On Nov 23, 3:44Â*am, K Isham wrote:
D Peter Maus wrote:
IBOCcrock wrote:
On Nov 21, 10:52 pm, D Peter Maus wrote:
IBOCcrock wrote:
On Nov 21, 2:07�pm, "David Eduardo" wrote:
"IBOCcrock" wrote in message
....

On Nov 21, 2:00 pm, "David Eduardo" wrote:
"D Peter Maus" wrote in
...

� �About 90% of the population still listens to the radio. �Even
those
with access to, and regular use of, other technologies.
Actually, it is over 95%. Roughly the same as it was in 1965.
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2015 2020
Ah, you called Miss Cleo. Ask what Google stock will be at, will you?
In the mid-60's, pundits said FM would never make it and radio
would die due
to TV. Those predictions are as accurate as yours. The satellite
numbers are
totally bogus, as sat radio has hit a brick wall on new
subscriptions and
the churn rate is huge after the free trial offers expire.
Poor argument - the 1960's didn't have cell phone/streaming, Satellite
Radio, the Internet, Internet Radio, etc...no nearly the same
situation Bud!
Â* Â*What's not acknowledged is that FM failed. Twice.

Â* Â*Before it didn't. FCC mandates were in part responsible.

Â* Â*Don't underestimate the power of commitment.

Â* Â*There's been a huge investment in this technology. There's been an
FCC mandate that all new modulation schemes be digital. Â*And there's
been a half a billion dollars spent in promotion. The point is not that
HD's success is assured, but rather that HD's demise is not assured
either. This is not going away anytime soon. It may go away, but it's
far from over.

Â* Â*And the forces that have sway are in a good position to make it a
full-on madated conversion.

Â* Â*If you really want to fight this, you'll not be successful by
reporting it's premature demise.- Hide quoted text -

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You keep repeating the same rhetoric over and over again.

Â* I keep repeating the same points because you keep ignoring the most
important parts of the argument....1) regardless of the market uptake of
this technology, the investors, the FCC and the stations involved are
committed to it. They may not be able to make it successful, but they
will not let it go easily. Even if IBOC goes no further than AM stereo,
they're simply NOT going to let it go. Not after all the money that's
been spent.

Â* If IBOC is to die, it will die slowly, and over a long period of time.

Stations
will tire of the internal costs associated with running HD/IBOC, and
with no ROI ever possible from total consumer apathy, stations will
tire of paying the on-going fees to iBiquty. Stations refuse to invest
in it, Gen Y thinks the concept is lauable, old consumers don't want
it, and retailers can't sell it.

Â* All of which is true. But the boat is in the water. They're not going
to just abandon ship. Not after all the costs of launch. Â*Radio,
iBiquity, and yes, FCC, will hang onto this for as long as they think
they can turn it around. Remember, AM stereo was a dud, too. With
international uptake. And it took 20 years to die.

Â* FM failed. Twice. The public didn't care. There was virtually no uptake.

Â* Look at it now.

Â* Color TV took 15 years to catch on.

Â* Look at it now.

Â* We're only at the very beginning of the process marketing IBOC
technology. If it's not working, but there are enough people driving
this who think that it can be made successful, they'll keep flaying the
horse until there's nothing left before they give up. And then blame
DXers for the failure.

Â* Even if it cannot be made successful, IBOC will take years to die..
iBiquity has laid out a 5 to 8 year plan...near to a decade, just to
break even. Even if they hit the target, that's only the break even
point. From there, it will take years to build real growth. Or, if not
successful, it will take years for stations, and investors to give up on
the money they've thrown at this issue and finally give up and go away.

Â* FM failed twice. And once it caught on, took nearly two decades to
become what it is. 40 years is a long time to keep swinging....and yet
FM, backed with a lot of creative thinking, and two FCC mandates became
successful 4 decades after launch.

Â* And the only one driving FM for the first 10 years was Edwin
Armstrong. There was no public interest. No industry interest. And no
FCC support.

Â* IBOC has corporate involvement, industry support, and the FCC's
mandate that all new modulation schemes be digital.

Â* It's not going to simply go away.

The FCC learned from the AM Stereo
debacle and will not mandate a shutoff of analog radio.

Â* Don't count on that, either. They didn't learn anything from AM
Stereo. Â*HDTV was supposed to be a market choice, too. Totally voluntary
uptake. And no talk of turning off the NTSC broadcast until and unless
85% of each market had moved to digital TV. And this was to be done
market by market, allowing market forces to make the decisions.

Â* Well, that didn't work. Public interest was low. And new digital
services wanted the spectrum. And they were willing to pay huge dollars
for it.

Â* So, there was an FCC mandate. And now digital TV uptake is strong.. I
just added an ATSC tuner to my own system. I now have digital
over-the-air TV. 30 channels of it. (without an HDTV--btw.) NTSC TV is
going away in a little over a year, and the uptake of digital TV
technology is brisk. Resulting in a faster conversion, improved
technology, and much lower prices.

Â* IBOC offers the opportunity for more stations, conditional
access...read that 'subscription radio,'... FCC benefits with more
licensing and process fees...stations see an end to dictatorial
advertisers...they're highly motivated to make IBOC work. No matter what
it takes. And what it may take is an FCC mandate.

Â* Again, HDTV was to be market driven. FCC specifically said there woudl
be no HDTV mandate. Now, there's a mandate. Don't think it can't happen
with Radio. There are too many salivating to get it done for that not to
be an option.

Â* IBOC. It certainly doesn't look good now. You and I agree there. The
public is not interested. Costs of implementation are a sore point for
broadcasters. iBiquity fees are absurd. We agree here.

Â* And nobody is liking where this is going. Not the public. Not the
industry. We agree here, as well.

Â* But there are too many historic examples of new technology
implemetation...even implementation badly executed...that have been
turned around by changing the rules.

Â* FM benefitted from two FCC mandates. HDTV was mandated into life.

Â* History has shown us that FCC can and will mandate what they believe
needs to be mandated. Even if reversing previous decisions to do it.

Â* And as far as Â*the spectrum issue is concerned...digital broadcasting
frees up more local spectra. More stations, more FCC revenues. They've
got a financial interest in this too.

Â* And the MW broadcast band is being eyed for low bitrate digital
services. There is spectrum pressure in favor of IBOC, just as there is
Â*HDTV.

Â* An FCC mandate is not out of the question.

Â* So, take a step back and look at the bigger picture. IBOC isn't
working. You're right about that. We agree. This is a boondoggle. And
it's an expensive boondoggle.

Â* But that's only the picture right now.

Â* There is too much history to suggest that with this much support in
the industry, with this much money spent, with this much motivation on
the part of broadcasters AND FCC....there is just too much historic
evidence to make the claim that IBOC will just go away.

Â* It may fail. But it will not just go away. It will peter out, and
peter out and peter out....just like AM Stereo...and it will take more
than a decade to do it.

Mr Maus:

I sincerely hope you are wrong about the FCC mandate.
I recently purchased a Sangean HD1-X to replace my worn out tuner for my
Â* stereo system and now wish that it had a IBOC stop switch.
I grate my teeth every time it goes digital. It truncates the high end
and over emphasis es the low (ie. Bass).
The one AM station that I can receive in IBOC out of two currently is
the worst of the bunch. The drop- outs at home Â*some fifteen miles from
the antenna are worse than my DRM reception from Radio New Zealand 6000
miles away. The DRM sounds better also. I use a Ten Tec 320D Â*plus DREAM
. FM IBOC sounds worse than CD quality, especially if they are
broadcasting another channel. It sounds worse than a highly compressed
MP4 or MP3 stream, and drops out worse than my dial up streaming channels.
To sell it they are going to have to make improvements both on AM and
FM. The subscription service won't sell if you cannot reliably pick it up.
I think I'm going to subscribe to Satellite once the merger is through.
At least they have a reliable portable unit.
I was hoping that Sangean would have released the DRM-40 here in the
states, but the FCC is dragging their feet in approving it. What a surprise.
God help us if the FCC tries to make all the domestic short-wave
stations switch to IBOC, at least the DRM signal is only 12kHz wide, not
30kHz.
Drm sounds better than IBOC if we should mandated to digital, plus it is
Â* open technology and most receivers could be modified to a 12KHZ filter
and run on ...

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"6/1/07 - FCC Releases Detailed Digital Audio Broadcast Rules"

"At some point in the future, when the Commission determines there is
sufficient market penetration of digital receivers, iBiquity asserts
that the public interest will be best served by reversing this
presumption to favor digital operations....We decline to adopt
iBiquity’s presumption policy because it is too early in the DAB
conversion process for us to consider such a mechanism. We find that
such a policy, if adopted now, may have unknown and unintended
consequences for a new technology that has yet to be accepted by the
public or widely adopted by the broadcast industry."

http://www.diymedia.net/archive/0607.htm

“4/4/07 - FCC: Market to Decide Fate of HD Radio�

"Though it appears that the FCC has stopped short of a full-on,
enthusiastic endorsement of the technology, it has removed all
marketplace barriers to its proliferation. I don't believe this is
because the FCC thinks it's the best DAB technology available, but it
is the horse that the broadcast industry has its money on. We'll now
see whether that bet is a good investment or not, and we'll be forced
to learn the hard way whether the technology's shortfalls are as
egregious as feared."

http://www.diymedia.net/archive/0407.htm

Clearly, it is up to consumers to determine the fate of HD Radio and
they have spoken "NO" with their wallets.