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[[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 |
#2
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In article ,
Neil wrote: 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? This is a major scam that was pushed through by iBiquity, who wants to sell its garbage at any cost to the industry. When push-back came from broadcasters who complained that no one was buying radios and that they were wasting their time with the HD-2 channels, this abomination came about. Broadcasters, for the price of IBOC gear and licensing fee get a free pass to soak up extra bandwidth on the FM band. It does have a lot of broadcasters hopping mad. It, however, does prove how ineffective IBOC really is. -- John Higdon +1 408 ANdrews 6-4400 A Cumulus Listener |
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