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WHISTLING - OR HISSING - PAST THE GRAVEYARD

S

Savage

One of the oft-chanted pro-HD talking points is: "well, if adjacent-channel nighttime interference is so bad, how come there haven't been more complaints?"

Implicit in the question, we find the usual cynical candor-deficit so typical when it comes to HD Radio.

The first and most obvious answer is - there are approximately 4700 AM stations operating. Of those, the latest count is 261 are broadcasting in HD. And due to a variety of compelling technical reasons, as of today, only 80 are broadcasting at night. (Generally the reason is nonlinear pattern bandwidth in night directional arrays which produces horrific self-interference - which can only be corrected by complete rebuilds of DAs, a proposition sane managers would dismiss as a massive waste of money given the nonexistent audience for HD.)

A dozen of that tiny number are noted as "intermittent operation."

And among the TWO percent of operating AMs transmitting in HD 24/7, we find two telling factors:

One is that big-cheese Alliance members have been quietly indulging in self-mitigation, such as the case of Clear Channel, which attempted to keep "on the QT" its reduction in daytime HD injection to correct interference with WFIL, Philly, at WHP Harrisburg. Or how they turned off HD at night on WRVA to protect three co-owned 1130s in Detroit. Milwaukee and Minneapolis.

But the most laughable reason may well be: of the 80 operating HD-AM at night, 34 are ON GRAVEYARD CHANNELS of 1230, 1240, 1340, 1400, 1450 and 1490! :D That's forty-three percent!

Of course nobody would notice the skywave noise contribution HD makes on those hopelessly interference-choked channels, plus: the matter of bothering to install an HD exciter to radiate a whopping TEN watts of digital power which, against thundering analog skywave interference probably gets out about as well as the illumination from the station's code beacon, is more of a question for psychiatrists than it is for engineers.

Once again, HD Radio proves the proposition: sometimes signing that check just proves to the world how dumb you are.
 
Savage said:
But the most laughable reason may well be: of the 80 operating HD-AM at night, 34 are ON GRAVEYARD CHANNELS of 1230, 1240, 1340, 1400, 1450 and 1490! :D That's forty-three percent!
Click to expand...

Hat's off for starting a "New" topic, I guess. :)

I would point out that at least in a few markets, like my home of Corpus Christi, Graveyarders, or their equivelents, are what there is on AM.

Here in CC we have

1030 - 50KW days only. Brokered religion. Zero night power.
1150 - 1 KW day 500w Night - Not quite a graveyarder. :)
1230 - 1KW Day/Night
1330 - Rimshot - 1 KW days 280 nights. Barely there at night.
1360 - 1KW Day/Night
1400 - 1KW Day/Night
1440 - 1KW Day/Night Directional night
1510 - 500W Days only - (Operates full power 24/7 for years)
1590 - "Suburban" 1KW days, 500 nights - Both directional Towards the city.


Us little new cities didin't get squat for AM. The best coverage at night on AM are "ALL" graveyards.

Sheesh. Give a guy 20KW and 4 towers and suddenly he can't remember the little people. :)

Be nice to me or Ill take my former boss's transmitter and go home. :) And yes, I can unscrew it from the rack and carry it to the truck, myself, thank you for asking. :)

Clouseau
 
I'm sure your AM situation there in Corpus is typical of many other markets, Inspector.

And I think it graphically demonstrates the truth of a statement made repeatedly here by Play Freebird - namely, that HD Radio (AM flavor) utterly fails to address the real technical problems plaguing AM radio. The high points including:

* Daytime-only operation for many stations
* Widely disparate dayttime/nighttime power and coverage
* Interference (which HD actually makes worse)
* Sound quality (reasonable minds can differ)
* Excessive complexity, cost and maintenance needs

In fact, the only AM "issue" which is addressed by HD is QRN - which is a real-world benefit only if the system actually works in the real world, which I would argue, it does NOT.
 
My original post was in no way meant to be disrespectful of operators/operations on "local" (graveyard) channels. Many of those stations operate profitably and render valuable public service. And some of the local channel signals offer truly surprising coverage, despite low power and very high co-channel analog interference levels.

I spent a summer working at Merv Griffin's WMID 1340 Atlantic City, which had a 5/8 wave tower (part of the old WFPG-TV stick) in a salt marsh about a mile from the oceanfront (conductivity 5000.) I would do remotes from Wildwood, 45 miles down the coast, at night when the station's power was only 250 watts. I got my cues just fine from a transistor radio. You could hear WMID almost to the New Jersey end of the Ben Franklin Bridge to Philly - despite co-channel WHAT!

My point is that HD-AM with ten watts of digital hardly makes sense on these signals. And when you take away the graveyarders operating at night in HD there are a whopping 46 signals left. Sorry, no disrespect, but "locals" operating in HD hybrid are generally not viable digital facilities receivable widely by the general public. And that leaves fewer than one major HD signal per STATE operating 24-7 in HD-AM. Less than ONE PERCENT of operating AM stations.

After FIVE years of relentless and unjustifiable HD hype, it's not exactly a screaming success story. More like....a joke.
 
When they (FCC) issued the HD-FM edict, they should have instead mandated that all HD-FM radios must have ENHANCED AMAX AM with noise suppression technologies, automatic wide bandwidth adjustment, decent frequency response and even analog stereo. The AM to FM translator is part of the solution. I suggested this in my FCC filing, but it fell on deaf ears.
 
Yeah, that's what we need all righty. More gubmint interference in what should be free market decisions.
 
Oh for crissake, please. ::) ::) ::) ::) Government sets the standards, then private business works within them. It worked really well until it got screwed up in the 80s.

We've all seen how blindingly effective the free market has been in getting HD Radio established. We've all seen how blindingly effective the free market was in getting AM Stereo established.

The lack of standards causes the market to stagnate, not be freed up.
 
That's the point. Government DID pick HD. The FCC didn't say, let's go digital radio....umm....HD, DRM, Eureka147, you guys fight it out among yourselves - hope it all works out for you.

No, they ignored all the adverse engineering opinion that warned that HD would never work, and bought line-and-sinker all the outrageous misrepresentations and stack-the-deck field studies contrived by self-promoting non-radio alleged "engineers." The FCC allowed itself to wallow in cozy little closed-door lobbying sessions with Martin and Rehr/Struble and then - presto! Mandated HD as The Radio Digital Standard.

If the FCC had actually done its regulatory job on HD (as it historically did until the vogue ca. the 1990s became "farming out" regulation to outside-the-government private sector partisans) they probably would have rejected HD in favor of a digital radio scheme that actually works.

Instead - using the picturesque phrase so often employed by HD promoters which somehow manages to be both authoritarian and defeatist at the same time - "we have what we have."

IOW: a cobbled, destructive, semi-functional piece of crap. Which is being deservedly ignored by broadcasters and listeners alike.

Sooner or later, marketplace realities will propel radio to move on and find real solutions, instead of slapping more engineering band-aids on its little Laetrile program.

Has anybody else noticed how government is screwing up HDTV? Think that isn't setting a precedent for HD Radio? Wake up. HD Radio is so far in the real-world rear-view, it can't even be seen any more by the naked eye.
 
Savage said:
That's the point. Government DID pick HD. The FCC didn't say, let's go digital radio....umm....HD, DRM, Eureka147, you guys fight it out among yourselves - hope it all works out for you.

No, they ignored all the adverse engineering opinion that warned that HD would never work, and bought line-and-sinker all the outrageous misrepresentations and stack-the-deck field studies contrived by self-promoting non-radio alleged "engineers." The FCC allowed itself to wallow in cozy little closed-door lobbying sessions with Martin and Rehr/Struble and then - presto! Mandated HD as The Radio Digital Standard.

If the FCC had actually done its regulatory job on HD (as it historically did until the vogue ca. the 1990s became "farming out" regulation to outside-the-government private sector partisans) they probably would have rejected HD in favor of a digital radio scheme that actually works.

Instead - using the picturesque phrase so often employed by HD promoters which somehow manages to be both authoritarian and defeatist at the same time - "we have what we have."

IOW: a cobbled, destructive, semi-functional piece of crap. Which is being deservedly ignored by broadcasters and listeners alike.

Sooner or later, marketplace realities will propel radio to move on and find real solutions, instead of slapping more engineering band-aids on its little Laetrile program.

Has anybody else noticed how government is screwing up HDTV? Think that isn't setting a precedent for HD Radio? Wake up. HD Radio is so far in the real-world rear-view, it can't even be seen any more by the naked eye.
Click to expand...

By letting them "fight it out", do you mean like the "format wars", like VHS vs Betamax and, more recently, Blu-Ray vs HD DVD? That would have been interesting, but since there are more than just two digital radio transmission methods, it might have lasted longer than the aforementioned format wars. This is pure speculation on my part, I'm not in the radio business or anything, but were station owners anxious to get on the digital train? Maybe impatient? Maybe they didn't want to wait for a format to win. I would have liked to see a digital radio format war, it might have generated more excitement for digital radio in general. I'm not arguing at all with Savage, I'm just asking a question because I know he is in the business.
 
No problem, almaniac27. Actually I think the answer to your question, "were station owners anxious to get on the digital train," is answered succinctly by the abysmal adoption rate of stations installing (mostly, not installing) HD Radio.

It's hard to say which represents the sorrier performance - station installs or receiver sales. So the unequivocal answer would be: no. At least in the expensive, underperforming HD iteration.

For there to be "excitement for digital radio in general," digital would have to offer a dramatic advantage over the best analog audio performance. As we have seen from the near-universal adoption of iPods with their distinctly inferior audio, "audiophile performance" is not a priority for casual listening in consumer-driven music. Would-be radio historians mistakenly point to FM's overtaking AM in the 1970s and 1980s as evidence that sound quality drives preferences, but - having been there at the time - I can state that was a relatively small piece of the picture. FM programming was better suited to the predominant target demo than was AM's version. And the coverage was generally better in major markets. And, yes, it sounded better, but as I said that wasn't the dominant issue.

In the case of HD Radio, the digital "improvement" compared with analog is so modest most listeners can't tell the difference. As far as multicasting and "programming choice" goes, established rival innovations already exist which vastly outpace HD - those being mp3 players and satellite radio. They generally perform better, offer wider choice and cost far less. AM-HD, "HD at its worst," fails to work acceptably in most station installations and generates horrific interference.

Certainly allowing rival digital-analog hybrid schemes to fight it out in the marketplace would have been pointless - essentially it would amount to a repeat of the AM C-Quam debacle. But knowingly promoting a half-baked semi-operational POS like HD isn't an answer either. Big Radio, the NAB and iBiquity tried to jam an Electromagnetic Stimulus Package down the industry's throat. Now the mess is theirs to clean up.
 
"Would-be radio historians mistakenly point to FM's overtaking AM in the 1970s and 1980s as evidence that sound quality drives preferences, but - having been there at the time - I can state that was a relatively small piece of the picture. "

What finally got FM out of the graveyard was the late 1960's decison by the FCC (otherwise bashed on in this set of postings) to mandate non-duplication forcing some need for creativity on the station owners.

So where are we in the 21st century. AM signals are migrating to FM either via HD-2, translator, or just putting the AM signal on a non-performing FM (see KCBS). Just going back to where we were in the late 60's.
 
Savage said:
Would-be radio historians mistakenly point to FM's overtaking AM in the 1970s and 1980s as evidence that sound quality drives preferences, but - having been there at the time - I can state that was a relatively small piece of the picture. FM programming was better suited to the predominant target demo than was AM's version. And the coverage was generally better in major markets. And, yes, it sounded better, but as I said that wasn't the dominant issue.
Click to expand...

In my opinion, the improvement in consistent coverage was the big reason for FM's growth in many markets - especially after FM owners maxed out their facilities by installing circular polarization, building taller towers, increasing to full class B or C power, etc.

There are numerous examples of once-dominant AM stations with highly restrictive night patterns having serious problems in covering populated suburbs after sunset -- for example, WBBF 950 in Rochester, WIXY 1260 in Cleveland, WIBG 990 in Philadelphia, and KLIF 1190 in Dallas. Looking at the night coverage maps of these facilities in Radio Locator (keeping in mind that the nulls are often deeper than predicted) compared with most FMs, the problem is obvious.

No wonder there is so little interest in AM IBOC; it offers no solution to the day vs. night coverage problem.
 
Play Freebird said:
In my opinion, the improvement in consistent coverage was the big reason for FM's growth in many markets - especially after FM owners maxed out their facilities by installing circular polarization, building taller towers, increasing to full class B or C power, etc.
Click to expand...

Boy, I'd have to agree with you there. Big FM facilities and much improved FM radios. Or the famous FM converters. (I had one of those. Worked great).

As a Main Line Boy, WIBG had miserable coverage in Chester County after dark. This is back in the "5" tower days. However WIFI 92FM blazed out that direction. Wibbage had far superior programming, and for obvious reasons I wanted to hear it. However more often then not, the Big 99 just disappeared in an area, and as folks drove through, they'd hit 56 and later WIFI. Coverage is very important, but it's not the whole story. Sound quality is important too. At least to a point. Note the lack of music on AM. (Sorry to beat the dead horse.)

There are numerous examples of once-dominant AM stations with highly restrictive night patterns having serious problems in covering populated suburbs after sunset -- for example, WBBF 950 in Rochester, WIXY 1260 in Cleveland, WIBG 990 in Philadelphia, and KLIF 1190 in Dallas. Looking at the night coverage maps of these facilities in Radio Locator (keeping in mind that the nulls are often deeper than predicted) compared with most FMs, the problem is obvious.
Click to expand...

Indeed it is. Perhaps we should have adopted the "Limited directionality" standards like we have for FM. When you look at stations like KLIF, it doesn't make much sense.

No wonder there is so little interest in AM IBOC; it offers no solution to the day vs. night coverage problem.
Click to expand...

In fairness, HD was never designed to solve day vs night. If anything it PRESERVED the day vs night difference. That will need to be fixed another way. Or left alone.

Clouseau
 
Back when I was PD of BBF 1975-77, we once had a harness-racing promotional challenge against 50kw WKBW at Buffalo Raceway. Jim Quinn - later to be my morning guy at 13Q and my current morning host on WYSL - was my opponent. He pre-promoted the event at KB, taunting me on-air about BBF's puny 1kw signal (as if I needed anyone to remind me) with comments like: "It's the great trot-off at Buffalo Raceway this Friday...I'm taking on Bob Savage from WBBF in Rochester. BBF. They're a really good station. If you're ever within three feet of Rochester, give 'em a listen!"

Yeah - WIBG definitely did have night coverage problems in Chester County. And Bucks County. And Montgomery County. Supposedly Buckley was gonna file for 50kw DA-2 from some absurd 10-tower array to be located in King of Prussia, but by then FM was taking over, so they canned that plan. I just know that even in Center City, WFIL was solid as a brick while 10kw WIBG sounded like a skywave coming all the way from Watchacallistan.

And the 12 towers of 1190 Dallas are of course legendary. As was the attempted 12-tower monster on 1500 in Detroit. The joke around CKLW was every time some cheesy suburban housing tract went up, WJBK made sure they threw up a couple more towers to create a null in that direction.
 
clouseau said:
In fairness, HD was never designed to solve day vs night. If anything it PRESERVED the day vs night difference. That will need to be fixed another way. Or left alone.

Clouseau
Click to expand...

BINGO! I think you've identified AM's big problem -- it's not so much the frequency response that needs to be improved, but COVERAGE. Other than billboards, what other media lose local coverage after dark? Not TV, not FM, not satellite, certainly not the internet. Yet the bosses at NAB and iBiquity are still trying to figure out why there's so little interest among AM broadcasters in adopting IBOC. Factor in the adjacent channel interference problem and you have the recipe for a major flop.

The people who pushed this scheme through the FCC clearly wanted to maintain the status quo -- and they succeeded, because consumers are showing little interest. Problem is, they've made matters even worse by adding noise to the bands. If we're going to the trouble and expense of a digital conversion, let's solve some real problems that listeners face, rather than adding more.
 
This just in!! Sirius-XM announces plans to "power down" during nighttime hours to only 3 channels to save money! "Pattern change" will occur at local sunset, central time. :D (Just kidding.)
 
Play Freebird said:
clouseau said:
In fairness, HD was never designed to solve day vs night. If anything it PRESERVED the day vs night difference. That will need to be fixed another way. Or left alone.

Clouseau
Click to expand...

BINGO! I think you've identified AM's big problem -- it's not so much the frequency response that needs to be improved, but COVERAGE. Other than billboards, what other media lose local coverage after dark? Not TV, not FM, not satellite, certainly not the internet. Yet the bosses at NAB and iBiquity are still trying to figure out why there's so little interest among AM broadcasters in adopting IBOC. Factor in the adjacent channel interference problem and you have the recipe for a major flop.

The people who pushed this scheme through the FCC clearly wanted to maintain the status quo -- and they succeeded, because consumers are showing little interest. Problem is, they've made matters even worse by adding noise to the bands. If we're going to the trouble and expense of a digital conversion, let's solve some real problems that listeners face, rather than adding more.
Click to expand...

Do you think maybe we should only let 50kw clear channels use AM-HD and have graveyarders try and get on an FM HD2 or 3? Or maybe just do away with AM-HD all together? I live in Cincinnati, and we have two local AM-HD stations. (I can lock in the digital signal from WONE in Dayton and WTVN Columbus fairly reliably as well.) HD on WLW makes sense because it doesn't go directional at night, but I bet the skywave hash wreaks havoc on stations like WOKV, WOR, and WGN. I think AM-HD should just go away, but if a lot of AM stations try and go for an HD2 or 3, will a lot of smaller AM broadcasters get left out in the cold? What's a more expensive proposition for a tiny AM outlet, investing in AM-HD equipment, or leasing a subchannel on an FM signal? And what about a daytimer? Will the HD3 go dark at night, or will they have to spend money on new programming to put on there?
 
Speaking of HD-AM, Bob Struble was once again in top form in the latest issue of RW (article, "CES HD-R"). He's the only one I know who can spin "1 or 2 percent in the auto and receiver market" as 'good growth.'

But while Struble was yammering on about the added capabilities of HD-FM, RW did observe that AMs using HD "does not appear to be growing appreciably."

What was Struble's reply to the AM issue? "We have a solution that we think works, and it's really going to be up to them" as far as AM stations adopting the technology.

Not only did I feel that his reply was dismissive of AM as a whole but a silent admission that HD-AM has problems. After all, here was an opportunity for Struble to refute any arguments brought forward by 'in the trenches' engineers opposed to HD-AM and he passed on it big time.

C5
 
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