"David Eduardo" wrote in message
. com...

"Brenda Ann" wrote in message
...

They can market them all they want. I don't know anyone personally that
will buy one.

I would not expect you would. Niether do I.. The consumer martketing just
began this monthy. It's in a very early phase.

They're just not willing to spend the sort of money to replace
something that's been working just fine for them.

What sort of money? You obviously don't know the price points of the next
wave of receivers.

And I doubt seriously that much of the general populus will want to
replace the 5-10 analog radios they already have just for a joke of a
digital signal.

A signal which sounds better, doubles the FM station count, and gives AM
decent quality. And it's "digital" which means a lot to the consumer.

You keep talking about the contours.. well, those may look good on paper,
they don't work in real life situations.

That's amusing. We have two dozen of these on the air already, and in
every case, the usable contour is greater for HD than for analog. The
biggest benefit is to major market AMs where the ambient noise level means
coverage is very limited. For FMs, we are finding a usable HD signal that
goes beyond the 64 dbu, which is where almost all rated listening stops on
analog. And rated listeners are all we care about, as that is how we make
money. And that is the way it has been of 80 years or so.

You'll learn that when people start tuning out of your stations en-masse.

Funny, but nearly all our stations were up in Winter, including the HD
enabled ones. Addin HD does not affect the ratings of the analog signal.
It just expands th epotential for the future.

I know that personally, I will never spend the money on IBOC receiving
equipment.

Since you don't even know how much it will cost in the next 18 months,
that is a ludicrous statement.

And how can you call it a ludicrous statement? It is a proper statement of
FACT. I will never purchase an IBOC device. I will never listen to an
IBOC signal. I am sick to death of having digital crammed down my throat
when it is universally inferior to analog as far as listenability. I would
much rather hear a bit of static on AM radio than the digital artifacts that
exist in AM IBOC. I'm sick of digital satellite television with artifacts
and pixelization and dropouts in even the most modest of rain storms which
would have at most produced a bit of sparkling in the old analog satellite
television. I have real world reports that the systems you push so hard do
not work in areas where analog does.

I won't spend a cent to replace something that has always worked with
something of questionable value in general and no value whatsoever to me.

Most people will feel that having twice the FM "stations" is well worht
it. One time cost, tangible gain.

Again, for most I do not believe it will be a gain. More of the same old
crap for an additional investment of any kind is not going to sway people to
buy IBOC radios. If it were so that they would do so, then the numbers for
XM and Sirius would be a lot better than they are, and they wouldn't be
trying to give away radios to get people to subscribe.

You also presume that radio stations are going to spend the money on the
additional programming sources to add to IBOC FM. I rather believe that most
stations will opt to stay with their one basic programming source.

IBOC interferes with adjacent channel stations. This is just poor
engineering, and something that would never have been allowed in the days
when the FCC was composed of engineers instead of greedy politicians.

Since there is scan evidence that the adjacents are being listened to in
the areas where the interference happens, this is irrelevant.

Whether or not anyone, in your small version of the world, is listening or
not, it's still **** poor engineering practice to splatter 2 or 3 channels
away from your own. There's no way you can possibly make a silk purse out of
that sow's ear.


I was just talking to a friend of mine on the Oregon coast who has been
listening regularly to KONA in the tri-cities on 610 for decades. He can
no longer listen to it because KPOJ 620 in Portland turned on their IBOC
and is splattering 15KHz either side of their carrier. You can do your
best to talk up this boondoggle, but most of us see it for what it is..
just another way for the NAB to screw the little guy, including the
listeners.

Actually, this was not an NAB project. The promotion of it is not NAB. The
engineering was not NAB. A bunch of group owners decided that radio had to
move into the digital domain, and financed iBiquity's early stock
offerings. Some of the early adopters are small, like UnoRadio Group, a
Puerto Rican company that is owned by a lifetime engineer who believes
this is the best hope of radio for the future.

So few people listen to far-off signals and so many will leave radio
altogether if we do not modernize delivery that this is a small price to
pay to stay off obselecence.

I think you'll find that rather than buy expensive new radios,

They will not be expensive as they roll out. My first CD player was
$1,400. My first DVD player was nearly $700. My first VHS was over $800.
My first walkman CD player was nearly $300. Now there are $19 DVD players,
$14 CD walkman players and nobody wants a VHS device.

that listeners will just turn off their radios and go to other
entertainment modes.. this is already largely the case with Ipods,
portable CD and MD players, etc.

Which have been studied and found to not compete with radio, but, in many
cases, create more radio listening. Just as 45's and cassettes and CDs
did. They are complimentary.

Most young people don't even own a radio anymore, it's too easy for them
to get the music they want, load it onto a personal portable device, and
hear what they want, when they want, without incessant DJ patter and
endless advertisements.

Radio does not program to young people. It can not afford to. Yet, 93% of
teens use radio weekly, so your data is just about totally wrong. You have
some kind of emotional reaction to this that does not allow you to see the
reality of pricing, radio usage or the "digital" phenomenon.

In case you hadn't noticed in your myopic view, young people make money,
they buy things. They also get older, and build into your narrow
demographic. I know lots of young people, and I doubt that 10% of them own a
radio. They own mp3 players. They read magazines, and buy CD's or download
mp3's based on name recognition.