J G Miller wrote:
On Sunday, August 8th, 2010 at 15:29:13h +0100, Richard Evans wrote:
True, in theory.

No, true in fact. David Eduardo has a successful career in commercial radio.
Actually I wasn't talking about Mr Eduardo, but I can understand the
confusion. It was a comment about radio in general.


However, I'm not sure if this exactly works with the BBC, who often seem
more interested in their own agenda, rather than in doing what is best
for the listeners.

BBC listeners have long been conditioned into accepting whatever
the BBC does is best for them.

Obvious examples of such people spring to mind
I'm happy with most of what the BBC do, but with radio being the big
exception, over processed, and reluctance to provide good digital sound
quality.

Don't know about community stations. They should in theory be a lot more
listener centric than the normal commercial stations.

It will all depend from where they receive their funding. If it is
a listened supported station then they will have to be receptive to
their listeners or they will not get any money to continue. If it
is a block grant from a government agency, then they can probably
ignore listeners completely so long as they can justify they next
grant application.

I don't really know if this works in practice as I don't have much
experience of community stations.

You could try listening to some for about 5 minutes -- you may feel
yourself unable to listen for any longer than that for some of them
in England.

I've only listened to one, and that was only because a friend has a show
on that station. I did send a message to the station once, on Facebook,
saying I found their 96k mp3 internet stream too low quality, and
suggested that if they can't afford a higher bit rate they might
consider an aac+ stream. I never got any response to my message, however
some how their 96k mp3 sounds better than it used to. Not sure if they
did something about it, or whether I simply got used to it. It does now
sound better than I'd expect, although not hi-fi quality.


As for the big commercial stations, the regulator ought to keep them in
line

If their is a regulator and if the regulator has policies and power
to do that.

Ofcom seems to have allowed allowed most of the commercial stations

OfCon is a light touch regulator whose purpose is to maximize
revenues from the exploitation of the electro-magnetic spectrum,
not a body to promote the interests of the listener and quality
programming.

And if Jeremy Hunt keeps his promise, OfCon will become just a
technical regulator and all policy decisions will be made as
an afterthought by free market enforcers at the DCMS.

No wonder radio listening is dyeing out :-(

On 08/08/2010 09:37 AM, John Higdon wrote:
In ,
Eric wrote:

Well do I remember the Great Controversy at KFJC in which net-streaming
was denounced vociferously because programmers would "start pandering to
the net audience."

The controversy at KKUP is exactly the obvious.

Uh.... you mean opposite?

The troops have been
vociferous in their demands to resume streaming at KKUP. The management
has been reticent because of cost and work involved.


Usual thing in those cases is take the loudest kvetcher and put him in
charge of it. Then ride his ass to get it done. It either gets done or
the person shuts up pretty quickly.

The thing about (especially non-comm play-music) radio is it's
relatively easy to single-hand. Thus it attracts a bunch of "auteurs"
who are in it exclusively for their own airtime and don't give much of a
hoot for the station as a whole. Just asking one of them to turn the
monitors down because I was recording somebody and he walls were
paper-thin resulted in a great huffiness.

In article ,
J G Miller wrote:

On Sunday, August 8th, 2010 at 15:29:13h +0100, Richard Evans wrote:

True, in theory.

No, true in fact. David Eduardo has a successful career in commercial radio.

It should be noted that there are many people who have had "a successful
career" in commercial radio and who materially disagree with David
Eduardo.

--
John Higdon
+1 408 ANdrews 6-4400
AT&T-Free At Last

In article ,
(David Kaye) wrote:

KKUP could take a page from KQED-FM. KQED, as you'll remember, had a
classical music format. They ditched it in favor of the news & information
format years ago and rose to become the #1 (highest share) non-comm
broadcaster in the nation. And in local ratings they're #3 after all-news
KCBS and "lite rock" KOIT.

News and information formats are among the most expensive to provide in
broadcasting. Unlike KQED, KKUP does not have access to unlimited funds.
Besides, what would all the old hippies who play wind chimes and whale
farts do?

--
John Higdon
+1 408 ANdrews 6-4400
AT&T-Free At Last

In article ,
(David Kaye) wrote:

Sure, there are occasional problems, such as when Higdon's KUIC wound up as
the #1overnight station. But generally the ratings are fairly accurate,
accurate enough that companies are willing to spend money on advertising.
For the second time let me say that if they weren't satisfied with what the
ratings mean the ratings would have gone away a long time ago.

There is no use asking if the air is any good if that's all there is to
breathe. The fact is that from inside the industry, the grumbling over
the sample size (and hence the granularity and accuracy) of the ratings
sucks. I hear this from within CC, CBS, the independents, and even KUIC
had a gigantic laugh over their own fleeting "good fortune" (which is
one reason KUIC and many other stations use the ratings as an internal
guide and not as a sales tool).

Arbitron remains in business because there is no competition, and the
major broadcasters are too lazy to do anything else.

--
John Higdon
+1 408 ANdrews 6-4400
AT&T-Free At Last

In article
,
RHF wrote:

Maybe in this here Recession the Radio Advertisers
should re-think their Prime Demographics and try
and Target those still with Money in this Multi-Year
[Great Obama] Recession (2009~2016).

You must be joking. Thinking out of the box is not practiced in
corporate radio.

--
John Higdon
+1 408 ANdrews 6-4400
AT&T-Free At Last

In article ,
Eric Weaver wrote:

Usual thing in those cases is take the loudest kvetcher and put him in
charge of it. Then ride his ass to get it done. It either gets done or
the person shuts up pretty quickly.

That was our ultimate solution. The noise has all but vanished
completely.

The thing about (especially non-comm play-music) radio is it's
relatively easy to single-hand. Thus it attracts a bunch of "auteurs"
who are in it exclusively for their own airtime and don't give much of a
hoot for the station as a whole. Just asking one of them to turn the
monitors down because I was recording somebody and he walls were
paper-thin resulted in a great huffiness.

Well, I have to say that when we moved, we solved that problem
creatively: we built sound-proof studios. Highly resistant, anyway.

--
John Higdon
+1 408 ANdrews 6-4400
AT&T-Free At Last

BBC airs those BBC tee vee programs whether enough people watch them, or
not.
cuhulin

DigitalRadioScams wrote:

"The average listener does 70% of their listening in a fixed location,
where there are no dropouts anyway."


That doesn't make sense, because HD Radio is more likely to drop out indoors
than outdoors because the signal strength is a lot lower indoors than it is
outdoors due to building penetration loss, and OFDM copes with mobile
reception relatively well.

Looks like the digital radio industry in the US is as clueless about digital
radio technologies as the grossly incompetent UK DAB industry.


--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - digital radio news & info

The BBC's "justification" of digital radio switchover is based on lies

DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:


and OFDM copes with mobile
reception relatively well.
Presumably that's true if it is used with time interleaving.
Can we assume that HD radio would use time interleaving?


Looks like the digital radio industry in the US is as clueless about digital
radio technologies as the grossly incompetent UK DAB industry.

200 Khz bandwidth, to get a bit rate of 96k, that's even worse than
Eureka 147.