Re: Honest thoughts about HD radio

On Mar 24, 7:08?pm, "David Eduardo" <amda...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Eric F. Richards" <efri...@xxxxxxx> wrote in messagenews:b01b03lbtq88abue5pio4jg0mcjka7l1ol@xxxxxxxxxx



It's a bull*** game being sold by a bull*** salesman. All it does is
hasten the death of AM, which has already been punished by
short-sighted decisions by the FCC and their elected minders'
lobbyists as well as appallingly unimatinative programming.

How about looking at the history of AM.

The FCC decision that killed AM was that one, effective in 1967, that forced
all simulcast FMs to do independent and separate programming. What this did
was multiply by at least double, and in many markets, triple, the number of
different radio offerings. As some stations became successful on FM, the
pre-existing formats fragmented. In addition, FM was not yet "advertiser
accepted" so FMs had lower commercial units per hour.

As listeners found alternatives to their taste on FM, they also discovered
that FM sounded better and that there were fewer commercials. Ten years
later, FM had achieved half of all radio listening, and ratings had about
three times the number of stations showing up as they did in the early 60's.

AM stereo, supposed to be approved and launched around 1978, could have kept
AM viable as a music medium. Lawsuits and FCC policy kept this from
happening for half a decade, and by that time FM had about 75% of the music
listening. AM was becoming a spoken word band.

The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in the mid 80's allowed the rapid
development of AM talk, and stations came back to life... at least the good
ones did. An example: Clear Channel WOAI in San Antonio was losing money and
sold for a song to a company that renamed itself after the class of
frequency WOAI was on and went to a talk format... achieving success that
continues to today. This would not have happened were Farness not repealed.

At the same time... in this 60's to 80's period, American cities continued
to sprawl. Most local AMs saw the market grow beyond their usable signal.
First, they became also-rans. Then they tried niche programming, such as
Spanish or religion or Black depending on the market. As FM picked up the
deep ethnic formats, AM lost out there, too.So you had markets where only a
couple of stations had real full signals doing talk and derivatives, while
the other AMs went to religion, brokered programming or niche ethnic like
Russian, Farsi or Mandarin.

Now, the issue is that there are two generations of Americans that have no
interest in AM, as what they grew up on was FM. Anyone born after about 1960
is an FMer...

So AM is now the band for persons over 45, and, mostly, over 55. That is
where economics kicks in... there is essentially no ad agency business aimed
at 55+, although in smaller markets local retailers take a broader view of
who to market to. In the big markets, AM listening is only salable if it is
under 55, and it is increasingly not so. WGN in Chicago, for example, is not
even a top 20 station in the under-25 demographic groups of interest.

AM was viable at night until TV grew up in the mid 60's. The big radio
dayparts are 6 AM to 7 PM, and after that time it is barely listened to. AM,
which once garnered listeners and advertisers at night, ceased to be
relevant after 6 or 7 PM, and even less relevant on skywave as the band grew
to over 4500 stations. At the same time, FM grew to over 9000 stations,
taking most listening because the C's and B's covered better than nearly
ever AM in the nation in respect to the local market.

While a few FCC things did not help AM, it was mostly market forces and the
growth of superior FM signals and programming that did the deed.

AM is fading, and may not be helpable... not by the FCC, not by HD, not by
owners. FM, on the other hand, is quite healthy... the loss of FM usage vs.
1985 is barely 1%, despite iPods and CDs and HDTV and video games and the
Internet. It is not the programming... as an industry, we spend tons of
money trying to find out what listeners want and giving it to them.

AM may have one chance, which is the fact that HD covers AM and FM, which
CQuam did not do. If FM HD, with its multiple channels, texting and improved
quality catches on, it can drag AM with it, hopefully. Otherwise, in 10
years AM listeners will be over 55 or 60, no advertiser will care, and we
will be left with nothing but brokered and quirky ethnic AMs...

My only point all along has been that the death of AM is insured if we worry
about ultra-fringe and skywave listening which does not help AMs to stay in
business. AM can only survive with change. While I am not sure we have a
viable solution, it is the best one to come along. It is certainly not
favorable to AM DX, but neither is having no AMs at all!

I hope this is taken in the spirit of your post which offered one point of
view that goes beyond the "DXers vs. Radio" argument; this point of view is
fairly widely adhered to in the industry, although some see AM eventually
going all digital, and others see it disappearing... my discussion above is
sort of a centrist position in the business.

Your whole broadcast industry is dying - it hasn't been profitable for
the last six years, and this dog they call HD/IBOC, is only going to
bring it down faster, with the hundeds-of-millions spent on this piece-
of-*** engineering, that is a fraud and a farce and causes adjacent-
channel interference and has only 60% the coverage of analog.
Consumers are not one-bit interested in purchasing HD radios:

http://www.statsaholic.com/hdradio.com

Even after the big FCC announcement this week, interest in HD Radio
hit bottom - sucka !

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