If not AM HD, then ???

[Darth_vader]

"Nothing was said about buying an inexpensive antenna and getting HDTV for free."

Well, what did it say about getting the SD streams (which currently make up the bulk of terrestrial television services), then?

I can see not focussing attention on HD streams, since they're the minority in probably most markets (why waste the paper and ink? That stuff's expensive!) but it seems irresponsible for them not to acknowledge the SDTV streams.

 

[tomservo]

Nothing was said about buying an inexpensive antenna and getting HDTV for free.

Or if it is mentioned, it's put in the light of an ancient curio that has survived "progress" into the 21st Century. One article I read a few years back basically said, "Hey, if you still have one of those ancient rooftop antennas, you can still use it to watch modern high definition free TV just by hooking it up," like doing so was some sort of secret hacking of 'the system' or something. It was embarrassing because I'm sure the author was younger than me and didn't know of a world without cable TV and high pay-TV fees!

And I disagree with Darth_vader. The SD subchannels may technically outnumber the HD channels available OTA in a given market, but the content that the majority desires is on the HD channels. I find it strange that so many people pay hundreds a month for cable and yet they STILL to this day overwhelmingly watch ABC, CBS and NBC, plus Fox, CW and PBS. They basically keep cable for ESPN and maybe one or two premium channels like HBO or Showtime. Hello, Netflix is $8/month and networks are FREE! If I didn't love standard cable channels in clear HD like Discovery, History and the like, I'd have cut the cord a long time ago. I've got a Roku now and the amount of free (but mostly SD, mostly stupid) content grows daily.

Of course what really burns my bumper is the people who pay $7.99 a week for Hulu Plus to watch free OTA content WITH COMMERCIALS THAT CAN'T BE SKIPPED. Holy crap, no. A home media PC or a basic DVR + antenna = OTA heaven, why would you pay to have even less control that you do with a DVR??? It's like paying $15/month or whatever it is now for SiriusXM and only listening to commercial-laden talk and CC music channels.

 

[arnoldevns]

Lots of ideas running around here.. but lets cut to the chase on some of this...

Radio itself is essentially a dying industry. A growing number of people are choosing to listen to music they download or stream and fewer are listening to the radio. People can listen to music they want through things like Pandora or Live 365 on their phone. They can use a variety of apps like TuneIn or IHeardRadio to listen to most any radio station on their phone with a sound quality that's probably better than what you get with a portable radio. The positive for radio stations is that people do indeed listen to them on these apps in growing numbers.. but not enough to offset what they're losing in overall radio listenership.

There's no point in trying to reallocate all the AM signals to another band and require people to buy new radios to listen to them.
People would not buy the radios, the listenership would drop to near zero and the stations would go out of business.

AM needs better sound quality and programming. Reducing interference, boosting power on some stations and improving the quality of receivers will help. But some of this will be a bit painful. We're going to need a bunch of AM stations to just go away. There are too many AM stations chasing tiny audiences and revenue. They sell their time for infomercials, preachers and foreign language programming that just do nothing make people want to listen. Syndicated talk shows fill other stations and some of those shows have their place and a good following.. but there are plenty that don't. Music is hard to do successfully on AM, but not impossible depending on the format.
Whatever is done, improving the locality of programming should help. Give people something they can't get anywhere else.

The same basically goes for FM. I'm not sure HD is all that bad on FM, but I do know that few people listen to it. As I've said many times, trying to find an HD radio for sale is becoming very difficult and even the stores that sell them don't have employees who know much about them. I think stations need to focus on improving the quality of their main signal and putting better programming on the air. Again, making the programming more local should help.

Were it up to me, I'd end the practice of voice tracking stations. I'd make sure every station had someone on duty at the control board at all times. If I were running a large station group, each station would have news/weather at the top and bottom of the hour - regardless of format or band. The larger market stations would have regular traffic reports during every hour of the day. Of course, that would be a good advertising opportunity as well. And speaking of ads, I'd try to cut down on the number of ads run each hour - or at least space them out more. The way it's done now may be helping to push people away from radio and toward non-commercial options like downloaded music and satellite radio.

But of course.. none of this is up to me. My suspicion is that it will take a long period of time before there's any hint of real change in the industry. It may come too late to save it. Or the real "change" in the industry might just be that it goes away.

 

[MarioMania]

I would support the idea about expanding the FM band down to 76 MHz, Would the FCC go ahead nope...I have like 3 radios with TV sound...

Also would AM's go to the New Expanded FM Band?? Would people listen at first

 

[rbrucecarter5]

I would support the idea about expanding the FM band down to 76 MHz, Would the FCC go ahead nope...I have like 3 radios with TV sound...

Also would AM's go to the New Expanded FM Band?? Would people listen at first

It has as much chance as HD radio does. You have to buy a new radio to get HD radio. You have to buy a new radio to get expanded FM. No difference, except the expanded FM band radio would be a lot less expensive, and would actually work.

 

[Chuck]

It has as much chance as HD radio does. You have to buy a new radio to get HD radio. You have to buy a new radio to get expanded FM. No difference, except the expanded FM band radio would be a lot less expensive, and would actually work.

Yep, and a lot of people already own radios that would work. AM-FM-TV radios were pretty popular. I know I have several. I doubt any of them cost over $29.95.

 

[kenglish]

How long would the 76-108 MHz FM band last, when the noise levels have already encroached on the (88 MHz) bottom edge of the current FM band?
As long as nothing is done about the interference problems, we'll just keep having to find higher and higher frequencies to move to.

Even TV stations are saying they will not migrate to the VHF channels when the FCC makes us re-pack.

 

[tomservo]

What interference is creeping up on the FM band? Aside from the plethora of poorly shielded car chargers for phones I never encounter debilitating noise above about 25 MHz. Even my old CRT tube computer monitor only blots out the weakest signals (and HD radio of course).

I'm curious what other sources I should be on the lookout for.

 

[Kmagrill]

Just to point out what might be the obvious, much of the thread here discusses plans for potentially abandoning the MW AM band. Only a few responses have tried to deal with how the MW AM band can survive, and some of those are impractical like turning off half of the existing stations. Based on the general direction the thread is moving, it doesn't seem to matter much whether HD is here or not since the consensus seems to be that nothing really will matter, one way or the other.

 

[satech]

Just to point out what might be the obvious, much of the thread here discusses plans for potentially abandoning the MW AM band. Only a few responses have tried to deal with how the MW AM band can survive, and some of those are impractical like turning off half of the existing stations. Based on the general direction the thread is moving, it doesn't seem to matter much whether HD is here or not since the consensus seems to be that nothing really will matter, one way or the other.

AM HD does matter. It causes harmful interference, both to the HD station's own signal and to other signals on neighboring channels. This fact has been well-known for over a decade. Stations thought the benefit of having a digital signal would outweigh this drawback, but the lack of proliferation of HD Radios (especially those which can receive AM) and the poor performance of AM HD in the real world has led most to conclude that AM HD is a failure. But knowing the FCC, they're not going to do anything about this. AM stations will just continue to voluntarily turn off their HD signals a few at a time.

 

[rtc]

According to

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

it's now 199.

 

[JohnnyElectron]

67 IBOC AM at night; then there are actully MORE analog AM stereo CQUAM stations than IBOC now if that's the case: 75 vs 67 ?!

 

[Savage]

Haw haw haw! And HALF of the IBOC-AMs that operate in hybrid mode 24-7 are graveyarders. With apologies to Radio Shack, kids with Archer SpacePatrol (tm) walkie-talkies get out better than the digital HD of AMs operating at night on the 6 "local" channels.

AFAIK the C-QUAM AMs are stations which actually have signals which make stereo widely available to the general public - as opposed to stations where people can come down to the transmitter shack and listen in the driveway, if they are so inclined.