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The Future - AM + Streaming only (no FM & HD)

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vchimpanzee said:
I saw this on another site. Is this any reason to feel encouraged?

If ATSC 3.0 broadcasts pack 50 radio stations in one TV channel, I’m all ears
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Not at this time. Not even years down the road. ATSC 3.0 is still experimental, and will continue to be so until TVs with the tuner built-in or converter boxes are commonplace at the consumer level, not just at the high end. We're now where analog TV was in 1936, or where ATSC 1.0 was in 1999: Nowhere near ready for prime time.

Then there would have to be tuners built into cars and home multimedia equipment (what we used to call "stereos"). HD on FM hasn't been all that successful so far, and it's all but dead on AM. Why would anyone believe that this new standard will magically appear in cars, even in the next 10 years, when the current number of these tuners outside of prototypes in engineering labs is zero?
 
Mikey Radio said:
Was this also the case back in the "EBS" days? Curious as I remember an afternoon jock on a Top40 station in a market where they'd recently had some tornado activity days prior got a weather alert on the news wire printer, he made an announcement that he'd received a weather alert and since residents in the area were generally hyper-vigilant after the recent tornados, he thought it best to activate the EBS tones. He pressed the red button on the front of their EBS "two tone" generator, read the weather alert, again explained the station was only doing this to be on the safe side and overly cautious and he then returned to regular programming. This was in about 1992.
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Conelrad, later EBS was mainly designed during the cold war for warning areas in case of a nuclear attack. Stations had authentication cards, which upon receiving a message via teletype/news wire, or phone would read the appropriate message, usually directing listeners where to tune for specific information, followed by turning off the transmitter.

Certain designated stations in say, Tornado Alley, used to activate EBS, later EAS, with weather or emergency information. Same goes for certain TV stations. Many residents also had NOAA weather radios which would also turn on in the event of the two tones from NOAA warning of severe weather.

Fast forward to modern EAS: Most stations don't have staff 24/7, but are simply relaying EAS from LP1 stations who are either authorized with staff to activate in an emergency, or to pass along severe weather information via NOAA. The Fed's can activate a national alert via iPAWS, but that relies on a secure and available public Internet connection at the station: Integrated Public Alert & Warning System
 
KeithE4 said:
Not at this time. Not even years down the road. ATSC 3.0 is still experimental, and will continue to be so until TVs with the tuner built-in or converter boxes are commonplace at the consumer level, not just at the high end. We're now where analog TV was in 1936, or where ATSC 1.0 was in 1999: Nowhere near ready for prime time.

Then there would have to be tuners built into cars and home multimedia equipment (what we used to call "stereos"). HD on FM hasn't been all that successful so far, and it's all but dead on AM. Why would anyone believe that this new standard will magically appear in cars, even in the next 10 years, when the current number of these tuners outside of prototypes in engineering labs is zero?
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That, and consumers don't buy new radios anymore. Haven't for twenty years. Doing some hybrid DAB thing with TV transmissions is like another solution in search of a problem.
 
Mikey Radio said:
Was this also the case back in the "EBS" days? Curious as I remember an afternoon jock on a Top40 station in a market where they'd recently had some tornado activity days prior got a weather alert on the news wire printer, he made an announcement that he'd received a weather alert and since residents in the area were generally hyper-vigilant after the recent tornados, he thought it best to activate the EBS tones. He pressed the red button on the front of their EBS "two tone" generator, read the weather alert, again explained the station was only doing this to be on the safe side and overly cautious and he then returned to regular programming. This was in about 1992.
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I worked at an LP-1 about 20 years ago. We originated the EAS alerts because the PD didn’t want the automated NWS voice going out over his station. We had a specific list of alerts we'd transmit: Tornado Warning, Flash Flood Warning, Blizzard Warning, Amber Alert, and Nuclear Plant information. We always read the script off of the alert wire when we got an alert in our listening area for any of those. The Amber Alerts were called in on our emergency line, and the copy was faxed from the Highway Patrol.

Around the time I left, the Highway Patrol started initiating the Amber Alerts. One of the reasons they fired all their part-timers, myself included, was that the organizations were starting to initiate those alerts themselves. So, they didn’t need us in the studio anymore to transmit them. I don’t know how the procedure works these days. I picked up another part-time radio job, but we had the same general practice with EAS everyone else had, which was to delete the alert and read it ourselves. Not being an LP, we didn’t have anything to transmit. We had severe weather last week, and the LP-1 where I had worked was transmitting Severe Thunderstorm Warnings, which weren’t among the list we transmitted when I worked there. It was also using the automated NWS voice. So, I assume the procedure has changed significantly from my time there.
 
Kent said:
I worked at an LP-1 about 20 years ago. We originated the EAS alerts because the PD didn’t want the automated NWS voice going out over his station. We had a specific list of alerts we'd transmit: Tornado Warning, Flash Flood Warning, Blizzard Warning, Amber Alert, and Nuclear Plant information. We always read the script off of the alert wire when we got an alert in our listening area for any of those. The Amber Alerts were called in on our emergency line, and the copy was faxed from the Highway Patrol.
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Gotcha. In the case I was mentioning, it wasn't a situation where there was an alert that originated from the NWS or a government agency or that the station didn't like the "Perfect Paul" voice (which was, I believe, what they called the first computerized voice they used) from the NWS - it was a case where the AP news printer printed a weather alert and the jock made the decision on his own "in an abundance of caution due to the fact that the listening audience was on edge due to the recent tornado activity" to sound the EBS "two-tone" alert and read the alert he got off the news printer. Was just curious if that was within the boundaries of policy back in the day.
 
Mikey Radio said:
Was this also the case back in the "EBS" days? Curious as I remember an afternoon jock on a Top40 station in a market where they'd recently had some tornado activity days prior got a weather alert on the news wire printer, he made an announcement that he'd received a weather alert and since residents in the area were generally hyper-vigilant after the recent tornados, he thought it best to activate the EBS tones. He pressed the red button on the front of their EBS "two tone" generator, read the weather alert, again explained the station was only doing this to be on the safe side and overly cautious and he then returned to regular programming. This was in about 1992.
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Some alerts would come down as "EBS requested" or "EAS requested"
 
I actually think mandating AM radios in vehicles should be done, if a major disaster strikes a large area, the FCC could order some AM stations off the air so as to make reception of existing distant 50kW AM radio station(s) broadcasting emergency info easier.

The 50kW AMs are already on the air and the daytime and nighttime signal characteristics are well known, it's really the only way to quickly inform the people affected by a disaster with emergency info.

Vehicles with displays could inform the AM radio listener about the reception problems inherent (and unique) in AM radio.


Kirk Bayne
 
kfbkfb said:
I actually think mandating AM radios in vehicles should be done, if a major disaster strikes a large area, the FCC could order some AM stations off the air so as to make reception of existing distant 50kW AM radio station(s) broadcasting emergency info easier.
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What you're describing is the old Conelrad system of the 50’s and 60’s. It was a poor and unworkable idea then and is even worse of an idea now.

Personally, I will be disappointed at AM being removed from new cars. My 2020 Sentra had AM, but it wasn’t on the console by default. I quickly realized that about 1/3 to 40% of my radio listening was AM, usually for sports programming. I ultimately moved AM to the console.

I do, however, get what the automakers are doing. While their noise excuses are lame, they realize most people don’t want or need it, and the younger generations don't use it. Probably 80-90% of my AM listening goes to two stations, KCSP 610 and WHB 810. Now that football season is over, I won’t likely tune to either of those signals for the next almost six months. Not having AM means I won’t have an easy place to get play-by-play since streaming is restricted by both the NFL and the NCAA. I can, however, still get those games via SiriusXM if I want them badly enough, and they generally sound better there versus on AM. The play-by-play, however, is easier to find on AM. SXM has so many channels, finding a game while mobile can be impractical.
 
I was thinking along the lines of perhaps FEMA/DHS making sure that the existing 50kW omni day/night AM stations have backup systems etc. to serve in an emergency.

(note - this isn't some roundabout scheme to try to same AM, it's just that AM exists now and [eventually] the 50kW stations may be some of the few AM stations left on the air)

I've heard it recommended in recent years to have enough provisions to last 3 days (even living in the city) since rescuers may not be able to reach you before then.


Kirk Bayne
 
kfbkfb said:
I actually think mandating AM radios in vehicles should be done, if a major disaster strikes a large area, the FCC could order some AM stations off the air so as to make reception of existing distant 50kW AM radio station(s) broadcasting emergency info easier.
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Distant stations can only be heard at night. Turning others off in the daytime will not make the rest more listenable.

This is not a viable solution in may parts of the nation.
 
kfbkfb said:
I was thinking along the lines of perhaps FEMA/DHS making sure that the existing 50kW omni day/night AM stations have backup systems etc. to serve in an emergency.
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A good portion of them already have, or at least used to have, that. More than a few of the 50 kw former clear channel AM's even have bomb shelters.

kfbkfb said:
I've heard it recommended in recent years to have enough provisions to last 3 days (even living in the city) since rescuers may not be able to reach you before then.
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Seems a bit paranoid to me. Sounds like something Jim Bakker would say to hawk whatever end times survival kit he's selling. In the off chance a nuclear war happens, we're not going to survive anyway. Communication would be disrupted. AM would be experiencing so much noise you couldn’t likely hear it. Plus, even if we were to survive the first 48 hours, most, if not all, of us would starve to death. Agriculture would be devastated, and what few crops that survived would be contaminated.
 
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