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Will Pittsburgh Be The Test Site for All Digital AM?

D

dB

From: Amateur Radio Newsline #1836, October 19, 2012 ( http://www.arnewsline.org/storage/scripts/nsln1836.txt )

EMERGING TECHNOLOGY: ALL DIGITAL AM HD TESTING ON ITS WAY

Information is surfacing regarding NAB Radio Technology Committee plans to test all- digital AM H-D Radio technology on an existing full carrier AM radio station.

The committee has been meeting since last November to discuss technical options for the revitalization of AM. Testing would quantify both indoor and outdoor coverage. In general, the goal is to verify whether the station coverage and robustness are improved with an all-digital signal in both day and night transmission. Also to quantify any change. There’s little technical data in the public arena for all-digital AM operation.

Glynn Walden is CBS Radio Senior Vice President of Engineering. He said during the fall NAB Radio Show that a test station has been chosen with testing likely to begin right after the presidential elections. Walden and other committee members declined to identify the facility but some believe it will be a CBS station in an area that could be characterized as a medium sized market. (CGC, RW)
 
Sure sounds like KDKA to me. It is a CBS O&O, one of two AMs in the market with digital capacity (Disney's WDDZ-1250 is the other) and it seems very receptive these days to experimentation, if you consider the amount of cross-programming it has been doing with KDKA-FM "93.7 The Fan" since Pirate, Pitt and high school seasons (not to mention the NFL commitments) began to conflict. Also, there is plenty to say about how KD's signal has been diminished east of the city in recent years because of technical issues. One more thing is KD's history of experimentation, including a shortwave simulcast in the early days of commercial radio. I'd bet on KD for a lot of reasons.
 
I *HIGHLY* doubt it will be KDKA. The station chosen will *lose all its audience* for the duration of the test. (OK, not *all*, but darned close to it. There just aren't that many HD radios in use.) Remember that this test calls for operating the station in all-digital mode; it will not be transmitting a signal that can be received on analog receivers.

I've heard a rumor elsewhere that the medium market in question is in North Carolina. CBS owns two AM stations in Charlotte, and one is rumored planning a format change. If they were going to run the station for a month with some format designed to drive off the listeners from the old format, they might as well operate it all-digital & gather some worthwhile engineering data in the process..
 
You were right the first time, w9. "Lose all its audience" is literally correct. Even in a market the size of Pittsburgh, I would be willing to bet the "digital" audience for KD or anyone else who might be running AM HD in the market is precisely zero at any given time. And I would bet the weekly digital cume for the entire market numbers fewer than a hundred listeners - much of that comprised of station engineers checking their signals.

I don't believe that non-auto HD radios which can tune AM have been available for at least two years.
 
My money would be on something like WHFS-AM in Tampa, a 50,000 watt sports simulcast of 98.7 The Fan, which currently has a 0.2.... no ratings or revenue at risk.
 
You're tuned to the NEW sound of AM 1020, The Buzz

Pittsburgh is not a good market for early adapters. Skews too old and too low income.
If they aren't buying HD radios now being able to hear Tradio and Father Ron Lengwin
in crystal clear HD is not likely to do it.
 
It will have to be a station that is heading for cadaver city. (aren't they all). Audience doesn't matter since they will be doing measurements all over the place. I'll be interested to see how the system handles all the QRM. However, since it is a failed system, it hardly matters. Too bad they had that "not invented here" mentality, because we could have adopted the DRM system. No matter what, the band is shot to hell with interference and, as much as I love AM, it's time to give it up.
 
AM radio died when the FCC wouldn't set a single standard for AM stereo broadcasts. The manufactures held off on making the radios. Eventually the public stopped tuning to AM for music so the stations shifted to talk formats and by the time the standard was set the party was over and nobody cared.

The final nail in AM's coffin is the quality of the AM tuners being made nowadays. My expensive Alpine car stereo can barely pick up KDKA. Every radio in my house with the exception of a older GE Super radio doesn't do ant better. I have a Sony HD Radio tuner in my house and the AM section is terrible. You think they would at least bother putting a good AM section in the HD radios but no.
Sorry to say it but AM is dead dead dead.
 
FreddyE1977 said:
You're tuned to the NEW sound of AM 1020, The Buzz

Pittsburgh is not a good market for early adapters. Skews too old and too low income.
If they aren't buying HD radios now being able to hear Tradio and Father Ron Lengwin
in crystal clear HD is not likely to do it.
Click to expand...

Firstly, this is a *temporary* test -- likely to run only a few weeks before the station in question goes back to hybrid mode. Secondly, they don't expect *any* ordinary listeners to listen to it. This will be run strictly for the engineers.
 
If the sky-wave at night issue is not solved by this (a I do not think it will), and the digital stream is "strong" enough to overcome man-made RF interference and lightning the the only "future" for AM is digital. AM could become a "poor man's" satellite radio. 50 KW in an AM digital signal should go great distances (hundreds if not a thousand miles). The old ham radio's Morse-code with a lot less power goes thousands of miles. I know it is a different set of frequencies but a lot of time Morse code can be made out a lot of times when the voice will not. If the "new" AM digital comes up on scan with the FM HD sub channels, and Ibiquity or whoever gets smart and lowers the receiver licensing fee to less than a dollar per reliever digital might be viable.
 
Understood about how the audience will all be engineers and executives, w9. But the issue I think is, which station has such low listenership and sponsor support, that it essentially has "nothing to lose" and can thus shut off its tiny/nonexistent audience with no adverse effect? I would guess the expanded-band 1660 in N.C.

Consulting the Predict-O-Meter: no matter how many HD wonks, engineers, NAB puppies etc. participate, the result will be: "HD AM RADIO ALL-DIGITAL works JUST GREAT!!" :eek: ::)
 
xm41 said:
AM radio died when the FCC wouldn't set a single standard for AM stereo broadcasts. The manufactures held off on making the radios. Eventually the public stopped tuning to AM for music so the stations shifted to talk formats and by the time the standard was set the party was over and nobody cared.

The final nail in AM's coffin is the quality of the AM tuners being made nowadays. My expensive Alpine car stereo can barely pick up KDKA. Every radio in my house with the exception of a older GE Super radio doesn't do ant better. I have a Sony HD Radio tuner in my house and the AM section is terrible. You think they would at least bother putting a good AM section in the HD radios but no.
Sorry to say it but AM is dead dead dead.
Click to expand...

I don't understand why new tuners are so horrible. The AM tuner in my JVC HD raido terrible. I can rarely get it to lock in on either an HD or normal AM station. New home receivers are just as bad. It's funny, I picked up a Kenwood KR-5150 on Ebay for $40. That thing is 40 years old, but it sounds great and the tuner is amazing. I have it in my basement with no antenna other than the little built in on, I can pick up dozens of AM stations, including WCBS at night.
 
VelvetJonesLives said:
xm41 said:
AM radio died when the FCC wouldn't set a single standard for AM stereo broadcasts. The manufactures held off on making the radios. Eventually the public stopped tuning to AM for music so the stations shifted to talk formats and by the time the standard was set the party was over and nobody cared.

The final nail in AM's coffin is the quality of the AM tuners being made nowadays. My expensive Alpine car stereo can barely pick up KDKA. Every radio in my house with the exception of a older GE Super radio doesn't do ant better. I have a Sony HD Radio tuner in my house and the AM section is terrible. You think they would at least bother putting a good AM section in the HD radios but no.
Sorry to say it but AM is dead dead dead.
Click to expand...

I don't understand why new tuners are so horrible. The AM tuner in my JVC HD raido terrible. I can rarely get it to lock in on either an HD or normal AM station. New home receivers are just as bad. It's funny, I picked up a Kenwood KR-5150 on Ebay for $40. That thing is 40 years old, but it sounds great and the tuner is amazing. I have it in my basement with no antenna other than the little built in on, I can pick up dozens of AM stations, including WCBS at night.
Click to expand...

No mystery there.
No one will build with physical parts anymore, and/or there's no separate,extra (tuned) amplified RF section before the mixer.
All Varactor diode tuning schemes are on stepped voltage outputs that don't to offer alignment adjustments.

If you look in that old Kenwood, you'd very likley see that the AM tuning capacitor has three seperate sections.
One of the larger sections was just for a tuned AM amplifier, the other two were for the local oscillator and detector circuits.

Most modern sets are what I call radio emulators.
They "fullfill" the function, but only at a most perfunctory level of the definition.

A lard sandwich certainly is FOOD, but like modern radios, It's just something I insist on avoiding for very good reasons.
 
The AM circuitry in modern radios is terrible because most buyers don't care about AM. Crane and the old GE Superradio serve the small market that has AM reception as a priority.
 
They could. However, keep in mind that few people will migrate to the AM band no matter the modulation scheme.
 
Then don't call it the AM band. Few people understand megahertz, AM v FM, propagation, etc. anyway.

Call it the New Super High Definition Audio Band. Forget frequencies. Start at the bottom and call it Channel 1000. 10kHz up is Channel 1100. Or forget numbers and have Channel AA, Channel AB, etc. Whatever.
 
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