead on about IBOC... Okay... Most casual listeners will perceive a benefit to both AM and FM IBOC, because they aren't discerning listeners... But that benefit will be in those extra channels on FM and text display on AM. Either way, it ain't worth $100 to most folks yet to upgrade a clock radio.

I've never had any luck disabling AMR-HR on SE's, I have a K790a unlocked and unbranded and don't want to brick it just yet! T-Mobile does indeed run FR in Atlanta, though they have limited conference calling to only two parties at the switch, apparently not enough room on their system for those five and six way conference calls I was making when I used them. I loved their system but very dismal coverage, they haven't added too many sites since they were Powertel. And Atlanta is not a PCS market to begin with...too many hills, valleys and trees.
Good customer support though, they'll give you practically everything you ask for. Too bad the network is so small. And no roaming anywhere in the state of Georgia on at&t, so forget making calls in much of south Georgia and in the mountains.

I agree about IBOC. I don't want to come across as some old fart who like in ham radio, clutches their CW keys in the face of D-Star. However I think prudent move to solid proven technologies will be the key to any digital system. The problem is, as with all digital technology, what is "cutting edge" today is old hat tomorrow and ancient technology in 5 years. Digital like anything for mass adoption, has to follow the "10x rule" for consumer acceptance. Simply put, it has to be 10 times better than what it replaces for it to catch on. Then there is price point. For example, the Compact Disc took nearly 20 years for it to obliterate it's analog counterparts...by that time it was already a "had been" technology. But it does well because it is AFFORDABLE and 10 times better than what it replaced (cassettes and LP's). The technology of CD's are late 70's, but it took well into the 90's to gain mass acceptance. Digital radio suffers the same problem as does TV. I still wonder how the FCC is going to make the Feb 09 sunset date with NTSC. Do you?

 

[tomservo]

I still wonder how the FCC is going to make the Feb 09 sunset date with NTSC. Do you?

If the government does a decent job pushing the DTV converter box program to consumers over the next year, there shouldn't be too many problems. Satellite, fiber and major cable operators have known about the cutoff date for a while now, there should be no excuses in getting their equipment ready.

The big problem I forsee will be all the stations that are going to "flash-cut" to digital on or before the cutoff date. Someone's going to have to be at all the cable/sat. headends to switch them over, and that may cause problems. Some major retailers have already stopped selling analog-capable TV receivers and the FCC seems to be going after a lot of retailers who are still selling them without the mandatory warning of the cutoff. Right now there seems to be a lot of misinformation floating around, mostly from news snippets. Just yesterday I heard a blurb during a radio news segment where the announcer said that after the cutoff date, all television would be digital and you'd need a new set to see it. Then his co-hosts mentioned that they were junking several old "useless" but good TV's.

The fact that those sets will continue to work when hooked up to cable, satellite, fiber, DVD and VCR units and game systems seems to be getting lost in the smog of misinformation.

Going back to T-Mobile for a minute - I was with that service since it was brand new, back in the Powertel days. The coverage around Birmingham was abysmal back then, but it gradually improved to become a decent competitor -- If not on coverage, on price. I enjoyed the good call quality and the fact I could buy any unlocked phone off the internet and be light years ahead of the junk the stores sold. Oh and international roaming (ok, it was just Canada, eh) rates were more affordable in the beginning as well.

Unfortunately, I moved to Grenada, MS last year and the coverage here was spotty -- one cell along the interstate for the entire town -- and roaming was a pain. For some reason, there's a "one cell" buffer between the T-Mobile service and roaming, meaning half the area between "here" and "there" was 'Emergency calls only'.

I wanted to keep my same phone (a quad band w810i I bought just to take advantage of extra T-Mo roaming in this state) so that meant going to Unicell or AT&T. Unicell's roaming coverage is so-so, so now I'm with AT&T, with awful call quality. I didn't want a contract, so that meant pre-paid. So now I pay more per month for less than half the minutes, no nights/weekends AND they bar video and audio streaming for people bring their own phone. If I ever move somewhere else, I'll be off this carrier so fast they won't know what hit 'em.

BTW, aren't you guys glad the FCC hasn't mandated an analog cutoff date for radio? They did for TV, and they have for AMPS cellular service (sort of).

 

[MRFLASHPORT]

see I worry about the FCC getting sucked into doing away with analog FM. I don't honestly think the average consumer will go out and replace every radio with a digital one until digital radios are on the same price point or cheaper than analog. Musing back to the compact disc, it literally took that long to make CD gain marketplace. We saw the same thing happen with DVD, in 10 years DVD players went from 400, down to 200, then 100 and now they are cheaper than their analog counterpart the VCR. Standalone DVD recorders with tuners are less then 100 bucks, about what a good quality name brand VHS HiFi deck would set you back. Until IBOC or whatever whiz-bang technology gets down to that level, it's a pipe dream. Same with DTV. Even the lowest price basic DTV's are considerably more expensive (SDTV or EDTV not full HD) than analog sets. When they drop to less than 200 dollars, more consumers will accept them. Problem is as you pointed out, much misinformation about DTV floating around. The FCC is trying to educate folks but most people won't realize it until their NTSC picture goes dark unfortunately.

On cellular, I switched to T-Mo after being a Verizon subscriber for 6 years. I loved their coverage, they were Airtouch before, Pactel since they went live in Atlanta in 1987. Their AMPS/CDMA sys ID is 41, so they've been around a while and overlayed CDMA2000 pretty good, native A-side 800MHz in most of north Georgia (some PCS around Macon/Warner Robins). What drove me away was their craptacular UI on their phones, locked down bluetooth, and Lousy Garbage (LG) handsets. I tried T-Mo but lack of rural coverage and weak street level signals of -95 to -105dbM at places like SPSU in downtown Marietta drove me to at&t. I hate AMR-HR- their answer is "go to 3G" but their UMTS carrier is an overlay of the old ATTWS system on PCS 1900- and it was pathetic coverage wise. I had a w810i myself, very good handset- RF was pretty decent. I love my K790a, wish I could disable AMR-HR and put an end to the garble. Was a breeze on my old Razr V3i. AMPS going away was inevitable, I remember when BellSouth Mobility started implementing RF fingerprinting on carriers, all of a sudden my series III bag phone stopped working, they didn't take too kindly to us who "found" a way to do ESN transfers on our own equipment (on our own accounts of course). I ended up "convincing" them I had a full car kit EE2 for my Motorola MicroTac Elite, and they believed me. (as you may or may not know, the old AMPS Motos did a full identity transfer on from the portable to the CVC when you placed the handset into the CVC, literally transferred the ESN out of the portable into the mobile radio every time. If you jerked the handset out improperly it would leave the ESN at hex 00000000 ;D) Don't you love SIM cards?

feel sorry for the gen 1 OnStar users come 2008...

 

[littlejohn]

I suspect the price of digital TVs will drop substantially as they become the only game in town. Likewaise, suset analog FM and give the wloe channel over to a bitstream, you'll see the price of receivers plummet. It takes penetration, and there won't be any until it's forced. HDTV isn't great yet, and it >has< a distinct advantage everyone agrees. Given a full FM channel at power, I can push a 384K bitstream without much worry about coverage. That equals a CD if I use MP format with lower overhead. Do something like a 4:1 reducation and a good CODEC, I can do at least a couple of really good audio channels and run some low speed data on the side.
Remember, color NTSC is the most complex signal anybody ever broadcast in this country. 8BPSK is easy behind it.
In re the cell service, like I said, my $20 phone on Cingluar works everyplace nationwide and costs my company like 70 a month. I think I can reduce that by 15 dollars next year.

 

[grmf]

When NTSC TV goes away AM stations should move to channel 2 - 6.

I've thought the same type thing for years. Instead of Am IBOC give then new Freqs with an all digital system. You have to buy a new radio for IBOC it could just as easily receive a new band.

 

[livingfruitvirus]

When NTSC TV goes away AM stations should move to channel 2 - 6.

I've thought the same type thing for years. Instead of Am IBOC give then new Freqs with an all digital system. You have to buy a new radio for IBOC it could just as easily receive a new band.

I wonder if any stations would contest that. I know WSM loves their skywave.

 

[littlejohn]

Basically we got IBOC cos broadcasters weren't about to accept a reallocation of frequencies on a new band. The option at the time would have been Erueka or something similar of a quasi - cellular nature. Can you imagine the fight over what market each analog being reassigned got to cover?

 

[Radioman100]

Carter has no idea who or what he is talking about. His recent posts are more science-fiction than science. Yes listeners matter but once the signal leaves the tower you can't baby-sit every radio that it might reach. As for the shrinking FM contour I want to see facts, call signs, equipment and people involved.

I am not a puppet of anyone and frankly I am not a big fan of IBOC. But I believe digital radio is the future. IBOC is what we have so let's do the best we can with it. We must keep our industry growing and competitive. We can't live in the past for the sake of a DX or any other tomfoolery. XM, I pods, I phones and whatever they think of next are out to get us they should not get an advantage because we refuse to evolve.

If you spent some time on the HD Radio board here you'd see he's not talking about shrinking coverage of FMs running IBOC, he's talking about IBOC making it harder for him to DX stations on first adjacents. The guy lives in Dallas and thinks a little station out of Madill, Oklahoma running ABC's satellite classic rock format does a much better job than any of the Dallas stations. He also has some family in Lubbock, Texas and has claimed on occasion that he's taken a GE Superadio to pools in Lubbock and DXed KMKI (Radio Disney) out of Dallas. He used to claim that Superadios would be flying off the shelves there after he introduced the local kids to Radio Disney.

This is the typical anti-HD stuff you see on that board. They're so completely out of touch, it's almost funny. The current big debate is with a webcaster that pops in from time to time to tell us all how radio is DOOMED just as soon as next year's whiz-bang wi-fi product hits the shelves.

It's actually kinda fun to kick the hornet's nest over on the HD Radio board from time to time. It doesn't take much to get the loonies all stirred up.

http://www.radio-info.com/smf/index.php/board,194.0.html