On 1/14/12 24:55 , FarsWatch4 wrote:
"D. Peter wrote in message
...
On 1/13/12 14:52 , FarsWatch4 wrote:

It doesn't offer the improvement in audio promised.

It does.


Actually, it doesn't.

Yes, it does. Have you listened to any AM stations in HD?

Yes, I have. Digital artifacts. High noise. More distortion than
wideband AM.

I did a proof of performance on one AM HD system. It failed to meet
the audio performance requirements of NRSCII.

HD FM was better than HD AM, but failed to meet the noise and
distortion specs of FM

So, NO...HD radio doesn't offer the improvement in audio that's been
promised.

A number of studies which have been conducted have specifically excluded
trained ears, musicians, and audiophiles, in favor of largely uninvolved,
uninterested, and unhearing individuals,

This is not true.

It is. I was part of several of them.


9 out of 10 doctors also recommended cigarette smoking to aid and
improve digestion.

Where is this study?


It was the advertising hook for marketing cigarettes post-war.
Based on a survey of physicians conducted by the Tobacco Institute. The
science, like your HD perceptuals, is somewhat questionable.

Pick up any copy of Look, or Life. It's there. Ronald Reagan was
a model in some of the ads.





The only meaningful studies that will determine HD Radio's technological
solutions to improving audio quality will be studies that measure noise,
distortion, and precision of reproduction,
Here, HD falls quite flat.

I have not seen a study where people can tell a difference in any of the
attributes mentioned above.


Then read any article by Ken Pohlmann during the early days of CD.
He published dozens of them. If audible differences between the extant
technologies and CD were detectable, the audible differences between HD
Radio and FM are detectable.

Read the Fraunhofer studies about the audible differences between
MP3 and CD audio.

There's plenty of scientific data available for those who wish to
know the facts.

Quoting marketing perceptuals to rebut scientifically observed
facts is a logic failure common to iBiquity fanbois.

However, people are not buying it for "audio improvment".

"People" aren't buy it at all. Comparatively speaking.

Well...people aren't buying RADIOS at all....so it's a non-starter.


Then, HD, being a Radio product, is also a non-starter, by your own
words.



If HD Radio offered the vastly sought after programming you claim, and the
audio quality is so superior, radios would be flying off the shelves.
They're not.

I didn't say "vastly sought after"...I would use the term alternative
programming. It's more niche.


Look at actual playlists. It's hardly niche. It's repackaged
programming that's found elsewhere on the dial. Read the actual
playlists. On 8 of the HD subchannels in Chicago, this so-called
alternative programming, played the exact same tunes as baseband FM
stations elsewhere on the dial. Only the order was different. And the
patter. But even the patter didn't differ by much.

And why is this? Because the content is being developed by the same
people who are programming the baseband. The same mentality, the same
research, the same business model with the same goals. Why would doing
things the same way by the same people produce anything that was
actually different?

It wouldn't.

It doesn't.

And where there is genuinely unique and alternative programming, it's
audience is vanishingly small.

Even in a market the size of Chicago, there's no viable market for
genuinely alternative programming. The lifegroup size is simply too
small to attract advertisers.

And in the US, broadcasting has always been about the money. Even HD
subchannels are about the money.

Satellite Radio, with its much broader reach has the potential to
monetize small lifegroup size by aggregating the niche across the entire
landscape of the population into salable numbers...but even Satellite
Radio has failed to do that. Why?...probably because the same people who
programmed the radio stations that satellite users subscribed to escape
from, were programming satellite radio.

Same ****, different fee structure. Subscriptions are not increasing
as expected.

And where there was real alternative programming on Satellite radio,
there wasn't enough of a market to support the cost of providing it. So,
those channels were removed to give way to the simulcast commercial
stations...with their own commercial load.

So, if you're taking the position that HD radio offers alternative
programming on the digital subchannels, you're again dispensing
misleading information. Urban, with a playlist expanded by one tier and
different disc jockeys isn't alternative programming, when you've got 4
or five other urban stations playing the same tunes. Simulcasting your
AM on an HD FM subchannel isn't alternative programming when the AM is
still on the air.

And the great Oldies 104 experiment in Chicago, when WJMK, Chicago,
went to Jack-FM and put the WJMK format on the HD subchannel, because of
the huge public outcry when Oldies 104 was removed from the dial,
produced insufficient revenue to support itself, and it's disc jockeys'
salaries, because no one was going out to buy an HD radio to hear Dick
Biondi and Fred Winston play the same music that could be heard could be
heard on the 'new' WLS-FM Oldies format.

Now, there's nothing to say that what you claim CAN'T happen with HD
Radio...it can. Provided someone is willing to make the commitment to
offer genuinely alternative programming, and stick with it, come what
may. But this is Radio. Research, corporate and local business goals,
and a headspace dominated by P&L statements, are going to erase the
intents of creatives, in order to monetize the product to meet revenue
goals.

That means more of the same.

Hell, at CBS, Hollander even went so far as to take the Free-For-All
alternative concept of Jack-FM, and put it on a computerized playlist.
Why? Because he needed it to fit into the corporate business model.

HD radio is no different than what's currently being offered, because
it's RADIO. Alternative in name, but not in content. Lower audio quality
claiming to be CD quality...all in the name of, God love 'em, profits. A
lot of marketing. A lot of license fees for iBiquity. Not a lot of
substance to the claims.

It's still a business, after all. And if alternative programming
could produce the revenue, it wouldn't be alternative.





I already addressed the fact that people are not moved by the argument of
quality.

Hard reality. Sales tells the story that marketing wants not to have
told.

Again, the whole story is that there is apathy about ALL radio, Ham, SWL,
Scanners, XM, HD, AM....

Does sales tell a story about that too?


You're making my point for me.



And sales demonstrate that the pubic isn't buying what iBiquity is
selling.

No, it doesn't. There is no "sales finish line"...

You're saying that there's a business model without goals?

Horse****.



As has been said before...content and programming is what people go to radio
for.

There has been no effort made by iBiquity or stations themselves to sell HD
based on the additional formats streams available.


And that, speaks louder than anything.