David Eduardo wrote:
Commentary: IBOC Naysayers Fear Change
Educator Says It's Time for Radio to Leave the Warm Glow of the 12AV6

by Edward Montgomery

After reading letters to the editor and excerpts of publicly-filed comments
from individuals opposed to the switch to IBOC, Ed Montgomery, an
electronics and communications teacher for 34 years, prepared this opinion
which he says refers "to another time when a broadcast signal was changed to
provide better service even though it introduced what was considered a
'penalty.'"

Human beings generally cling to the status quo. When something new comes
along, trepidation often results.

When Thomas Edison developed electricity, the gaslight companies proclaimed
the dangers of the new form of energy. "Get a horse!" was the cry for many
at the turn of the 19th to the 20th centuries, when the automobile came on
the scene.

My father would never buy a car with a radio or an automatic transmission.
His standard response to the latter was, "The transmissions break."

He was a firm believer that car radios didn't work outside a specific area.
We lived in northern New Jersey. He believed that if you got to Greenwood
Lake, which borders New York, the radio would cease to operate. This was
empirical evidence he acquired from using a company car with a radio.

What he never understood was that WAAT(AM) - now WWDJ - was a
five-kilowatter that couldn't send a signal that distance. It was the only
station to which he listened.

Radio purists

But a lot of people like that act out of ignorance. Others use intentional
deception to protect their products. The company with the slogan "the most
trusted name in electronics" did all it could to suppress the development of
FM broadcasting.

And among those who were there, who can forget Hollywood executives in the
early 1950s writing off television, saying the average person would never
exchange a giant theater screen for a small flickering box in their homes?

That battle created two classes of performers, writers, producers and
directors: The elite Hollywood professionals, and the "underlings" in
television, mostly based in New York City.

We live in an age of another group of purists who seem to believe that true
radio broadcasting should consist of Heising Modulation at the transmitter
and five tube superheterodyne receivers. These electronic Luddites fear any
change to radio while EMI noise, iPods, Webcasting, satellite radio and
those custom mix music CDs take more of the listening audience away each
day.

Diversity of program distribution is taking listeners from the traditional
broadcaster. Listeners are leaving and they are not likely to return, and
this is affecting FM as well as AM.

It's time to leave the warm glow of the 12AV6.

Listening habits have changed over the years. Two-income families have
pretty much eliminated the DJ format with family-oriented humor between
every song integrating their banter into the commercial clusters. Talk radio
has gathered the political and sports demographics and the narrow rotation
of some forms of music.

With just a few conglomerates owning most of the stations, the formats are
very similar. A decade ago more nighttime radio stations were added to the
old clear channel frequencies, adding more noise, limiting their
effectiveness at great distances.

What he is saying here is the content comes from the networks, implying
there is no need to listen to a distant station since it will be more
of the same. This just isn't true.


The primary service is the area that needs signal free from most noise with
a good-fidelity stereo signal, at a minimum. The IBOC system can deliver
that. Yes, it does inject noise in the first-adjacent sidebands in that
primary zone; but few people have a need to listen to a station a time zone
away any more.

Again, this isn't true. IBOC is inferior to a good AM signal. What is
worse, it forces the AM signal to be bandlimited to 5KHz. So you ruin
the analog signal and deliver low bit rate crappy digital audio.

What is true is the digital signal spreads hash on the adjacent analog
channel, but they aren't in the next time zone.


Sixty years ago I would not have favored this change. But back then, living
in a more rural America, we had broad-banded AM receivers and a need to hear
Fred Allen, Eddie Cantor or the latest news from the war. That's no longer
the case.

The best way to describe what is happening is that the radio signals will
change. Within the limits of keeping most of the analog signal, it is a
small price to pay to reduce noise, improve fidelity and add more services.

More services? Well, is that what you call a computer playing classic
rock? Reduce noise? IBOC creates noise. Improved fidelity?? Well, if
you don't count digital artifacts.

'Stereo penalty'

This is not the first time radio signals have changed.

When Edwin Armstrong developed wide-band FM he established 100 percent
modulation as a frequency deviation of +/- 75 kHz producing the best
signal-to-noise ratio. When subcarriers were added, the main channel
modulation had to be reduced to accommodate them.

With FM stereo, sum and difference channels of equal loudness were
transmitted, severely reducing the main channel deviation. The result was
the "stereo penalty," adding noise, often resulting in moving transmitters
to better locations and increasing power. Even that didn't always do the
job, especially for the Class A stations.

All true, but none of these "improvements" put hash on the adjacent
channel.

The low receiver sensitivity of that era contributed to a reduced coverage
area. The difference then was that there were far fewer FM listeners then
than there are AM listeners today. I know of no complaints surrounding the
addition of the stereo signal. Most say it saved the band.

In the bay area, KFOG has to own two stations to deliver decent stereo.



There is another way to solve the digital broadcasting dilemma: Follow the
path Armstrong did - developing an entirely new form of broadcasting,
promoting it himself, fending off those who wanted him to fail. He gathered
a significant number of listeners along The Yankee Network.

The battle with RCA was too much, costing his life; but his wife prevailed.
There were no conglomerate owners back then, and a little more interest by
local broadcasters to experiment.

Few have the willingness to do that today.

Montgomery is laboratory director for video technology and communications at
the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax, Va.

RW welcomes other points of view.

Create a new band for digital radio and I won't complain, though it
better be a high bit rate if you expect me to buy one. Further, we
could have AM stereo right now if the market wanted it. The technology
was delivered, but it never caught on as FM had both stereo, more
bandwidth, and less noise.