[[Preamble: A recent discussion on ba.broadcast.moderated, about San
[Francisco public station KALW turning off their IBOC transmitter,
[began with the following posting from Patty Winter:
[
[On 10/9/11 10:13 AM, Patty Winter wrote:
[ I heard something about KALW turning off its IBOC transmitter.
[ Can anyone with an HD receiver confirm?
[
[ Patty
[
[To save the reader the trip over to ba.b.m, it was confirmed that KALW
[has indeed discontinued their HD signal.
[
[My response, which follows, was deemed by one of the moderators to be
[more appropriately posted to rec.radio.broadcasting, so here goes:]]

For a long time, I've been wondering what's in it for the public
stations that run IBOC, or for NPR, for that matter. They don't promote
their HD or HD2 channels, unlike their commercial cousins (as pathetic
an effort as that has been, at least it was something.) Unless you
already had an HD radio, you'd never know they were going through the
effort.

Last week I had the great good fortune to be down in the West Palm
Beach, Florida area (due to family issues). I'd been alerted that the
local NPR affiliate, WXEL, had been sold and had new call letters, WPBI,
and they had split their NPR news and talk programming off onto a second
station, at 101.9. (The original signal, now all classical, remains at
90.7.)

When I started dialing around, that was indeed the case. But upon
further investigation, it seems that 101.9 is nothing more than a
translator, rebroadcasting the real NPR News programming, which now
actually originates on the station's HD2. (Their TOH ID is "WPBI-HD2
West Palm Beach".) And the reception, as you'd expect from a translator,
is nowhere close to the strength of the original signal. The locals were
told the station was working on strengthening 101.9's signal "soon",
though I wonder just how much strengthening they could get away with
without adding more translators in other locations to fill in the holes.

How many public stations were sold on the idea that if they went HD,
they'd be able to expand into a second signal in their market for cheap?
Has this been the secret carrot that Ibiquity dangled at the end of the
stick to get so many public broadcasters to jump on the bandwagon,
despite all evidence that this was going to be a kludge of epic proportions?

....Neil