At least we can hear AM radio when the signal is bad. With digital it's all or nothing.
Because of the way digital TV was done in this country, we can't see or hear it when the signal is bad.
It sounds like the next generation will do it better.
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
What happened and why is it still happening?
- Thread starter alok
- Start date
- Status
Because of the way digital TV was done in this country, we can't see or hear it when the signal is bad.
It sounds like the next generation will do it better.
Only the most hard core radio geeks are going to listen to a bad signal.
I’ve said this before, but the discussion of the viability of AM needs to focus on the 99.95% of the time a service area is NOT in an “emergency” situation.
I'd say TV's situation is worse because operating a radio station is a lot cheaper than operating a TV station. I'd also suggest Sinclair's recently shuttering of a handful of smaller market newsrooms and replacing them with "The National Desk" is a canary in a coal mine. Should the TV networks lose value, the local stations' only options will be to continue running the network programming at lower margins, run syndicated fare, or produce their own programming. The first and last of those options have a direct impact on the bottom line, and the second has a limited supply and limited appeal.
I seem to remember FTV Live reporting that the industry as a whole crossed the 50% threshold last year. It has also reported that more than 55% of Sinclair's revenue is retrans fees. I also seem to remember Nexstar's is about the same.
Major league sports certainly has its share of problems. The head injuries from football are also a huge concern. If even a small percentage of parents don't let their kids play, the quality of the sport will deteriorate to the point that it won't be worth much in TV rights. For that reason, I don't think the NFL's current value is sustainable either, though previous predictions of imminent disaster don't seem to have panned out. The networks and, by extension, their affiliates have attached their success to the success of the league. If the NFL either cuts them out or loses value for some other reason, they're dead properties walking.
Again, Thanks to all that commented.
I just wish digital radio happened here for at least the last 20 years and electronic manufactures were willing to make the radios, giving OTA radio broadcasting one last breath of life, with a signal clear as can be.
Yes in digital the signal is either there or not but most people want quality not a poor lousy noisy signal.
Again thanks for all your comments, Take Care,
Al
I just wish digital radio happened here for at least the last 20 years and electronic manufactures were willing to make the radios, giving OTA radio broadcasting one last breath of life, with a signal clear as can be.
Yes in digital the signal is either there or not but most people want quality not a poor lousy noisy signal.
Again thanks for all your comments, Take Care,
Al
Last edited:
Right. I meant in an emergency you will listen to a bad signal.
I'm not a hard core radio geek but someone who is not interested in doing whatever it takes to get a signal in my car. Doing that. I suppose, would make me a nerd. But everything seems to point to my having Internet access in the car, however that would happen, which is an additional cost I'm not willing to deal with. So I listen to the best music I can with whatever signal I get, because the music doesn't magically get better just because the signal does.
Most people won't, actually. Most of us have enough good signals available that we won't strain to hear a bad one. The bigger problem that Mediafrog alludes to is that the Emergency Alert System is a daisy-chained system. It doesn't need AM to function, and the population at large doesn't need AM to get alerts. Focusing on AM as an emergency service won't help indefinitely. People will eventually get wise to the fact that it's not necessary in emergencies. I would also like to suggest that the best solution to preventing AM from becoming unnecessary would be to focus on content and get people interested, but I can't really suggest that with a straight face. That train left the station a long time ago. It's not coming back.
If you have a smartphone with a data plan, you can get internet access in your car for $20 with a Bluetooth adapter. If you don't want to spend $20, that's your money and your right. More power to you. Adding a connection to your car, however, doesn't have to be some expense that's going to eat half your rent or mortgage.
I see. And that smartphone and data plan are free and easy to use?
Not now, but perhaps at some point. The government has already recognized the value of high speed internet. That's why the Congress included it in the infrastructure act. The problem is the government doesn't want to actually get into that business (just as they didn't want to get into the radio business in the 1920s). So there's a credit where people can buy internet service with tax money. That's the way this system will work and change in the next 30 years. The government will get more involved, and along the way, the businesses involved will become more regulated.
In the CA county where I live, low income families get subsidized Internet and school-age children get free iPads to do class work.
I do remember Rush Limbaugh talking about poor people talking about their phones, and he played a clip of a woman saying Obama was giving away phones "from his stash".
Of course, the easy to use part still needs fixing. I have trouble with a Jitterbug.
All of this takes time. If you had to operate early radios in 1910 thru 1920, you would have likely had trouble. But over the years the devices became easier to use.
I didn't say they were. These days, though, most people have a smartphone with a data plan and don't think twice about spending money on them. I don't know what the landline companies charge these days, but my voice and data plan cost about what my landline bill was the last year I had one (either 2005 or '06). Granted, that doesn't include the smartphone, but a workable smartphone need not be a budget buster. On the ease of use part, I would assert that using my smartphone for music is no more difficult than using the radio. In my older car, I can use voice controls on the smartphone that I can't use to tune the radio. So, it's arguably much easier to use in that vehicle.
Again, if you don't want to spend money on a data plan and smartphone, that's your money, and you may spend it however you wish. If you want to remain in the landline era, that's your business. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if you could get a mobile plan with data for what you're paying for that landline. The cost of my landline was the main reason I got rid of it. Plus, the number of annoying calls I received went down immediately.
There's getting past learning how to do anything, period.
My Internet is cheaper if I keep the landline and I don't like the idea of giving it up. I only got a Jitterbug when the cost of increasing the speed of my Internet was too much. When I was all set to go with getting VOIP and Internet added to broadcast channels plus a few more from Time Warner, I was going to cancel and tell them they couldn't change my mind. My Internet got speeded up at a much lower cost than they had told me. And I had to do that again recently but i didn't go so far as to threaten to cancel.
I am paying a lot for the Jitterbug considering I rarely use it, but it's there for emergencies.
You don't have to learn how to use a smartphone if you don't want to, but, if you keep doing what you're doing, you're going to keep getting what you're getting. If you're happy with that, fine, but even my mother, who is terrified of technology, eventually broke down and got an iPhone. I know she doesn't do as much with it as I do with mine, but she definitely does use it.
I'm paying roughly three times as much for my home internet and cable as I pay for my smartphone and data plan. In my line of work, I don't have the option of discontinuing the cable internet and going fully mobile, and I only have one viable internet provider at my house (though the local company with fiber internet is supposedly going to start operating in my neighborhood by the end of the summer). I obviously don't know what kind of phone you're using for your Jitterbug, but you can buy an Android device that works with Jitterbug for just over $100. You can get an unlimited talk, text, and data plan for about $50/month (which is about 60% of what my monthly cell phone bill is). I also don't know what your monthly income is, but that seems economical to me if you ever decided you wanted to break out of your comfort zone.
It's also worth noting that many "landlines" are no longer true copper landlines in the traditional sense. When my parents asked AT&T to install faster internet at their home, the first thing the phone company did was to disconnect the proper "landline" they'd had in use since they moved there, and they installed a modem that both their phone and internet service now connect through. When my parents protested, asked for their copper landline to be reconnected and explained that, with the new setup they would lose their landline when the power to the modem failed, AT&T basically said they couldn't reconnect their old copper lines and they sent them a small-format UPS that allows them to continue to have phone service for a very short while after a power failure.
Maybe if you left your home, or hometown every once and a while, you'd actually have the need.
The FCC does not have the authority to do such a thing. The only entity who does is Congress.
The advantage of digital TV was not in the fact that it was digital but in the fact that it was much higher resolution.
FM analog sounds just as good as digital systems to 99% or better of listeners.
The FCC did not "choose" iBiquity, the radio industry did. They presented it to the FCC as a fait acomplit.
Of course, radio is mostly a mobile proposition today. TV is not. In fact, digital TV ruined the market for little portable analog TV sets one could carry with them and have last all day on a pair of AAA batteries.
And LG makes absolutely the best TVs in the world, per all the recongized reviews. They don´t need the Zenith name... since that name was already deteriorated before it was sold.
AM's problems are not its audio. They lie in the fact that so few AMs even cover their entire market area today. Just 180 AMs in the top 100 markets cover 80% of the market day and night... less than an average of two good signals per market.
AM has little hope of rescue due to coverage and increasing noise levels. FM does not really have a perceived need for digital as analog FM sounds perfectly acceptable to nearly every listener.
One reason: Leonard Kahn. And there were five systems, but when his was not picked, he held up AM stereo for almost 5 years, and by then nearly all music listening had gone to FM.
So did all of the systems. I had order #1 for two of the five for an AM I managed, but by the time the FCC ruled "let the market decide" none of us were investing in AM any more.
And it was fixed.
I had it at KTNQ in LA, and it sounded fine in the strong signal areas... but when you got below the 10 to 15 mV/m contours in DA nulls, it could be nasty. I turned it off and nobody... not one listener... noticed.
By FCC decision and because Leonard Kahn would not accept defeat. So the FCC said, "OK, we tried. Now it is up to you guys to shoot it out on your own".
No, they should not. There are hundreds of millions of analog AM radios out there now, and about 170,000,000 are in cars and won't be replaced until the vehicle is in a junk yard. Requiring all digital would make all those radios obsolete with no replacement option.
The period needed to get 90% of all car radios off the road is about 22 to 23 years. Your idea is impractical.
And, of course, listeners have no perception of need for digital radio. For TV, it was big flat screens and enormous resolution improvements. In radio it is zilch, nothing, nada.
Nobody buys new radios today, as the move is to streaming. Hint: streams are digital, but old analog FM usually sounds better. Listeners have figured that out.
Because there is no notable improvement such as there was in TV. "Digital" was once a frightening word to radio, but that was 25 years ago when digital satellite was on the horizon... it came and did not destroy terrestrial radio. And now, even my kitchen microwave and water filter are "digital" so that word has no strength or power any more.
FM owners knew that nearly none of the local AMs even covered their market so we ignored them.
Again, there are huge markets like Phoenix and San Diego and the like that don't even have one AM that covers the whole metro. And others like Orlando, Atlanta, Nashville, that have, maybe, one that comes close to full coverage but even then not without interference from co-channel stations in the rest of the world.
Nobody asks for it... particularly consumers.
They would rip each other up so badly at night that nobody would be listenable. It is not modulation that determines skip on the AM band... it is the frequency of each station.
In any case, most of the "good " AM allocations were done over 80 years ago. Cities expanded and grew and those signals don't work any more. Our two big neighbors, Canada and Mexico, decided to gradually move about 80% of all AMs to the FM band. Canada is cleaning out AM, leaving only specialized services on AM. Mexico is letting everybody except on the regulated US border and a couple of big cities move to FM; AM is being given mostly to groups in rural areas that broadcast in one of Mexico's over 100 indigenous languages in very rural areas.
Brazil is closing the AM band. Many South American and Central American nations now have less than 25% of the AMs they once had.
Concurrent to all of this was the explosion of streaming radio using the internet and smartphones. That was an entire organized system from transmission to reception, with devices on both sides that were cheaper to use than broadcasting. Plus it's all digital. The radio companies looked at that and asked: Why are we spending so much money buying and operating radio stations when we can reach more people from our garages without all the crazy federal regulations? It all makes so much sense.
- Status