-
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
Will am go all am digital?
- Thread starter joshzz
- Start date
F
FredLeonard
Guest
(a) When hell freezes over.
(b) When pigs fly.
(c) When Rush's BMI hits 15
(d) All of the above.
(b) When pigs fly.
(c) When Rush's BMI hits 15
(d) All of the above.
That would be an interesting leap in directions and momentum.
AM was the simpler, less technical, less expensive technology of broadcasting to the masses. FM came along and required those funny antennas up on the tower, in many cases demand TALL towers, requiring more exacting studio equipment and for all practical purposes, requiring it to be stereo which added to the expense.
So I would think the debate today would be: Does AM radio need to go FULL BORE and spend the big bucks to go all digital and try to be more attractive to the public that is FM, or should AM radio go back to it's roots and keep the simplicity and low cost equipment and fill the role of being.... The People Radio, radio that can fill niches that do not have big bucks to help with the filling.
There are communities, there are segments of our population that need programming, need communication, but do not have the critical mass audience to justify the Big Bucks. Our nation needs to achieve some kind of policy understanding: AM Radio must gather itself together and find some way to do unto FM what FM has done to AM in the past generation, or AM radio needs to have a public policy that AM radio is like public transportation and city parks: it is there for the masses who can't ride to work in a Lexus every day.
AM radio has had the horsepower of a free-enterprise investment concept that offered supposed superior technical methods and so far it has fallen on it's face. Wyy in the next five years would faileld Digital AM IBOC suddenly become Prince Charming on a white horse sweeping the audience off its feet. 15 years ago investors were buying up AM stations because they wanted to be in the vanguard of this great new technology. Why would it suddenly work today.... when it has plodded along like a lame horse for so long?
What deprived form of programming is waiting back stage to burst onto the scene just as soon as slots on the dial open up that currently are not available?
AM was the simpler, less technical, less expensive technology of broadcasting to the masses. FM came along and required those funny antennas up on the tower, in many cases demand TALL towers, requiring more exacting studio equipment and for all practical purposes, requiring it to be stereo which added to the expense.
So I would think the debate today would be: Does AM radio need to go FULL BORE and spend the big bucks to go all digital and try to be more attractive to the public that is FM, or should AM radio go back to it's roots and keep the simplicity and low cost equipment and fill the role of being.... The People Radio, radio that can fill niches that do not have big bucks to help with the filling.
There are communities, there are segments of our population that need programming, need communication, but do not have the critical mass audience to justify the Big Bucks. Our nation needs to achieve some kind of policy understanding: AM Radio must gather itself together and find some way to do unto FM what FM has done to AM in the past generation, or AM radio needs to have a public policy that AM radio is like public transportation and city parks: it is there for the masses who can't ride to work in a Lexus every day.
AM radio has had the horsepower of a free-enterprise investment concept that offered supposed superior technical methods and so far it has fallen on it's face. Wyy in the next five years would faileld Digital AM IBOC suddenly become Prince Charming on a white horse sweeping the audience off its feet. 15 years ago investors were buying up AM stations because they wanted to be in the vanguard of this great new technology. Why would it suddenly work today.... when it has plodded along like a lame horse for so long?
What deprived form of programming is waiting back stage to burst onto the scene just as soon as slots on the dial open up that currently are not available?
Probably not in our lifetime. The government would have to force broadcasters to change over, which is unlikely, and would drive most of the AM broadcasters out of business. That and forcing receiver manufacturers and auto companies to build and install digital radios at a high cost, is also unlikely. The digital TV transition, was a completely different situation. Radio is a mobile environment, unlike TV.
Then why did they do it to analog TV in the US? There are still a few people listening to all-news, Rush Limbaugh or ESPN Radio on AM. Much like there was a few people still watching analog TV in 2008-2009. And analog TV was somewhat a mobile environment - remember the Sony Watchman? Little 3'' TV screen that could pull in VHF/UHF locals/semi locals. Not as many mobile viewers however as radio was.
I don't expect a full DTV-like AM conversion (likely to FM) until around 2025 or so. Mexico's already flipping 600+ AMs to FM in 2015. With all the new translators and LPFMs, expect the same 10-15 years from now in the US.
-crainbebo
I don't expect a full DTV-like AM conversion (likely to FM) until around 2025 or so. Mexico's already flipping 600+ AMs to FM in 2015. With all the new translators and LPFMs, expect the same 10-15 years from now in the US.
-crainbebo
Well with DTV and the requirement that manufacturers put digital in new units guaranteed the market would be there when the flip happened, if they did the same thing for radio it would work as well. But from a transmitter perspective FM would be allot easier to swap over than AM since "most" FM antennas will handle digital with minimal problems so you are looking at a similar change over cost to what TV saw. Allot of AM directional arrays are incompatible with the current digital standard so the cost of modification will be higher. But any way you slice it, smaller broadcasters will have a hard time soldering the cost of a swap over weather they are AM or FM based.
Going all digital in TV was to pack more signals in the RF remaining below RF51 after the 700MHz band was removed from TV broadcast...HD came along for the ride
Remember most TV stations had second signals on the air to carry their DTV in the beginning and most people watched TV via cable or sat..cannot do that with AM...
ALSO TV is a fixed service (in the majority of cases...you dont see a single person driving along watching TV in the car..in some states, its ILLEGAL to have a TV on in the front seat where the driver can see it..Texas is one). Radio is highly mobile/portable..apples and oranges
TV converters could be easily made by demoding DTV and sending it to S-Video/AV IOs/HDMI OR using a channel 3/4 modulator and a short cable (this was capable due to the fact there has NEVER been an analog 3 AND 4 in the same market....but 4 and 5 were separated enough to allow such in many markets). You cannot find an external antenna input on ANY portable AM radio (except for some rare ones)..and NO external audio inputs..thus making an external digital decoder worthless (in fact, there WAS an external AM Stereo decoder made but it had a FM modulator...because you cannot easily unplug a car AM antenna and insert such inline...think about it...while you reach inside YOUR dash to do so....average joe Q Public will not do that)...
I rest my case.
Going all digital in TV was to pack more signals in the RF remaining below RF51 after the 700MHz band was removed from TV broadcast...HD came along for the ride
Remember most TV stations had second signals on the air to carry their DTV in the beginning and most people watched TV via cable or sat..cannot do that with AM...
ALSO TV is a fixed service (in the majority of cases...you dont see a single person driving along watching TV in the car..in some states, its ILLEGAL to have a TV on in the front seat where the driver can see it..Texas is one). Radio is highly mobile/portable..apples and oranges
TV converters could be easily made by demoding DTV and sending it to S-Video/AV IOs/HDMI OR using a channel 3/4 modulator and a short cable (this was capable due to the fact there has NEVER been an analog 3 AND 4 in the same market....but 4 and 5 were separated enough to allow such in many markets). You cannot find an external antenna input on ANY portable AM radio (except for some rare ones)..and NO external audio inputs..thus making an external digital decoder worthless (in fact, there WAS an external AM Stereo decoder made but it had a FM modulator...because you cannot easily unplug a car AM antenna and insert such inline...think about it...while you reach inside YOUR dash to do so....average joe Q Public will not do that)...
I rest my case.
Keep in mind (at least in my area) there continues to be Analog TV, but on a Low Power Scale, which to this day is still permitted. I guess the Prospects of ATSC 3 are not too kind in the US... More conversion and more $$$...
- Status