You are reading the data wrong.
In terms of the amount of listening about a third takes place in the car, and the rest is divided between at home and at work, with at home being the larger of the remaining 2/3's of listening.
The RAB table is based on listening occasions. Radio is sold based on the amount of listeners actually tuned in. Radio in-car incidents are generally short, while daily at home and at work listening can be quite long.
Specifically, the RAB states that 60% of people listen sometime each day in the car. But the fact is that more hours a week are spent weekly listening in other places. In a market like New York, only about 25% of listening takes place in the car.
And increasingly, with an annual payment due if you want to keep using it. Does that make it right, or just greedy?
I did not read the data wrong. I merely stated the information as presented in RAB's own material. In fact, the RAB fact sheet goes on to say:
"Across the nation, Americans spend increasing amounts of time in their cars — longer commutes, running errands, and taking the kids (and themselves) from activity to activity, 24/7. Radio — the medium that invented “drive time” — is always along for the ride.
Vehicle is primary location for Radio listening." Their words, not mine.
Do you have any secular source material for what you state or is it just your opinion?
...to make the case for why all-digital AM-HD is necessary, backed up with the same rigorous testing that was done for prior developments.
You think the future of AM is analog?
Trying to SQUEEZE a digital signal and squeezing the life's blood on a less than 5 kHz analog piece of spectrum is destroying what is left of the AM band. It's a no-brainer. The IBOC noisemaker should be banned from the AM band. Return AM to the pre-NRSC mask and revisit C-QUAM/Stereo.
Let's put it this way. The recent tests of pure digital AM on WBT in Charlotte at night were amazing (not). During the tests, the nighttime coverage of this 50,000 watt blowtorch gave an amazing usable coverage of 13 (yes thirteen) miles! .
I believe that I recall reading that the WBT digital transmitter used for the tests was something around 400 watts. The test was not intended to replicate analog coverage, but to study the use of a digital only signal on AM.
You think the future of AM is analog?
Let's put it this way. The recent tests of pure digital AM on WBT in Charlotte at night were amazing (not). During the tests, the nighttime coverage of this 50,000 watt blowtorch gave an amazing usable coverage of 13 (yes thirteen) miles! WOW! Going from an analog coverage of the entire Eastern Seaboard to 13 miles of digital coverage. Is that PROGRESS or is that progress! AM was NEVER meant to provide a digital signal, period. Trying to SQUEEZE a digital signal and squeezing the life's blood on a less than 5 kHz analog piece of spectrum is destroying what is left of the AM band. It's a no-brainer. The IBOC noisemaker should be banned from the AM band. Return AM to the pre-NRSC mask and revisit C-QUAM/Stereo.
Going from an analog coverage of the entire Eastern Seaboard to 13 miles of digital coverage. Is that PROGRESS or is that progress!
A digital, MW, four hundred watt, crystal clear, 13 mile usable radius, night signal! Impressive numbers if true!
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According to the Inside Radio article it appears WBT used their normal power level and pattern for nighttime operation:
"They occurred when WBT was operating in its normal night-time directional mode, when skywaves carry its signal “from Canada to Cuba,” as the station boasts. Five vehicles equipped with factory-installed HD radios and laptops running custom software to monitor signal reception were used."
The earlier test on 1660 claimed full 10kw digital power.
Although the report also spent some time discussing the problem of *defining* power in the all-digital world. (a problem us TV types are quite familiar with ) In analog AM, when we say WBT runs 50,000 watts, we mean their *carrier* is 50,000 watts.
Hybrid mode IBOC still has that carrier, and there's a reasonably well-defined relationship between the digital power and the carrier. In all-digital mode the carrier no longer exists. So if we say a station is running 10,000 watts of digital power, how exactly are we measuring it?
13 miles?
I could devise a system which would only work 5 miles!
Maybe I could even patent something that works even worse, compared to current tech.