Re: [IRCA] The Nighttime IBOC Scorecard

["Brett Saylor" <bsaylor@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 9/16/07, Scott Fybush <scott@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Gerry Bishop wrote:
> > Of the stations running night IBOC, it seems all but two are
> > news/talk/sports.
> >
> > Can someone please enlighten me how a digital signal enhances such a
> format?
> > Somehow, the concept of "CD-quality" sports programming just isn't
> coming
> > together for me.
>
> The same argument should apply to news/talk/sports formats on FM - but
> here's what real-world experience has found: there's a significant
> ratings boost, particularly among younger listeners, for news and talk
> in cities where the format has migrated from AM to FM. WTOP in DC, KTAR
> in Phoenix, KSL in Salt Lake and WPGB in Pittsburgh are the most
> prominent examples so far. In Pittsburgh, particularly, KDKA's
> listenership has all but vanished to FM since WPGB signed on a couple of
> years ago.



I'd offer the reason is that young people don't listen to the AM band *at
all*, so for them, those formats might represent something new and different
from the same blandness that FM has become. I have two kids, and work at a
large university, and know for a fact that kids get their music from the
Internet and listen to it on their iPods. Radio is irrelevant to the *vast*
majority of them.

It's understandable, at least on the programming side, that management
> would see these successes and hope for similar results from "FM-like"
> audio on HD AM.


It's been said here many times, it's not the quality of the sound that's
going to drive listenership, it's the content. FM-like quality on AM does
not equate to more AM listeners.


And I've got to say, there's something to be said for
> the absence of ANY background noise, especially on a distant signal. I
> had WABC's digital audio locked for a while Friday night, and it was
> pretty remarkable to hear audio that good, and that free of noise,
> coming from 350 miles away.
>
> That said, there are still more AM stations processing their audio
> poorly than there are stations getting it right. When it's done poorly,
> it sounds like a low-bitrate webstream and is hard to listen to at
> length. And of course there's a very valid argument to be made that at
> one time, AM analog audio sounded great, too - but the combination of
> crappy radios and a sharply increased noise floor has just about done
> THAT in, like it or not.
>
> s



If broadcasters truly wanted to provide quality audio, the vehicle to do so
has been available for decades. And now apparently they don't consider
anyone more than 30 miles from their transmitter "relevant" to HD radio
listening so the issue of overcoming the noise floor could have been dealt
with in a similar manner (you live too far away, you don't count to us).
What I think happened is they allowed themselves to be caught up in the
"crappifying" of the medium, and are now grasping at technology to save
them.


Brett Saylor
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