Well Here it is!

[Carmine5]

Unless CE and car manufacturers suddenly decide to put HDR in EVERYTHING, and I mean literally everything they make so that consumers have no choice but to buy it, HD Radio will remain a niche product.

That's it. Everything else is a niche product. All those expensive table radios? Niche products. Bose Wave? Niche product. The battle now is for getting placement in other products, and those who own traditional AM & FM stations better pray that their bands are included on every cool new device being built. Or we could see AM/FM becoming a niche product.

What you're describing are not niche products but rather a ubiquitous technology, namely radio, in different form factors. It's like a CD player that is a stand alone in a hi-fi system vs. a CD player in a boom box vs. an in-dash CD player. A ubiquitous technology in different form factors. Now a mini disc player, that is a niche product. HD Radio becoming the next mini disc player? Hmm.

But I have full confidence that radio will be with us for years to come simply because CE manufacturers are building it into so many of their products from home A/V receivers to in-dash stereos. You may be hard pressed to find HD Radio in these products but not good old analog AM/FM. Sure, radio is sharing space with other audio alternatives but it's still there.

c5

 

[semoochie]

So you're saying we have an 80 year history of paying the big bucks to the wrong people, that in moving up the ranks from nights to middays to afternoons and to mornings, we should have stopped at the second one ?

 

[davideduardo]

So you're saying we have an 80 year history of paying the big bucks to the wrong people, that in moving up the ranks from nights to middays to afternoons and to mornings, we should have stopped at the second one ?

No, we did the right thing for a flawed methodology. High talk content in mornings got memorability and that made it work in the diary. Today, you can watch the meters leaving a station every time the "talent" goes on too long or goes too far. Similarly, many specialty shows that created great memory benchmarks and outperformed surrounding hours actually go down in the PPM.

 

[davideduardo]

Many of the ones I am familiar with are making money.

Who and how?

I just named several... add in the ones Emmis has that are targeted at folks from the Indian subcontinent and it becomes apparent that there is money in HD.

 

[TheBigA]

What you're describing are not niche products but rather a ubiquitous technology, namely radio, in different form factors.

You're talking about the present. I'm talking about the future. Horses were ubiquitous means of transportation at one time. Manufacturers are including AM/FM because it's free. But if the new economy is built around brands and technologies that companies will PAY them for inclusion, such as XM, Pandora, Lala, and other similar things, then a free product is less interesting than one you share profit in. Like for record labels, free airplay is less interesting than airplay that pays them a royalty. Sure, for the time being, they reach more ears with free airplay. But today, the goal isn't always about reach, but whose ears you reach. Plus they have to deal with gatekeepers. The whole house of cards could fall down simply around having an FM radio in an iPad or any similar device. Radio IS ubiquitous...AM/FM may not be in ten or 20 years. Don't take it for granted.

 

[JamesAnderson]

Here is the order, the first post on this thread only had the news release. They released it at the same time, as DA 10-208.

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-10-208A1.pdf

 

[almaniac27]

So you're saying we have an 80 year history of paying the big bucks to the wrong people, that in moving up the ranks from nights to middays to afternoons and to mornings, we should have stopped at the second one ?

No, we did the right thing for a flawed methodology. High talk content in mornings got memorability and that made it work in the diary. Today, you can watch the meters leaving a station every time the "talent" goes on too long or goes too far. Similarly, many specialty shows that created great memory benchmarks and outperformed surrounding hours actually go down in the PPM.

Bummer. It seems PPM is sucking the life out of radio, all in the name of the almighty dollar. If radio companies hadn't mismanaged themselves into bankruptcy, maybe they would be able to take more chances creatively, but now they have to do what the PPM tells them, which is less personality and tighter playlists. I guess this will work in the short term, but who knows what the future will hold, maybe radio will just become next-generation Muzak for offices.

 

[TheBigA]

Bummer. It seems PPM is sucking the life out of radio, all in the name of the almighty dollar.

No...in the name of giving the people what they want. We're talking about listener behavior. It's like customers walking out on a bad movie or a lousy comedian. Don't blame money when the real issue is crappy entertainment.

The challenge here for creative air talent is to become better. Actually do show prep, plan bits, and know when it's time to move on. Some people have a :30 clock built in their head. Others need to be directed.

My view is this will hopefully take the fat out of radio, and energize it to where Bill Drake was taking radio 40 years ago.

 

[almaniac27]

Bummer. It seems PPM is sucking the life out of radio, all in the name of the almighty dollar.

No...in the name of giving the people what they want. We're talking about listener behavior. It's like customers walking out on a bad movie or a lousy comedian. Don't blame money when the real issue is crappy entertainment.

The challenge here for creative air talent is to become better. Actually do show prep, plan bits, and know when it's time to move on. Some people have a :30 clock built in their head. Others need to be directed.

My view is this will hopefully take the fat out of radio, and energize it to where Bill Drake was taking radio 40 years ago.

In the risk of derailing the thread, I would have to halfway disagree. Sure radio's been crappy entertainment-wise lately, but IMHO, PPM is keeping all the crap. The stations that have benefited the most so far seem to be the soft AC stations with the insufferable Delilahs and John Teshs. I am aware my tastes run fairly outside of the mainstream (I'm typing this while listening to Bauhaus' 9-minute epic "Bela Lugosi's Dead"), and it looks like all the formats I enjoy aren't faring well. And I know Bill Drake was before my time, but I've heard airchecks from that era, and they sound like the stereotypical obnoxious radio DJ who blabbers the time and temperature every five minutes and injects too much fake enthusiasm into his voice.

 

[KB1OKL]

Let's just hope this folly is aborted by stations that belatedly recognize their own best interests before it can do as much harm to the FM band as Iniquity's half-baked technology has already done to AM.

HD has done no significant harm to AM. AM is simply, as several other posts have mentioned, on its way out due to factors that have nothing to do with HD. And the closing and surrendering of the licenses of two 50 kw clear channel AMs in Montreal today shows that there is very little perception of value for AMs, even in major markets such as Montreal.

When's the last time you did a band scan at night with a good radio or tried listening to the AM band in your car David? My car radio lands on WBZ's IBOC noise when I hit scan. Many stations are covered with with noise especially at night on the band.

 

[davideduardo]

And I know Bill Drake was before my time, but I've heard airchecks from that era, and they sound like the stereotypical obnoxious radio DJ who blabbers the time and temperature every five minutes and injects too much fake enthusiasm into his voice.

"They" don't sound anything like that. You may have heard airchecks from the era (whatever you think "the era" to be) but you probably did not hear airchecks of the stations that Bill Drake himself consulted and which were programmed by people like Ron Jacobs and Tom Rounds. Those stations did away with the self-centered and undisciplined chatter and replaced it with fun jocks playing fun music. They proved that you could fit a lot of personality into very few seconds, and got the ratings to prove it. In other words, Drake did what the PPM is showing should be done today.

And you might also consider that a style that sounds dated to you might have been totally appropriate for "that era."

 

[FM AM]

"They" don't sound anything like that. You may have heard airchecks from the era (whatever you think "the era" to be) but you probably did not hear airchecks of the stations that Bill Drake himself consulted and which were programmed by people like Ron Jacobs and Tom Rounds. Those stations did away with the self-centered and undisciplined chatter and replaced it with fun jocks playing fun music. They proved that you could fit a lot of personality into very few seconds, and got the ratings to prove it. In other words, Drake did what the PPM is showing should be done today.

And you might also consider that a style that sounds dated to you might have been totally appropriate for "that era."

Fo once David or whoever you are I have to agree with you completely...

 

[davideduardo]

When's the last time you did a band scan at night with a good radio or tried listening to the AM band in your car David?

You mean a radio like my R8B or my R75? Yeah, I have listened to AM, but I also know that most people who listen to AM know what stations they like, and know that there are really only a couple in any market worth listening too so they don't play "seek" on the AM band.

My car radio lands on WBZ's IBOC noise when I hit scan. Many stations are covered with with noise especially at night on the band.

For starters, not very many people listen to AM at night, and those that do are in the very, very senior demos. And, in any case, the stations that get listend to since well before the HD era were those that put relatively huge signals over each listener's location... 10 mV/m or more for most metros is where nearly all the reported listening occurs.

 

[davideduardo]

Fo once David or whoever you are I have to agree with you completely...

So there is a common ground somewhere for all of us... ;D

And... "David Eduardo" is really what appears on my driver license just before my last names.

 

[Play Freebird]

Many of the ones I am familiar with are making money.

Who and how?

I just named several... add in the ones Emmis has that are targeted at folks from the Indian subcontinent and it becomes apparent that there is money in HD.

Do you know of any HD secondary channels with sufficient audience numbers to show in Arbitron? I haven't found any yet, so I'm just wondering.

 

[radioskeptic]

An HD-2 can show up in Arbitron—but only if it has an analog translator! See these two back issues of Tom Taylor’s “Taylor on Radio-Info” newsletter:

http://www.radio-info.com/newsletter/html/tri-07172009.html (story number 2)

http://www.radio-info.com/newsletter/html/tri-09112009.html (story number 12)

 

[Savage]

Haw haw! "There is money in HD!" (You bet there is. For everyone involved but broadcasters. And lenders!)

Just tossing in a side comment here about Drake-era Top 40. I actually was a Drake-era jock and worked on-air at Drake-consulted stations including WIBG and CKLW. I can assure you there was no "blabbering" and no repetition or superfluous stuff. Jocks executing the Drake format were highly structured, but were also encouraged to contribute actual content - interesting and engaging things to say. If, as almaniac suggests, your content was limited to "time and temperature" you wouldn't last long.

Every shift was monitored on a rotating basis. You never knew when the boss was listening - and he usually was. One of Bill Drake's most famous acolytes was Paul Drew, who was a legendary sight attending dinner parties with a transistor radio in his pocket whose earpiece was clearly visible trailing its wire into his coat pocket. It was not uncommon to get phone calls from Paul (and other PDs) while you were on the air, admonishing you for saying something lame, breaking format or praising you for an excellent moment. Working on-air at a Drake station was a special experience and a career highlight for almost anyone who had the luck.

The Drake format highlighted music in "sweeps" and was uncluttered and exciting to listen to. Airchecks of these stations are still exciting and interesting to hear today.

 

[radioskeptic]

In Reply # 56 (Jan. 30, 7:57 PM Central Time), ve3jf wrote,

If this [ David Eduardo’s claim that “a third or less of listening takes place in the car” ] is the case, isn't it remarkable that the NPR study concentrated completely on mobile reception? They went out of their way to show that impairments due to IBOC interference can be masked by the ambient noise in vehicles, by putting their test subjects in cars, and playing back previously recorded audio samples as they drove around in traffic. Reception in quiet listening environments simply wasn't considered at all.

And then there's the magic calculator they came up with to show the allowable digital power that a given station should get. It's based on the estimated D/U ratios on the protected contours of 1st adjacent stations - just like the previous calculator that they came up with – remember, that one that showed virtually no stations should get a power increase? [Emphasis supplied.] The new one is essentially identical, except that they threw in an 8 dB fudge factor that now permits big increases in most cases. The reasoning behind the 8 dB tweak is fuzzy, to say the least.

Under pressure, the NPR folks have resorted to some really bad science here. And the FCC has once again thrown the public interest out the window by not subjecting their report to any serious scrutiny - in fact, not requesting any comments at all.

Oh well, I won't waste any more time writing about this stuff. Let 'em stew in their own juices.

Thank you, ve3jf, for pointing out how much weight NPR gave to mobile reception in their study. And thanks even more for reminding me of the original version of the NPR Calculator.

That original version agreed with my own calculations for the handful of stations for which I had previously tried to do my own calculations. The new one is way off!

There’s something much worse than resorting to “some really bad science” here. When they removed the original NPR Calculator from their web site, they were actively suppressing good science.

If they were practicing real science, rather than just serving as a propaganda tool for their corporate bosses (and yes, non-profits can be just as ruthless in advancing their own agendas as business interests), they would make the original version available, perhaps with some caveats (and I really like to see how they’d spin the differences!).

But of course, the technically ignorant business school grads running NPR won’t let them.

And I stand by “technically ignorant.” In order to support Iniquity’s utterly daft technology, it isn’t absolutely necessary to be technically ignorant—not if you (1) have a financial interest in promoting it, (2) have already invested a lot of your own prestige in promoting it , and thus think that admitting that it was a mistake would lead to what the Chinese call “losing face,” or (3) have a good use for the technology, even if it doesn’t work very well.

NPR as an organization, having developed the protocols for “HD” multicasting, clearly qualifies for number 3, and because of the way they’ve been promoting it, for number 2 as well. As for number 1, I’m not alleging that NPR has a financial stake in Iniquity, only that—CPB matching grants notwithstanding—they’ve spent so much of their own money on those transmitters that they can’t just write it off so easily.

And if the NPR suits aren’t actually “technically ignorant”—if they do in fact understand just how bad the interference problems will be—and support the power increase anyway for the three reasons above, I think they have to be labeled psychopathic. Here’s the dictionary definition of a psychopathic personality:

“psychopathic personality 1: an emotionally and behaviorally disordered state characterized by clear perception of reality except for the individual’s social and moral obligations, and by pursuit of immediate personal gratification...” (From Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, 1991 ed.)

But it’s not just individuals. Organizations, too, can exhibit psychopathic behavior—even non-profit ones! And if blatantly reckless disregard for other users of the spectrum doesn’t qualify as psychopathic behavior, what does?

 

[TheBigA]

Back on topic!

If they were practicing real science, rather than just serving as a propaganda tool for their corporate bosses (and yes, non-profits can be just as ruthless in advancing their own agendas as business interests),

Oh come on now. What possible financial benefit would HD Radio provide for NPR? They're not allowed to fundraise with it. The stations would prevent that (as they did last year when Nina Totenberg suggested a fundraiser). NPR doesn't actually OWN any radio stations, and therefore has not spent any money on transmitters. And propaganda is in the eyes of the beholder. Which is to say there's lots of propaganda coming from the haters. Including some of the fiction you're inventing. In post after post, you demonstrate just how little you know about NPR and how it works. But that doesn't matter. You've convinced yourself it must be true. And as for psychopathic personality, well...hello!

 

[kc1ih]

Back on topic!


Oh come on now. What possible financial benefit would HD Radio provide for NPR? They're not allowed to fundraise with it.

I don't think that's true, with the presumption that you are talking about the affiliate stations and not NPR themselves. I've heard fundraising on WGBH-HD2 in Boston that was separate from the fundraising also going on at the same time on their main channel, this was before the recent format change.