Tag: hd radio

LPFM's Elephant In the Room

I was heartened to see that the requisite committees of the House of Representatives and Senate have both endorsed complementary bills that would expand the FCC’s low-power FM (LPFM) service toward votes on the floors of the respective chambers. Those working the issue in D.C. are very optimistic that Congress will pass both versions of the Local Community Radio Act, harmonize them, and send a version to President Obama by the end of this Congressional session.
But it’s not yet time to break out the champagne just yet. There are three reasons for this: Continue reading “LPFM's Elephant In the Room”

iBiquity/NPR HD Power Hike In Play

As predicted, the two major players in the HD Radio space – iBiquity, the proprietor of the technology, and NPR, its primary broadcast innovator – have jointly petitioned the FCC to increase the power level of HD Radio sidebands. They’re asking for a blanket 4x increase to the power of digital sidebands for both AM and FM stations, and includes proposed methodology for allowing selected stations to increase their digital power levels by 10x. The joint filing even includes helpful language the FCC is encouraged to adopt in full as as regulation. The National Association of Broadcasters was not far behind in lauding the deal.
Given that this will obviously involve a modification of the “spectral mask” under which a stations’ power must exceed, this request skewers once and for all the notion that HD radio “does not use new spectrum.” Continue reading “iBiquity/NPR HD Power Hike In Play”

Pubcasters to be Determinant Factor in FM-HD Power Inrease

I smell history repeating itself.
Not 10 years ago, National Public Radio acted as an important ally – and a foil – for a concerted attempt by commercial broadcasters to quash LPFM stations before birth. A lot’s changed since then (for example, NPR only halfheartedly opposes LPFM expansion now), but there’s still a ways to go before that service reaches its full potential.
The historical lesson learned is: if it weren’t for NPR’s anti-LPFM stance at the time, which provided the anti-LPFM campaign with a semblance of technical “impartiality” and brought important “liberal” cachet to the legislative fight, LPFM would be an even stronger service today. Continue reading “Pubcasters to be Determinant Factor in FM-HD Power Inrease”

Robert Struble Channels Lee DeForest (and Other HD Follies)

I never thought I’d consider Twitter a tool for journalistic use, but it looks like I’ve been proven wrong.
iBiquity’s President and CEO, Robert Struble, has taken to tweeting. In early September, he revealed he’d taken the train to Wall Street to float the notion of taking iBiquity public: “Good NYC trip. Wall St way more upbeat than recently. IPO pipeline better, but most think [stock market] rally was too fast.”
Other than a mention-in-passing in the Washington Post more than four years ago (which coincidentally predicted iBiquity would need an IPO by 2009 to keep HD Radio viable), and less than a handful of dismissive side-comments on a couple of inside-baseball-type blogs, the notion of this process going forward (or, perhaps more importantly, gaining traction) is not being closely followed. Continue reading “Robert Struble Channels Lee DeForest (and Other HD Follies)”

HD Radio Increasing Format Diversity?

Dissertation research, phase two: explore and catalog interesting information about HD Radio from all available electronic resources except the FCC’s actual, entire rulemaking (that’s phase three). Initially, this involved exploring HD Radio’s proponents and how they present themselves online. It’s quite an extensive presence, involving two corporate portals, one consumer-marketing site, and a (user-restricted) site involving broadcaster and retailer education.
I just finished scouring the consumer-portal, where I re-stumbled upon a news release from March in which the HD Radio Alliance touted 1,000 FM stations now multicasting, and 100 receiver-models in production. The release includes two graphs. Continue reading “HD Radio Increasing Format Diversity?”

HD Radio: Point/Counterpoint

Last month, the Prometheus Radio Project published a list of the “Top Ten Problems With HD Radio.” While it’s somewhat incomplete, it is probably the most coherent and concise plain-English critique published so far that best captures the deficiencies in the HD Radio protocol.
Apparently, this did not sit well with the radio industry which, in one of its trade publications, ran a feature “debunking” many of Prometheus’ HD Radio criticisms. Continue reading “HD Radio: Point/Counterpoint”

Stations Experiment With Beefed-Up HD

It’s already been well-established that the digital radio sidebands of HD Radio signals have the potential (in both the AM and FM environments) to cause significant interference, both to neighboring stations and, in some cases, to the analog host-signal of an HD-enabled station. The issue is so significant that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio have embarked on not one, but two studies to examine the problem. The first report was pretty damning. Continue reading “Stations Experiment With Beefed-Up HD”

HD Going Global? Check the Map

Kurt Hanson over at the Radio and Internet Newsletter recently posted an insta-retrospective of the tenure of David Rehr as (former) President of the National Association of Broadcasters. The piece focuses on “possible errors” made by the NAB et. al. during Rehr’s reign. Number two on the list is HD Radio:
Unfortunately, it turns out that “going digital” in radio’s case is not going to happen via the distribution method of IBOC (In-Band On-Channel), but rather via the delivery mechanism of the Internet. Already the latter method has tens of millions of weekly listeners on PCs, plus millions more on smartphones (many in cars), while cumulative HD Radio sales are still under a million units. (And the gap is spreading.)
Radio’s effort to contain digitally-delivered radio to their scarce FCC-licensed frequencies has cost radio hundreds of millions of dollars in equipment upgrades — and, worse yet, more than $1 billion in wasted on-air promotion value.
And, meanwhile, most of the great Internet radio opportunities are being grabbed by outsiders…. Continue reading “HD Going Global? Check the Map”