Digital Radio (IBOC) News

bob adams

Well-Known Member
For a long time the powers that be driving the switch to terrestrial based digital broadcasting have been bemoaning the fact that no one wants to make or buy digital tuners. I mean why shell out hundreds of dollars for a new tuner when you have a perfectly good TU-X1, TU-919, CT-7000, MR-78, KT-917, 600T, KT-5020, T-117 in the house right? But don't you see that you analog broadcast tunerholics are the very thing that is keeping the Clear Channels and Ibiquitys from totally owning the airwaves. Hence they have pulled together a gameplan.

http://tinyurl.com/dqcjf

"Radio Industry to Roll Out Digital Radio

Tuesday, December 6, 2005
12-06) 15:41 PST New York (AP) --

The radio industry, in a move to take on growing competition from satellite radio, iPods and the Internet, has formed an alliance to step up the rollout of digital radio.

The group's goal is to offer new and compelling content using "high-definition" digital radio technology, which produces CD-quality sound and eliminates the static, hiss and fades associated with analog signals, top radio executives said Tuesday at a press briefing unveiling the alliance.

So far, about 600 out of more than 10,000 radio stations across the United States have started digital broadcasts. HD radio is free, but consumers need to purchase pricey digital radio receivers to listen to broadcasts.

The alliance — which has at least seven radio companies on board including giants Clear Channel Communications Inc. and Viacom Inc.'s Infinity — hopes its efforts will drive down the cost of digital receivers as they catch on with more consumers.

The group, called HD Digital Radio Alliance, will coordinate the rollout of HD digital radio, including who will get to air what on new "multicast" channels. Through multicasting, which involves the split of radio frequencies into niche channels, a radio station can use the extra space for alternate programming."



Don't be fooled by all the hype over HD digital broadcasts. The biggies will first broadcast some nice HD stuff. Then when the switch has been fully made they'll dice each assigned frequency up so many times the audio quality will be no better than AM. :thumbsdn:
 
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Bob,

You are right in your assessment of their marketing strategy. Analog FM is too good for us! Especially when the station owners can expand their market by splitting their government-allocated bandwidth.

I still say a letter writing campaign to the FCC is the first thing we need to do. Is there an FM Listeners Group somewhere? Who's looking out for our interests in Washington? Of course, the MSM will brand us reactionaries to the advance of technology and will claim that most people can't tell the difference.
 
Whitehall

Just like HDTV I'm afraid it's already a done deal. EXCEPT for one thing. The general public is not buying in. Average Joe Sixpack hasn't gone out and spent his hard earned dollars on these expensive HDTVs and IBOC tuners (Not that there are many tuners in the first place). He's perfectly happy to use what he already has. And why shouldn't he be? Why would anyone go out and spend a lot of money on cheap plastic junk (that will have to be replaced because the IBOC standards haven't been finalized) when they can spin the dial on something of substance that they bought used? This refusal by the public to buy into all the hype is driving the digital industry crazy.

On the digital TV front the MSBM and HDTV manufacturers are lobbying Congress to give the "poor" 900 million dollars so they can buy converter boxes for their old analog TVs when the analog broadcasts are phased out and the only broadcasts are in digital.

The IBOC crowd has now started this group. If you want to get a feel of what they are thinking you should visit Radio World Online and read the IBOC DAB columns. Here's a link.

http://www.rwonline.com/reference-room/iboc/index.shtml.

Some of the articles are funny in the concerns they have. IPods, satellite radio, and online audio streaming are gaining strength and the digital crowd doesn't have chit to sell and nobody wants or needs it anyway. I'm loving it. I hope they loose their asses.
 
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No doubt it has to be a hard sell to the general public due to the fact they already have radios they're satisfied with. Why would the average guy want a digital radio. This alone I hope will end the IBOC investments by the radio stations. Trying to tell people it is cd quality I believe should be classified as fraud due to the fact the broadcasts will be MP3 format which of course is a significant drop in sound quality.
 
"The Average Guy" is not the one that HD Radio was designed for. Its specs are much more oriented to non-audio signals like Muzak and stockmarket info.

What they're doing is taking away from FM stereo signal quality and selling the bandwidth elsewhere. I suspect that the owners are not particularly interested in giving HD Radio to free listeners as they are in getting FCC permission to start broadcasting and biting into the FM stereo quality FOR OTHER MARKETS.

They are stealing our FM, a property of the public.
 
The new FCC commisar just backed our getting to pick the individual cable channels we want, which was a HUGE turn-around from the a-hole he replaced (Colon Powell's son - in the pocket of the broadcast/music industry). Anyway, perhaps a letter writing campaign might help. But to whom?
 
Don't Panic

I worked for a big chain of radio stations, that was bought out by a billionaire, which was then bought out by another big chain of radio stations. I work in what is now a radio warehouse on three of the six formats that come from this building with a lovely view of the rest of the industrial park.

This story came out two days ago. I walked up the hallway to the guy who's in charge of engineering for the whole chain and asked what was up. He said "it won't happen for a long, long time". The current owners would all have to die first. This so called alliance is all smoke and mirrors to make it look like they are actually doing something.

When this facility was built a couple years ago, one engineers said ?we should include room for addition racks for digital?. The answer was no!

The truth is, it would cost a lot of money. The whole point of broadcasting deregulation during the Regan era was to prevent anything like this from happening.

Our FCC attorney says the industry wants this to go away.

They say they want to drive down the cost of digital receivers, but the cost of digital transmitters will remain the stumbling point.
 
Holst

Are you saying that FM broadcasters in general want digital broadcasting to go away or that they want Ibiquity to fade away? I'm not in the business but I have one radio engineer friend. I get most of my info from him. He would say that the small independents want both digital broadcasting and Ibiquity to die a quick and painful death. He would say the broadcast industry in general would want to get out from under all the fees they are going to have to pay to Ibiquity or transfer those fee costs to the people having to buy the new digital tuners. He would say that the big boys are the driving force in this shift to digital. This is how they aim to corner the airwaves. They plan on the FCC mandating the smaller independents off the air when they can't afford the switch to digital transmission. The big companys may not like paying fees to Ibiquity but they'll just pass them along to the paying customers. I'm sure you know that whereas each current FM license is assigned 200Khz of bandwidth the fully digital stations will have a 400Khz assignment. With that 400Khz you can split the frequency up a lot of times and make plenty of money to pay Ibiquity fees.
 
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Ibiquity seems to be the one who stands to profit most from this.

I won't pretend to know the way this will turn out. All I really know is what I have been told and yes, I've been doing this for 30 years.

Keep in mind, this is the United States. We (I mean the industry in general) don't like regulations. We (in general) follow them to the letter and are very careful with our license. We keep up with possible changes in regulations. Have big meetings with the owners and lawyers to make sure we have no wardrobe failures.

But.. look at history. Just going to stereo might never have happened if someone hadn't come up with the simple left minus right answer.

A few years ago we were told the industry would be wiped out by Internet radio. Where is it now.

Music on cable would wipe out radio.

Then, satellite radio, see where I'm going.

Plus...

Passing cost on to customers won't be easy. Splitting freqs or not, radio makes it money from advertising. Once upon a time, the competition for those dollars was the local newspaper. Now, everyone is after that money. My company owns most of the stations in every market we are in. Ad rates will remain the same next year. That's not the action of a company that owns the market. The money has to come from somewhere and trust me, overhead can't be any lower.

Will we got digital someday? I think so.

Today or in the near future, doubtful.

I sent my tuner of to RadioX to get aligned and I'm looking forward to using it for a long, long time.
 
Holst do you work for Clear Channel? And I do hope you are right about analog for a long, long time.
 
Here's a good read.

Note the comments about passing the costs on to the consumers.

http://www.rwonline.com/reference-room/iboc/01a_rwrf_march_16_part_3.shtml

"Reis Says HD Radio Has a Marketing Problem
IBOC Will Never Hit The Masses If Marketing, Promotion Aren't a Priority


by Art Reis

The author is chief engineer for Crawford Broadcasting Co./Chicago.

I had a talk the other day with a longtime friend and fellow radio geek-wizard in a smaller market. I asked him what his station's plans were for digital broadcasting. His answer was, "None."

"Never?"

"Nope. Not for the foreseeable future."

"Why?"

"The fees, the lack of radios and XM and Sirius are running marketing rings around Ibiquity out here. Nobody knows about IBOC. Who cares?"

I know that this story is anecdotal, but it does beg the real question: "Ibiquity, Ibiquity, where art thy marketing?"

Consider:
1) How many times have you heard an ad for the Ibiquity in-band, on-channel HD Radio digital, CD-quality radio in any media, print or broadcast?
2)How many ads have you heard or seen for Sirius Satellite or XM Satellite?

You don't have to tell me your answers. It wouldn't be something you'd want to share anyway, and most of us have the same answers you do.

Folks, we have a problem here. It is called public relations at Ibiquity, or rather, the lack of it.

Where is the marketing support that is supposed to help launch Ibiquity IBOC HD Radio into the public mainstream of the electronics industry? Where are the ads on radio, TV and in print? As it stands right now, Ibiquity isn't even on the public's radar screens. Just walk into any Radio Shack and ask about Ibiquity or HD Radio. You've got questions, they've got just blank stares. Or, their response is, "Oh, yeah! Sirius! Sure, we have that! Right over here!"

That, folks, is a danger sign.

Can't forget the Motor City
How come there were, until mid-2004, no Ibiquity HD Radio stations in the most important market in the country for all new mobile sound technologies, Detroit? Didn't anyone at Ibiquity understand how important it was that Detroit be one of the first markets into which HD Radio should have been introduced? Doesn't anyone understand that all the decision-making about such things as the makeup of in-car sound systems, including the Japanese and many of the European cars, are made first in Detroit? Doesn't anyone understand that it is the auto industry that usually leads in the development of sound technology?

I'm from Detroit, so I understand this. In Detroit, the automobile absolutely rules, so it is important that anything reliant on the automobile be involved with Detroit. Every marketing major in college should - why doesn't Ibiquity?
Crawford Broadcasting, Clear Channel and other broadcasting chains have committed themselves to the growth and development of HD Radio on their stations across the country. They've had to, in their own enlightened interests. But that's only half the battle. That's the choir talking to the choir. We need to get the word to the congregation - the listeners - and get them interested and involved. They have much to gain by doing so. We as an industry have much to lose if we don't.

Note the waivers
Ibiquity's licensing fee revenues will be much greater for receiver sales than they ever could be for the transmitter end. Which brings me to the next point: Just where is the good in charging all broadcasters a license fee for the use of the technology, given the circumstances I've just mentioned? Note that when push came to shove, those Detroit-area broadcasters that signed up to inaugurate HD Radio in Detroit, on an emergency basis, were rewarded with license fee reductions or outright wavers. That should be another message to the folks at Ibiquity: Charge the license fees on the consumer end and keep them low. And cut out taxing the broadcasters for making your technology available to the end-user. Your reward will be at the bank.

The problem of marketing HD Radio where there are no HD signals yet also will be solved, a problem XM and Sirius don't have. Make the signals happen, market it, keep the receiver licensing fees low, remove the licensing fees for the transmit end and they will come.

I have a partial solution, but it asks: Is Ibiquity's solution to its marketing shortcomings simply to turn the marketing of the technology over to the local stations that use it? If so, why didn't they just tell us? Not that the station managers and sales departments would go for it, but why not suggest a trade-out of ad time for licensing fees, if you have to?

Even so, doesn't such a strategy inevitably give rise to a spotty, fragmented and possibly contradictory marketing effort? And, doesn't that let the door open for a "divide and conquer" strategy by the likes of XM, Sirius or Leonard Kahn, who always seems to throw a monkey wrench into the works? Does the thought of HD Radio suffering the same fate as Motorola's C-Quam AM stereo, which for its time was a great format, bother you?
Maybe it should. And here's what I suggest Ibiquity do about it. If Ibiquity has a marketing rep, the company should give him a new set of marching orders: "Get visible to the public, now!" If those orders are already delivered but not being followed, get a new marketing rep. Either way, get visible with the public immediately.

Do what it takes to get HD Radio on the air and listened to, everywhere. The audio quality, on both FM and AM, will sell itself. It sure beats having the public pay $10 and up for radio every month.

Addendum: I am not alone in my thinking, nor did I think I'd be. The president, CEO and chairman of Emmis Communications, Jeff Smulyan, has echoed similar sentiments, quoted in Inside Radio in January. As my friend from a small-market operation put it, "There seems to be too many parallels to the situation which occurred with AM stereo in the 1980s and '90s."
That sort of thinking is going to have to stop, and it's Ibiquity that has to take the lead in stopping it - Crawford, Clear Channel and the major markets notwithstanding.

The major markets are, for the most part, embracing HD Radio. I don't have a problem with that. And ironically, it's in the major markets where XM and Sirius have, to this point, the lesser measure of success, simply because local radio there can satisfy almost any taste.

But it's in the medium and small markets where HD Radio is most needed, because it is in the medium and small markets where the lesser choices opens the door widest for the acceptance of satellite radio. It's exactly there where the listeners need to know there is a quality audio alternative to paying $10 a month just to listen to radio without any possibility of local content. And it's exactly the place where HD Radio isn't happening yet.

But time is running out. The time to make the big marketing move is now, Ibiquity. You, and radio broadcasting in this country, have too much to lose to not to get the population of the United States on your bandwagon and keep them there.

This commentary appeared in The Local Oscillator, the newsletter of Crawford Broadcasting Co. Corporate Engineering. RW welcomes other points of view."
 
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As he has my ST-5000FW, I hope that you are correct.

He just e-mailed me my ST-5100 is done, I called the wife and told her to pay up. It's my Christmas present.

The conversation went like "you make it sound like you never get anything for Christmas"

"I mean other than socks".

"But you need socks".

No I don't work for clear channel.

The comparisons with AM stereo in Art Reis article was interesting.

I remember that one. AM stereo promised (and I'm told delivered) quality on the level of FM. As I said I've been doing this for thirty years, January second makes the day I stated at WWTC AM in Minneapolis/St. Paul.

When the great AM panic hit, I was working at a Top 40 AM station, we were number one in the market. Despite the fact we were at number one, the big word in the business was the death of AM due to people finally switching the FM. My station changed format. I quite and went on to do mornings at a Album Rock Station in a much bigger market. That AM station went under and ended up being sold. It now uses the old automation system that once was used on the FM.

It's a panicky business, but changing format has no overhead. Switching to AM stereo to compete with FM would cost a lot of money and would require listeners to shell out the bucks too. Same with digital radio.

Let's remember, these consumers are not AK'ers. They are Best Buy'ers and folks who get their electronics at WalMart.

People who aren't endorsing super audio CD's, have passed on mini-disks, DCC and so on.

Their BOSE acoustic wave machines which they are currently delighted with, won't tune the digital stations in.

That Cirrus thing they got won't work either, and I doubt they will add that as a feature.

Remember, market apathy can be our friend too.
 
Holst

I agree with you that AM radio is safe for a long time. Even "Guy Wire" over at Radio World Online is beginning to question the logic of using Ibiquity IBOC technology for AM. It would be a disaster.

Since you work in AM you may be aware of the work of Leonard Kahn. He is the inventor of one of the four methods (Kahn/Hazeltine) of broadcasting analog AM stereo. He is blasting Ibiquity IBOC HD left and right over on his website, The Wrath of Kahn

http://www.wrathofkahn.org/wst_page5.html

He has some great articles over there. Start at the beginning and read through. Many of the articles are written by people in the industry. Read the Feb 9th article by Ralph Carlson, the president of Carlson Communications.

Kahn is touting his method of digital AM broadcasting (CAM-D). He is a wild card in the industry and many people hate him. BUT if his method is as good as he claims it is then it should be considered as a viable alternative to IBOC.
 
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Holst, how does that 5100 sound? I'm still sitting on mine...one of these days...!
Doug, are Cerphe and Damian still somewhere in DC? How about Weasel and Tom?

Ok guys, who knows who owns Ibiquity, or at least a substantial interest? You guessed it, Infinity, Clear Channel, etc...they're all in on it!! In January they're getting together to split up formats in the major cities, and that will last for 2 years, commercial free, then it's UP FOR GRABS!!

Boston Acoustics just released their table top radio with HD, so I go into a Tweeter Electronics to give it a listen, and was the salesman turning red, No ANTENNA was connected, so they couldn't even recieve ANYTHING on it, just static...wow, I'd shell out $500 and have no idea what it even sounded like!!

BMW will have HD in their cars next year, standard. GM is following suit in the higher end models...so by the time the 2 years has passed of commercial free, they'll have some kind of a base, but who knows how many folks will notice. I've heard a car head unit, and it does sound better than analogue FM, in a car...but I don't know if it will beat the X1, as Rotel hasn't released their unit yet-1st quarter 2006 and the BA unit doesn't have any outputs.

The biggest problem they're having is the engineers have no idea how to set the HD up, I believe it's Warner who's had problems in the Portland area, and I've heard other complaints from LA. Here in Chicago we're fine...

Updates to follow as I accumulate info.

L'wood
 
That's a good piece Bob, hits the nail on the head, and hopefully, will bring the analogue FM junkies down off the ledge!
 
cerphe & weasel, afaik, are on a classic rock station here - warw, 94.7. not *too* bad, not *too* compressed. i listen once in a while. damian is on wrnr, 103.1. this station is owned by jake weinstein; the original whfs owner, & has similar format. excellent station, but unfortunately extremely low-power. :( dunno about tom, he may be over at wrnr, i yust dunno... they are on line now, worth a listen on the compootah...

http://wrnr.com/

now, for another bit of bad news for fm - yust yesterday, i was tooned into 103.5 wgms at work before lunch. this is (was) the only classical station left in dc. when i got back to work, the music was gone, & it was broadcasting wtop news - i thought my 60's vintage all-tubed ge walnut "boombox" had finally packed it in. but no; the station switched at noon!?! :rant: :uzi: :twak: :butt2: :puke: :bs: :butt1: :dammit: :grumpy: :mad: :pistols: and wgms got moved to 104.1, which barely comes in now. :( i wrote bonneville international corp, which owns the stations, a nastygram, as well as sending the same to wtop & wgms. i also let them know i would *never* be having anything to do w/digital radio.

oh well,

doug s.


L'wood said:
Holst, how does that 5100 sound? I'm still sitting on mine...one of these days...!
Doug, are Cerphe and Damian still somewhere in DC? How about Weasel and Tom?

Ok guys, who knows who owns Ibiquity, or at least a substantial interest? You guessed it, Infinity, Clear Channel, etc...they're all in on it!! In January they're getting together to split up formats in the major cities, and that will last for 2 years, commercial free, then it's UP FOR GRABS!!

Boston Acoustics just released their table top radio with HD, so I go into a Tweeter Electronics to give it a listen, and was the salesman turning red, No ANTENNA was connected, so they couldn't even recieve ANYTHING on it, just static...wow, I'd shell out $500 and have no idea what it even sounded like!!

BMW will have HD in their cars next year, standard. GM is following suit in the higher end models...so by the time the 2 years has passed of commercial free, they'll have some kind of a base, but who knows how many folks will notice. I've heard a car head unit, and it does sound better than analogue FM, in a car...but I don't know if it will beat the X1, as Rotel hasn't released their unit yet-1st quarter 2006 and the BA unit doesn't have any outputs.

The biggest problem they're having is the engineers have no idea how to set the HD up, I believe it's Warner who's had problems in the Portland area, and I've heard other complaints from LA. Here in Chicago we're fine...

Updates to follow as I accumulate info.

L'wood
 
Bonneville seems very committed to HD Radio. Their San Francisco classical station (KDFC) runs self-promotional ads for HDRadio every hour.

I've let the station manager know my displeasure to that to no response.
 
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