HD Honesty

[Play Freebird]

I enjoyed reading the October issue of Crawford Broadcasting's engineering newsletter:

http://www.crawfordbroadcasting.com/~cbc/Local_Oscillator/October%202009%20Local%20Oscillator.pdf

CBC's western New York engineer Brian shares a candid but honest opinion; he has concluded that "public interest in HD-R is incapable of being revitalized."  Kudos to Cris Alexander for allowing this to be published, but according to the corporate interpretation, somehow Cris thinks the proximity of Buffalo and Rochester to Canada is to blame.  Yep, must be those socialists up north are out to sabotage HD Radio!

Meanwhile, other markets continue to have problems with their HD equipment.  Read about hard drive troubles with the "iBiquity Box" in the Chicago report and recent AM IBOC failures in Denver.

[audioguy]

Interesting post, Freebird! I wanted to read the newsletter myself, so I visited the web site but after several tries I gave up trying to download it. At 24 bytes per second it will take an awful long while.

I did notice one thing: on the Crawford Engineering page, it says "Crawford Broadcasting Company... is also on the leading edge of digital technology, being among the first in the nation to transmit High Definition (HD) Radio signals on some of its FM stations."

Apparently even Cris Alexander isn't aware that HD does not mean "High Definition". 

[SUPERCASTER]

I enjoyed reading the October issue of Crawford Broadcasting's engineering newsletter:

http://www.crawfordbroadcasting.com/~cbc/Local_Oscillator/October%202009%20Local%20Oscillator.pdf

CBC's western New York engineer Brian shares a candid but honest opinion; he has concluded that "public interest in HD-R is incapable of being revitalized."  Kudos to Cris Alexander for allowing this to be published, but according to the corporate interpretation, somehow Cris thinks the proximity of Buffalo and Rochester to Canada is to blame.  Yep, must be those socialists up north are out to sabotage HD Radio!

Meanwhile, other markets continue to have problems with their HD equipment.  Read about hard drive troubles with the "iBiquity Box" in the Chicago report and recent AM IBOC failures in Denver.

Thanks for the great article in the newsletter.

Since we are only allowed brief quotes here, my favorite lines were:

"Personally, I believe that public interest in
HD-R is incapable of being revitalized. The majority
of terrestrial radio listeners are now getting their local
radio “fix” from the Internet, either via
personal/desktop computers or iPhones."

I'd like to quote a few others but would probably get edited by the moderators.

What are your favorite quotes?

[rbrucecarter5]

http://www.crawfordbroadcasting.com/~cbc/Local_Oscillator/October%202009%20Local%20Oscillator.pdf

I just wish that Crawford would shut off the IBOC on KAAM, so I could get a strong signal down here in Houston again.  This IBOCr@p really hobbles the analog coverage of every AM station that installs it.  Given the extremely low public interest in the flawed system, I would think it would a no brainer to turn if off for now, and if it ever does catch on with the public, then and only then turn it back on.

[Savage]

It's never going to "catch on."  The pop-count of HD-AM stations is within five stations of where it was in the fall of 2007, when I first started to keep track.  The only stations turning it on these days are AMs which committed two or three years ago to expensive rebuilds of directional systems to permit HD, such as WWVA, and these projects take a while.

We monitor CPSC-1 station WHAM locally for EAS.  On some nights WWVA's adjacent-channel IBOC noise, arriving via skywave makes reception of WHAM, 22 miles distant with 50kw, impossible.  These are co-owned stations.  It's mind-boggling.

At the very least the Commission should rescind the authorization for the use of HD at night.

[Cal Stymes]

Savage suggested:

We monitor CPSC-1 station WHAM locally for EAS.  On some nights WWVA's adjacent-channel IBOC noise, arriving via skywave makes reception of WHAM, 22 miles distant with 50kw, impossible.  These are co-owned stations.  It's mind-boggling.

It is worse than mind-boggling.  It is so very sad what these idiots have done to our beloved AM band that we can't hear locals anymore which are only 22 miles away and broadcasting with 50kw.

[Savage]

"HD honesty?"

Is that like: "plastic glasses?"  "Down escalator?"   "Military intelligence?"   Etc.....