[BC] GE Superadio III vs. IBOC hash

[Kevin Tekel]

Steve Newman wrote:
 > There seem to be no such concerns now. We had an FCC who was very
 > careful about compatibility. This AM IBOC thing is just something that
 > shouldn't happened.

Indeed, it was not too long ago that the FCC ordered the Harris AM Stereo
system to be taken off the air due to a trivial engineering discrepancy
that no listener or broadcaster would ever notice.  It only became an
issue because of the tooth-and-nail competition between the various AM
Stereo systems, whose proponents frequently pointed out the flaws -- no
matter how small -- in their competitors' systems.  Unfortunately the
"marketplace war" became rather ugly after a while and the deployment of
AM Stereo suffered greatly due to the lack of a single standardized
system.

The FCC clearly wanted to avoid this when they chose iBiquity's IBOC
system as the only viable candidate for terrestrial digital broadcasting,
but the downside of this is that there are no competitors around to point
out the flaws in iBiquity's system.  Ol' Lenny Kahn is trying valiantly,
but he's just a one-man company and his reputation has been tarnished to
the point that he has about as much influence in the radio industry as
Ralph Nader has in politics.  So now we're stuck with iBiquity, even if
their system is about as suitable for broadcasting as the Spruce Goose was
for aviation.

But by all means, pick up a Superadio III and enjoy it while you still
can!