The FCC Will Vote This Month on All-Digital AM

[SixPlusOne]

The FCC Will Vote This Month on All-Digital AM

The Federal Communications Commission will vote this month on whether to allow AM stations in the United States to convert to all-digital HD Radio if they wish to do so.

https://www.radioworld.com/tech-and-gea ... digital-am


FCC Proposes Digital AM Radio with Analog Shut Off

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEK3uOqjWK4

[Mega Hertz]

No.

[MotorCityRadioFreak]

I hope they like 0.1 ratings.

[Turkeytop]

Do they mean digital AM, or digital radio on the MW band?

Is that what they call IBOC? I thought that had been pretty much abandoned already.

[MWmetalhead]

Pai is an idiot; the only reason WWFD has detectable ratings is because of their FM translator! The station's audience is meager. Over the past few survey periods, I notice the lowest AQH share of any station that appears in the Frederick, MD book is a 0.5. (Just so happens WWFD scored a 0.5 in its two most recent appearances.) That probably means one whole diary keeper logged listenership of any significance.

How will ERP licensing work, if this proposal is adopted? If digital only stations would be permitted to broadcast at the same ERP as their analog stations - especially if we're talking Class A or Class B - I'm opposed. The interference to analog AM stations would be unfairly compounded.

[Ben Zonia]

I can't see people buying radios for this. I can't see more than a handful of stations doing this. It would make 575,000,000 receivers obsolete. The handful of stations that do will wreak havoc on the rest of the stations on a frequency and adjacent frequencies, just like the remaining handful of AM IBOC stations do on adjacent channels. I talked to a station owner last week who sold a station he owned because IBOC interference rendered it unlistenable at Night.

There are nearly two radios for every person in the US. For a family of four that's 8 obsolete radios. For a radio geek I talked to last week, that's nearly 100 obsolete radios for one person. Not the same person as the station owner who received IBOC interference.

If you want to finish off the AM band completely, that is an efficient way.

https://www.nationmaster.com/country-in ... -receivers

[Turkeytop]

Somebody help me. Is this new technology they're prposing something different than IBOC?

[WOHO]

yep, it's IBOC digital only without the analog portion, MA3, I believe. So half a billion AM receivers can't get it, and maybe, just maybe a million can? There was a much higher penetration level for AM Stereo than for HD on AM, and AM ST didn't obsolete any radios whereas all HD on AM can only be received on an HD radio- period. Stupid idea and will kill-off the band sooner than later, unless that's their objective. Expanding the FM band down to VHF TV Channels 5 & 6 would have allowed AM stations a place to migrate and leave only the 1A 50KW clear channel stations on the AM band with half a million watts each to keep the EAS PEP system working.

[Turkeytop]

Maybe it will go the way of AM Stereo.

[k8jd]

Maybe some entrepeneur can collect all the old AM radios and sell them to the third world countries !
Tha stations will have to increase power. Digital TV ended up having less viewable coverage compared to the old NTSC version.

[Turkeytop]

So, I live about 100 miles east of Detroit. WJR has a strong signal here day and night. Assuming they make the switch, could it still be heard here if someone had one of the new receivers?

[k8jd]

Depends on how sensitive the front end of the new radios will be? Will the mnufacturers put all the engineering effort into the IBOC decoders and audio or make the RF part good ? or both , I imagine there will be good ones for the automobiles and a variety of price and function levels in the home or portable units. Hopefully you will be able to get what you pay for.

[Turkeytop]

Unless Canada adopts the same standard I'll need 2 radios.

[Calvert DeForest]

Maybe it will go the way of AM Stereo.

AM stereo tanked because the FCC didn't choose a singular standard, but rather left the marketplace open to competing manufacturers with proprietary standards that weren't compatible when it came to decoding a stereo transmission (I believe there were four companies carving up the pie). If you purchased a receiver designed to decode one standard and you tuned a station using a competing standard....no stereo for you. I'm all for competition and free markets, but this was the wrong instance in which to go that route. It effectively doomed AM stereo from the get-go.

At least the AM stereo systems of the day were compatible with existing mono signals in that you could listen to an AM stereo signal on a pre-existing monaural radio, just without the stereo separation. IBOC is exclusively digital and therefore incompatible with existing analog receivers, not unlike digital and analog television. All-digital AM would render current analog radios useless, requiring listeners to purchase new receivers to pick up stations. Add to it the fact that bandwidth limitations would not allow for broadcasters to transmit simultaneous analog and digital signals as TV stations were able to do for a number of years before the final switch. The IBOC switch would have to be a flash-cut with no crossover period to get people acclimated. I don't see how they can do it without severely damaging the listener base.

[Turkeytop]

I only heard AM stereo once, when I rented a Chrysler vehicle for a day. I thought it sounded good,