Re: FCC Approves AM HD at night



Continuing with the info-mercial, David Frackelton Gleason, who poses as
'Eduardo', and whose employer, Univision, has an interest in HD/IBOC, made it
perfectly clear that he's stuck on stupid and locked on dumb when he wrote:

"D Peter Maus" <DPeterMaus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:_0bNh.6631$f56.4888@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
David Eduardo wrote:


Of course, I was citing Bob Orban, who you obviously know nothing
about.... it is amazing how you can have a $2 k radio, and not know a
thing about the industry that makes the sounds come out of it.

David, first, you don't tell Brenda Ann what she does and does not know.
Her experience in broadcast engineering is considerable. And goes well
beyond that of all but a handful of domestic broadcast engineers.

That response was not to Brenda Ann, I have to clarify... it was to Telamon.

But...

I have, unfortunately, found that Brenda Ann is extremely superficial in her
knowledge of how American, mostly-commercial, advertiser supported radio
works. In many posts she has made errors of fact on station operation in the
US.

She, in fact, is the one who began the "we can hear KXXX in Klamath Falls"
justification for not allowing radio to try to save itself, ignoring the
fact that for decades AM listening is on the wane and nearly nobody does
listen to signals below a certain intensity on AM. All the while, AM in
general is dying rather alarmingly. It is fine to have engineering
experience, but at most stations in the US, the objectives of engineering
are to help the station be profitable and to stay in legal compliance.

Second, you know as well as I, that Radio, no matter what the station,
or what the era, is still SHOWBIZ. And most people do not understand how
it works behind the scenes. As much as you lecture here, you're not really
getting any traction precisely because you are lecturing.

Still there are things that are just hard and fast rules. First, in metros,
there is essentially no listening below an arbitrary 10 mv/m signal level...
no amount of DXer logic about "well I can hear it" obviates the well
researched fact that weaker signals just do not get real world listening.
And tiny bits of listening do not support commercial stations that must obey
the way advertisers tell them to sell: you can not get a dime more revenue
for an LA station when that station has big ratings in Ventura, for example.

The key here is radio is provided free because advertisers pay for it.

Radio has danced to that trune for 80-some years, and there is no changing
of the rules by radio... advertisers call the shots. Radio is only about 8%
of all ad expenditure in the US, so it can not dictate the rules.

How does this affect listeners? Radio can not afford to cater to listeners
outside the local market because they make radio no money today. Peter, I
can't change that fact and the whole industry can not, either. Some things,
like the proverbia death and taxes, are not changable and just have to be
accepted.

Third...Bob Orban's research addresses what he found of the radios he
tested. But it doesn't address his methodology, nor his list of brands and
models. As much as I despise Sony, they've done some interesting things
with their consumer radios. Of which there are millions in play worldwide.
One of the most interesting, is the automatic variable bandwidth circuitry
added to AM stages on portables, ie Walkman's some of the smaller
boomboxes--suburb blasters I like to call them. This circuitry leaves AM
bandwidth quite narrow, and about where Orban empirically determined it to
be. Under most conditions found in non ideal signal areas. High noise, low
signal strength, the AM bandwidth remained narrow.

From what I know, the CRL / Orban folks bought a huge assortment of what
they considered the typical radio 80% to 90% of listening was being done
on... most in the $20 range, give or take. And some boom boxes, and a bunch
of OEM and aftermarket car receivers. They tested all for response, and then
tried to develop ways to make processing basics suitable for nearly all of
the receivers. I believe they accurately discarded upscale receivers
(component tuners, etc.) as they felt the liklihood of anyone listening to
AM on one was very minimal... with which I agree.

It is tough to design the basics of a processor to fit thousands of
different radios. It is sort of like the comparisons of the Mac OS to
Windows... one fits with totally compliant hardware, the other has to try to
adapt to tens of thousands of devices with a wide degree of compliance.

The technical stuff, though, goes only so far. AM lost being a music medium
in about 1977 and is now unsuitable for it. About 90% of radio listening is
for music and light entertainment, and that goes to FM. So AM has a bigger
issue than processing... it is the fact that two generations of Americans
think it sounds horrible and don't even sample it!

AH...but under low noise or/and higher signal strength conditions, the
bandwidth automatically widened to a respectable figure and presented
surprisingly nice audio. Nearly all AM Stereo radios work this way. And
many not AM Stereo equipped. Including car radios by Philco, Visteon,
Delco, Delphi, Clarion (and other suppliers to Chrysler). I have five or
six in my house right now, and all my Caravans have worked this way. These
aren't throw away radios. And they're not $10 specials at Wal-Mart, but I
see/hear them on the streets, on the beaches downtown, and WGN, WLS and
WBBM are on them a surprisingly large percentage of the time. I see these
radios on busses, and trains, or clipped to the belts of joggers,
commuters, business sorts walking the sidewalks to the office. They're not
a majority, bt they do have a significant presence.

The issue is that AM stereo (CQuam) did not work, not because of
broadcasters or programming, but because Leonard Kahn's legal gyrations
delayed it by 5 or 6 years until AM was irrelevant for music. This is kind
of a Betamax situation, where a good system did not prevail... in this case
due to the fact that by the early 80's, listeners had decided FM was better
and AM was trying to find Rush or some other saviour.

These are NOT radios so few in number as to be ignored. And they are
precisely the radios to be adversely affected by AM-HD/IBOC hash from the
local station.

Portables are mostly used by younger persons... there is no current market
for AM under 45 years of age. The issue with AM is that the band is dead in
younger age groups, and dying in older ones; a 55+ audience can not be made
profitable for a station, even with lots of sub-prime lenders hawking
mortgage derivitives.

So, while I'm sure you correctly describe Orban's findings, what either
you or he hasn't done is paint the complete picture.

Bob and Greg were trying to use real world receivers to determine the start
point for design... you have to take into account the majority of receivers
and who is listening. And for AM in the US, that is an ugley picture of bad
receivers and old farts.

And by dismissively arguing statistics that directly controvert
personal experiences, you're not making any headway.

This is the crux of the whole discussion, and your focus on it is very
appropriate... as usual in your posts.

AM stations can be heard outside their immediate market or community. Many
can be heard for quite a distance.

Listeners do not, in any significant quantity, listen to signals that are
not intense. Data gathered from all over the nation over years and years
shows this.

On a station basis, the out of immediate "trade area" or market listening is
not salable. Advertisers don't care about listeners who are a several hour
drive from their store or who are not in the particular distribution area at
hand.

Most AMs do not cover their local market day and night... and that is the
real issue... there are only a very few AMs that truly cover well in any
market and the rest are "deefective" and will not get listening.

To preserve AM, then, the status quo is not an option.

Try not sounding like a corporate suit, David. You may find that there
people here who can, and will listen to what you have to say, if you stop
talking to them like they're stupid beneath your contempt.

The first step is understanding that radio is a business. We can not provide
service, entertainment, anything of value, without having an income. AM is
dying, and something has to be done or it will be gone... the only viable
format, news / talk, will migrate to FM as is already happening in many
markets. And AM will disappear, or be a source of Farsi programming in LA or
Vietnamese en Houston and all manner of religious content in between.

And then the couple of listeners in the fringe areas or picking up KOA in
Utah will have no AM choice at all.

But this can not be explained unless there is an understanding of how a
station is able to provide free programming. Whether it is Brenda Ann or
Telamon, this understanding is being ignored.

Hey, Edweenie, shove it up your fake Hispanic prancing ass, boy!


.

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