Re: [IRCA] IBOC DXing

[Scott Fybush <scott@xxxxxxxxxx>]

>IBOC proponents are very big on telling us (DXers and others) that you have
>no "inherent right" to listen to stations outside of their interference free
>contour.  OK, there's nothing new there.  This has always been true -- you
>get what you get outside of that contour, even with analog.  That simple
>understanding is, in fact, the basis of our hobby.  What can we receive that
>we shouldn't normally be hearing?  Isn't that the purpose of DX?  So, what
>the proponents say on "protected contours" is really old hat.

It is and it isn't.

We can all cite plenty of examples of stations that have attempted to 
market themselves (whether to potential listeners or potential purchasers) 
on the basis of coverage that is both very real and not protected from 
interference. Here in Rochester, Bob Savage's WYSL 1040 Avon bills itself 
as a Rochester station, and with its impending upgrade to 20 kW day will 
have the second most-potent AM signal in the city. But at sunset it will 
still drop to 500 watts, which provides useful but far from ideal coverage 
of Rochester...now. When WBZ gets night IBOC, WYSL will lose much of that 
reach...and let's not forget that sunset here can be as early as 4:30 in 
the winter.

Or take all those class D (ex-daytimer) facilities that were granted 
unprotected night power over the last couple of decades, some with as much 
as 200 watts. That coverage is ALL unprotected, by definition, and a lot of 
those stations will feel the hurt from IBOC when it comes.

There are arguments on both sides of that issue, of course, but there's 
certainly the very real likelihood that at least some listeners who now 
depend on unprotected signals for regular listening, not just for DXing, 
will lose those signals if and when night IBOC becomes a reality.

>BUT, I would suggest that what is really going to do in IBOC is when
>stations start losing nighttime coverage within their protected contours due
>to the 8-15khz sideband activity of the IBOC signal from distant stations.

Agreed - that was the thrust of my earlier message. This is already a 
daytime issue in some areas, and it's easy to see others coming down the 
road (1230 Hammond, Indiana against 1240 Chicago, anyone?)

>Bottom line:  as has been said before, "The emperor has no clothes."  IBOC
>(or more appropriately, IBAC) is bad technology that, in so far as nighttime
>AM is concerned, will only work well in the lab, or in extremely controlled
>circumstances.  In the real world of 10khz spacing and nighttime skywave,
>it's a no brainer.  It's will, I predict, never take hold and will meet the
>same fate as AM stereo.

I'm not going to go quite that far. For SOME stations, IBOC will work just 
fine. If you're WOR or WABC or KNX, and if you're willing to accept the 
loss of your distant listeners in exchange for a solid digital signal over 
all of your home market, you're going to see IBOC as being a winner. (And 
as the codec has improved, it now sounds pretty darned good, too.)

But that's perhaps 10 percent of all the AM signals out there, and I'm 
being generous at that. It's the other 90 percent that stand to suffer, and 
most of them don't see it coming.

Rene's company is somewhat unusual in that it happens to own a number of 
stations that already suffer from adjacent-channel issues (560 Philly/570 
NYC, 560 Chicago/540 Milwaukee, and so on), so they've had some experience 
in these issues already and they see what's coming. 

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