All digital IBOC (HD) on AM

[CAwasinNJ]

I don't know how many of you have been following the tests that are going on at WWFD in Fredrick MD, but the tests are interesting. They are the first AM in the country to run digital only, no analog. If you have an analog only radio, you're out of luck. There was an update a couple of weeks ago on Scott Fybush's Top of the Tower podcast talking to the engineer at WWFD and a rep from Xperi (the artist formerly known as iBiquity.)

www.fybush.com/podcast-035/

There were a few things that caught my attention. The Xperi rep pretty much said that the analog/digital hybrid system that all other AMs are using now was a failure. (That starts at 11 minutes into the show.) Well, we knew that. He was tactful about it, but it was refreshing to hear someone from the company that invented this thing basically admit the Emperor has no clothes on. The good news is that the all digital flavor doesn't trash everything anywhere near it. That was my biggest problem with the hybrid system and why I've always been opposed to it. Digital IBOC is a good neighbor so that opposition is gone. Fantastic. Another interesting thing they bring up (and Scott confirms this in the real world) is that the signal gets out much further in all digital that the analog signal would. Better coverage is something any broadcaster would love to have. Even better, the licensing fees for the all digital MA3 are being waived right now.

Will IBOC ever gain anything more than a niche market? I don't know. Xperi is certainly not giving up, but there's still the compatibility issue. The numbers of cars in the Washington DC area that have IBOC are interesting and higher than I would have thought. They quoted 22%, and of course most people regularly replace their cars. If Xperi can keep the automakers interested that number will grow steadily. Places other than cars are going to be a lot more of a challenge. I have something like 15-20 radios and not one of them does digital. At the same time AM outside of the really huge powerful blowtorches aren't really doing that well anyway. Maybe it's worth taking a gamble, especially for those who are pretty much programming for a translator and the AM is just a really powerful studio to transmitter link. We'll have to see.

[fmdj1]

I think there are some great proposals for reinvigorating AM and I like this one, as well as the idea to open up Channels 5 and 6, both as strong possibilities. But, as you point out, both require people to buy new tuners, and the question is what is the motivation for them to get it? The stations have to have compelling content. That is one of the key reasons why FM finally took off after 25 years of being around and why satellite finally took off after more than a decade of being around. With the growing number of sources for different types of content, the challenge is going to be on programmers to fill those new channels with great stuff.

Second, this has to be more obvious and intuitive than current HD Radio. The amount of tuners out there is growing, but most people I've met with HD radio tuners didn't even know they had one or how to access additional channels with it. Cars sales people can be luddites at times so they can't rely on the dealership to do the lifting, it has to work intuitively out of the box for consumer to "get it"

[CAwasinNJ]

One thing all digital AM has going for it is that I don't think you need to do anything special to get an all digital AM signal. It should just work. You point it at a frequency, it sees the digital data and plays it. As you say, it has to be dead simple or a lot of people won't get it. I'm fond of saying that the average person is an idiot. People like those of us who read this board can figure these things out with no problem. The average man on the street? Good luck. There's also another problem. What happens when someone who may have an HD radio tries sampling the station on a non-HD radio and gets what sounds like the station is off the air? It's a well known axiom that you have to make the first impression of a station count because if the experience is bad you won't get another. Imagine you convince Joe Blow to tune into the all new Digital 530 and when he tries it on an analog radio he gets zip. He's probably not trying again. The only idea I could come up with to get around that would be a massive direct mail campaign that can give a quick tutorial on what the station is and how to listen, and are potential listeners going to bother reading it? (TL;DR) The problem will get solved over time, but how mcuh time do we have? I hate to sound like a pessamist, but what makes sense at the end of the day?

[fmdj1]

You're dead on. There's a reason why no one has come up with the perfect solution yet. Of course, the other option going all digital would be to do what they did with TV and set a date. But I've seen Europeans chime in on other boards with mixed thoughts about results over there, especially with Norway's switch to digital only for their national channels

[CAwasinNJ]

There are a few key differences between TV digital and IBOC that makes mandating a switch somewhere between impractical and impossible. One is that IBOC is owned and licensed by a for-profit corporation. Forcing all AM stations to pay a licensing fee is probably going to make it a non-starter. Two is that with TV there were relatively easy upgrade paths when they were even needed at all. The majority of broadcast TV viewing is done through TV providers like cable and satellite. Those people didn't need to do anything. For those who did actually receive an off air signal, it's fairly simple to add a converter box. Converter boxes could be made for digital AM to analog but the implementation of them such as in cars would be a problem. It was done in the early days of FM for cars with only AM radios, but the results wern't very good.

Another idea that got floated was to create a simulcast band for digital AM. You've still got the penetration problem though and with all the jockeying for spectrum I'm not sure how high a priority it would be.

Nope, no simple answers and maybe not even many good difficult ones.

[David]

More on the all digital AM debate. Unless the FCC decides on a broadcasting standard and digital AM receivers can be manufactured and sold at an affordable price point, I see digital AM becoming the 21st century version of AM stereo. That's especially true now that 99% of consumer electronics are manufactured in China, which Trump has been slapping tariffs on left and right. There's also the issue of the lack of interesting programming on AM. With streaming becoming more popular and more affordable every year, AM stations would have to provide listeners with something other than the standard talk radio/sports/ethnic/religious programming that presently dominates the MW band to make investing in new receivers worthwhile.

www.insideradio.com/broadcasters-tell-fcc-the-time-has-come-for-digital-only/article_99eda97e-7acc-11e9-961e-9bff794312ca.html

[CAwasinNJ]

Any station that wants to go all digital can do so right now. They just need to go through the experimental application process which at this point is just a rubber stamp. The question is whether it will be made permanent. IMO that's almost a foregone conclusion, BUT the only way all digital is going to be mandatory is if Xperi gives away the technology which has almost no chance of happening. There is only one standard in contention and that's theirs. Start over with a public domain system? Good luck getting adoption. The FCC buying the rights from Xperi? Good luck getting that budget approved.

For those stations that have a programming problem it comes down to money. Good programming costs. If you have no money because you have few listeners then you can't improve the product. Those same broadcasters are also going to have a hard time coming up with the funds to buy lots of new equipment, fix up their aging plant that worked OK for analog but won't work for digital and so on.

The threat of streaming is the most interesting one, but I'll put that in a separate post.