AM HD TURNOFF PACE ACCELERATES

TheBigA said:

So I'm curious...I saw the subject of this thread: "AM HD Turnoff Pace Accelerates." I read the first article, and all the stations mentioned, like Citadel, turned off their HD a long time ago. I've gone through all the posts, and don't see any new additions to the list. So can someone tell me who in the last six months has turned off HD?

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All Phoenix AM stations except KMIK 1580 (Radio Disney) ended HD fairly recently. HD had been on KFYI 550, KTAR 620, KMVP 860, KGME 910, KOY 1230, and KMIK 1580. This is as of the last time I checked the entire band, which was Thursday. Those that turned it off were owned by Clear Channel and Bonneville.

WLS AM has only had there daytime HD off for 2 maybe 3 weeks now at the most.

I believe that Citadel has stated that if anything goes wrong with the HD on any of the other AM's they
own, they have instructed the stations to not "fix" it and just leave it off.

Hopefully CBS, Crawford and the others will realize that AM HD is worthless and do the same.

TR1992 said:

Hopefully CBS, Crawford and the others will realize that AM HD is worthless and do the same.

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CBS doesn't have the financial problems Citadel has. I don't expect they'll follow Citadel.

In Chicago, 1690 recently turned theirs off briefly, but then they turned it back on. AM 1200 has not turned it on from their new location, as far as I know. I hope they don't.

The only stations that are still running IBOC on AM in Chicago when I last listened were 670, 780, 1000, 1300, 1390, and 1690. Of those, only the first three appear to have enough signal to provide digital service to anyone except listeners in the immediate area of their transmitters.

Citadel's reasons for turning HD off are not financial. There are no cost savings to be realized by simply not continuing to use IBOC. They're leaving HD off because they've concluded it's basically stupid. And Clear Channel is following suit: the same course of action consisting of calculated neglect to be followed in a few months by an edict to fuggedabout it.

Time to try Kahn this time...

You'll keep the existing range and it won't go to mono when you honk your horn.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!

Savage said:

There are no cost savings to be realized by simply not continuing to use IBOC.

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On a 50 kw AM, the electrical savings at a mid-range kwh cost market would be on the order of $20 k to $24 k a year.

In almost any market that is a significant amount.

DavidEduardo said:

Savage said:

There are no cost savings to be realized by simply not continuing to use IBOC.

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On a 50 kw AM, the electrical savings at a mid-range kwh cost market would be on the order of $20 k to $24 k a year.

In almost any market that is a significant amount.

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David:
Are you saying, the iBOC equipment alone on an AM station is running as high as $24k/yr = $2k/mo. = ~$500/wk = $70/day - nightime operations notwithstanding? Is that respective of class of station?

How about an FM? With HD-2? HD-3 running?

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!

HD does not cause AM transmitters to consume significantly more electricity. It's not like HD-FM on Class Bs or Cs where frequently there is a separate digital transmitter with high-level combining into a common antenna, producing 90% waste of the RF generated as heat.

Even if we were to concede your argument about HD-AM costing an additional $25K per year, that's not a significant savings on a station like WGN which bills tens of millions.

Besides, while many stations turning HD-AM off are 50-kilowatters, there are just as many 5kw and 1kw graveyarders tossing in the IBOC towel. The HD exciter on a PDM/PWM transmitter doesn't consume much juice anyway, but check it for yourself:

http://topazdesigns.com/iboc/station-list.html

BigA, sorry, missed your earlier post. Recent HD turnoffs include WWVA, WLS (24 hours), KOY, KFYI, KTAR, KMVP, KGME, WRNI, KMUS (silent - guess HD didn't fix THEIR problems, whatever the situation).

In fact most of these turnoffs took place in the past 30 days. There are only a total of 260 stations operating IBOC in the AM band, and most of those are running HD daytime-only because of incompatibility with directional systems. The pop-count of HD-AM stations is actually slightly down from when 24-hour digital was authorized over two years ago.

I also refer you to recent coverage in RBR, Inside Radio and RW with commentaries to the effect that big operators are increasingly abandoning HD-AM. Just do a search on each publication.

I would not expect significant power demands by AM HD either. As far as an "AM" Pulse width Mod transmitter, or any other is concerned, it's simply a much wider bandwith signal, with REALLY HIGH slew rate (more bandwidth) capability. There's more information to
encode, bur only incrementally with bandwidth, just that much more power. In the eyes of an anolog person it is hiss, but indeed
power is consumed in generating this higher frequency information. Many stations waste as much power in mistuning and parasitic oscillations in overmod. No big deal and I bet ya can barely see it on the xmtr power bill.

But I bet that FM rejector load is a trick to drive!

For the record, I was sad to see WLS turn off their AM HD. I thought their AM HD sound quality was excellent and I could hear it with the exception of a few black spots to a 100 mile radius of the TX. Every person (including a few tech geeks) that listened to it my car was very impressed with the AM HD quality. I was OK with the switch off of HD at night as they had done until now which I believe was a good compromise.

I am so angry that they turned off their IBOC that I wrote to their management and their Chief Engineer about this. Listening to WLS for 15 years, I will no longer be a WLS listener as long as they have their AM HD switched off that's how passionate I felt about AM HD on WLS. I live too far to reliably hear their simulcast 94.7 HD-2 signal.

For some small AM stations the FCC should approve pure digital AM, where it could show case its potential (32 times the power of hybrid mode, none of the adjacent channel interference issues) in some larger markets.

Pure digital AM? And how many listeners could you expect to attract with that signal, Brian?

In the early 1950s DuMont took over a fully-equipped nearly-new UHF TV station in Kansas City, having bought it from a company called "Empire Coil Company" for one dollar. DuMont's competitors were VHF stations. After two months of operating the station, DuMont took the station dark, surrendered the license to the Commission and resold all the equipment.

There were no receivers. There was no audience. The station was transmitting to oblivion. The experiment wound up costing DuMont almost a quarter of a million 1953 dollars, even though they got the facility for nothing. Just like you would lose massive money with your digital-only AM IBOC station.

Have you ever actually owned and operated a for-profit business?

Just fixed the AM/FM knob link in the '72 Dodge Dart, took a little drive to test the radio, and discovered that WBBM 780 is not using HD today. I don't know if it a fluke or it's been "switched off". Indeed, I don't know how long it may have been off.

As long as current upper management remains in place at CBS Radio, it's my understanding that AM HD will not be "switched off," and one may safely assume that any outages at a station such as WBBM are only temporary.

Savage said:

HD does not cause AM transmitters to consume significantly more electricity.

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This was measured and documented at a 50 kw LA station.

Even if we were to concede your argument about HD-AM costing an additional $25K per year, that's not a significant savings on a station like WGN which bills tens of millions.

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Gee, if that were so, then why has WGN even let go of low paid people like "show producers" (euphemism in many stations for a call screener) who do not make much more than $25 k? If it is so little, they should keep those people.

And WGN, like most ageing AMs, is billing less and less. With the new Cubs deal, they will have a significantly lower BCF this year, too. So saving $25 k may look attractive.

The HD exciter on a PDM/PWM transmitter doesn't consume much juice anyway, but check it for yourself:

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We have checked, using kwh consumption and the utility bill. We had a major overload incident, which wiped the transmitter (over 80 power modules) and the HD; without HD, monthly savings were $2 k.

Gee, with 80 power modules out, you should have been saving 80% !

Hmm. A "major overload incident." Gotta wonder if this was another instance where the HD exciter was causing momentary FET bias cutoff on Harris transmitters, with resulting power module failure! HD trashed a number of Harris 50kw AM transmitters. iBiquity and Harris both tried to hush it up, but it's common knowledge.

If your "overload" was an antenna-load issue, it shouldn't have hurt the HD exciter. It's not in the RF drive chain. If your "overload" was from the utility company, you need surge suppression - even here at your favorite much-derided WYSL we have total clamping-type protection on both the Niagara Mohawk and generator inputs to the studio/transmitter/office facility. It's kinda elementary as an engineering issue.

You must have the world's least efficient AM transmitter. (Prior to this, the only radio transmitting facilities with 10% power efficiency I'd ever heard of were FM-HDs with high-level combining!) Suggestion: since you feel AM is a vast wasteland with essentially no prospect for survivial, let alone growth, why not turn it off and save 100% on your power bill?? ;D Just sayin'......

Scott Fybush said:

As long as current upper management remains in place at CBS Radio, it's my understanding that AM HD will not be "switched off," and one may safely assume that any outages at a station such as WBBM are only temporary.

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As time goes by this becomes more interesting to me....is WBBM going to break ranks with CBS policy?
They must still be feverishly working to get the HD back on, it's been how long now? (Still off at present and sounding crisp and wonderful)
I'll let you know when it comes back...WSCR got an "upgrade" a few weeks back and it took a few days.

But with WGN and WLS now sounding clearly superior to WBBM with iboc, they may have decided to get out while the getting's good.

Tom Wells said:

Scott Fybush said:

As long as current upper management remains in place at CBS Radio, it's my understanding that AM HD will not be "switched off," and one may safely assume that any outages at a station such as WBBM are only temporary.

Click to expand...

As time goes by this becomes more interesting to me....is WBBM going to break ranks with CBS policy?
They must still be feverishly working to get the HD back on, it's been how long now? (Still off at present and sounding crisp and wonderful)
I'll let you know when it comes back...WSCR got an "upgrade" a few weeks back and it took a few days.

But with WGN and WLS now sounding clearly superior to WBBM with iboc, they may have decided to get out while the getting's good.

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I so hope WBBM's HD is off for good!! They are the worst offender when it comes to blasting the hiss all over the AM dial; their mask is the largest of the Chicago 50kw'ers that use this system.

As for the poster that criticized Citadel for turning off the IBOC at WLS, he's prompted me to email the chief engineer at the station to thank him - their analog (listened to by 99.7 % of their audience) sounds 100% better with the damn hashmaker off!!!

Savage said:

Suggestion: since you feel AM is a vast wasteland with essentially no prospect for survivial, let alone growth, why not turn it off and save 100% on your power bill?? ;D Just sayin'......

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Heck, today I recommended to higher management that we turn all of them off, AM and FM, and use the resources for something that matters (except the several HD channels that are profitable). While I think FM HD is a usable solution, the consumer market is not going to move fast enough and I suggested other areas where the ROI was better.

Of course, that does not help AM any more than free health care will help a cadaver.