Well, finally somebody woke up! My congratulations to the engineering moguls at ABC-Citadel who have gone out on a limb and said to the cartel, "enough is enough" (at least for now).
musiconradio.com asked:
does AM just quietly fade into the sunset?
Gosh I hope so! Only time will tell.
DavidEduardo suggested:
If the night problems with HD are not resolved, many owners who were hoping for an AM resurgence will be more motivated to sell and dedicate efforts to FM and newer media. It does not bode well for AM.
Nonsense. David, I think you and those "hoping owners" have been drinking the iBiquity koolaid for a bit too long. AM will go on just fine without all that analog interference. Are you going to tell me that you have finally admitted that there are problems? This AM HD system should never have seen the light of day. It is not nice to raise the hopes of people when that hope is based on a bad system. Everyone knew what would happen when these noise generators got lit up at night. The broadcasting industry was sold a bill of goods. But the engineers all knew this and kept their mouths shut because the corporate types have too much money and pride in this invested. This is going to end up being a big problem for iBiquity. All I can say is that they'd better get that IPO going before everybody finally figures it out! Right about now I think its CEO is wincing just a bit.
But best of all, dumber than a box of hair intoned:
Every engineer I knew said repeatedly, before the 9/14 effective date for nighttime operation, that whether or not nighttime HD really works would be proven in the next few months, as more stations turn it on at night. The postings I've seen stating that many stations have it on intermittently shows me that they're experimenting.
Indeed they are. But dumber, you are an engineer (and a good one at that!). You must have known what so many of us were saying which was that night time implementation of AM IBOC would be, well, "challenging" at the very best. My goodness this isn't rocket science. Hopefully, everybody who jumped on this bandwagon will take a good hard look at it, realize that it can never work well as it is presently engineered and abandon it.
Citadel is most likely dealing with, at least, two of their stations engaging in "mutually assured destruction" (WJR and WABC on first adjacents to each other) at night, so this is not a complete surprise.
Which just goes to show that truth can definitely be stranger than fiction. You can't make this stuff up!
It also wouldn't surprise me if CBS follows suit, seeing that they have three stations within 20 kHz of each other (WINS, KDKA and WBZ).
Gosh, now wouldn't THAT be a hoot! To all the staunch supporters of the AM HD system on this here message board (including my buddy R.F.), you are being very quiet! No doubt we would all like to hear what you think now.
Oh that's right. People like me made this board a joke and you folks are taking a break. I'm sorry, Lino. I'll try and be a better person in the future.
