Re: [IRCA] [NRC-AM] IBOC on late on 1190 obliterating WHAM

[Barry McLarnon <bdm@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sunday 13 November 2005 13:39, David Gleason wrote:
> There are two issues here.
>
> First, the owners of most of the big, former 1-A, clear channels are the
> biggest supporters of HD Radio. They have looked at where the revenue
> comes from, and it does not come from skywave. It does not come from
> coverage of areas outside the metro area the station is in. So they are,
> in effect, saying, "we only care about metro groundwave coverage and HD
> is fine for this."

Clearly, that's where the management of WOR and some of the other clears 
are coming from, but they don't speak for everyone.  Where's the results 
of polling ALL of the Class A stations to see whether they agree that 
they're ready to write off their skywave coverage plus non-metro 
groundwave coverage?  WGN, for example, filed comments to the FCC against 
nighttime AM IBOC operation.

How about the Class A's in neighboring countries - anybody ask them if
they're willing to accept a loss in coverage, with no upside?  And Class 
A's are just the tip of the iceburg... most of the much more numerous 
Class B stations will take a hit in groundwave coverage, and they don't 
all serve large metro areas.

This may serve the corporate bottom line of the big broadcast groups that
are also iBiquity investors, but it does not serve the public interest.

> Second, the HD sidebands may affect stations that are very tightly
> spaced, or are "shoehorn" grants that have agreed to accept huge
> interference at night in exchage for being able to operate.

This is not what they bargained for.  IBOC allows stations to generate
adjacent channel interference that is far in excess of that which existed 
before.

You seem to be saying that the interference problems are limited to two
cases: Class A stations, plus some others that were "shoehorned" into
the band.  This vastly understates the extent of the problems.

> In addition, remember that neither AM nor FM have anywhere near the
> listening at night that they do in daytime. Night listening is less than
> a third of the morning listening, and most is in the 7 to 9 PM frame.
> Stations have a hard time selling night listening, no matter what kind
> of share they have as advertisers do not generally specify nights in ad
> buys.

That being the case, it should not have much impact on the bottom lines 
of the AM IBOCers if they continue to refrain from putting the digital on 
at night.  It's all for the greater good, you see.

Barry

-- 
Barry McLarnon VE3JF  Ottawa, ON

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