"AM Broadcasters Back Away from HD Deployment"

According to a leaked memorandum from ABC/Citadel's executive chief
engineer, all AM stations in the company's stable have ceased
broadcasting in digital at night, effective immediately. The
memorandum does not give specifics, but follow-on reports cite
interference between AM stations on adjacent channels as a major
factor for the decision. Interestingly, some suggest Citadel
executives knew such a problem might be in the offing, but they went
ahead and turned on their digital signals at night anyway.

This is a major setback for the adoption of HD Radio, especially on
the AM dial, and Citadel is the first large broadcast conglomerate to
back away from full deployment of the HD broadcast technology.
Although the company's gone out of its way not to characterize its
move an indictment of iBiquity's proprietary digital broadcast
standard, the problems with AM HD broadcast interference are well-
known and -documented.

Apparently, since the FCC's authorization of nighttime AM-HD
broadcasts earlier this year, the number of complaints about
interference between stations has risen dramatically, and affects all
classes of AM stations - from the 50-kilowatt "clear channel"
blowtorches to the smallest operations.

Because the interference potential of HD Radio signals (and especially
AM-HD signals) is a fundamental flaw of the technology itself, it's
hard to see how a "workaround" might be produced to fix this problem,
outside of going back to the drawing board and redesigning the entire
HD broadcast protocol to not be as bandwidth-hungry as it is. HD-
capable AM stations have already squeezed the bandwidth of their
analog signals in order to accommodate the HD sidebands, even beyond
the point of fundamentally degrading analog audio quality. Since a
wholesale redesign of the AM-HD protocol is highly unlikely, perhaps
AM stations should consider HD alternatives instead? Unfortunately,
the FCC does not seem predisposed to consider this.

As radio's technology of the future, HD could very well be a waste of
time: listener knowledge about and adoption of new HD-capable
receivers is abysmal (more people listen to Democracy Now! every week
than listen to a digital radio broadcast); the price and quality of
said receivers is mostly-abysmal; and even broadcasters are coming
around enough to openly admit that AM-HD is an afterthought - radio's
digital future will almost entirely exist on the FM band. This is a
major factor, I believe, as to why the NAB and its member-stations are
pushing so hard for the FCC to freely give FM translators to AM
stations.

http://diymedia.net/archive/1007.htm#101307

"News/Talk/Sports:Radio's Last Bastion"

"Music FMs of any flavor are utterly screwed... Right now -- while FMs
are losing the music audience to new media -- satellite radio is
offering more News/Talk/Sports programming than we can fit on AM
radio..."

http://ftp.media.radcity.net/ZMST/daily/IS031005.htm

"The Last Days of AM Radio?"

"Sports, all-news and talk programming continue to draw large
audiences to the AM band in most big cities..."

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/rawfi..._am_radio.html

"News/Talk/Sports Tops Radio Formats, Interep Analysis Reveals"

"The latest share numbers place the News/Talk/Sports format at the
top, pulling in an average of 17 percent of listenership among persons
age 12-plus, based on Arbitron figures for total radio listening in 92
continuously measured metros. That share number is even higher than
levels seen last spring, when the war in Iraq began. According to
Interep, more stations than ever are programming News/Talk."

http://www.thenewsletterplace.com/05...9/article4.htm

Ha! Ha! Eduardo - HD is DEAD, and news/talk/sports is alive-and-well
on AM!