[BC] Country Music plight in top towns

[Xen Scott]

At 11:42 AM 09/28/2006 -0400, you wrote:

>>Do XM and Sirius even have the bandwidth to offer local radio into local 
>>markets?

>This is why I stressed using the Local Repeater system.  In most major 
>markets, both SatCasters use terrestrial repeaters to "fill in" for the 
>times the Satellite isn't 'visible' by the receivers.  Limiting to the 
>local market could be as simple as gettign the feed to the terrestrial 
>repeater, and assigning it a channel there, and the national feed just 
>goes on as normal.

The technology of getting the local source to the terrestrial repeater 
could be the challenge.
The question is whether it's possible to go directly to the repeater or 
whether it is necessary
to back-haul the source to some central control point so it could be 
uplinked to the satellite
and then down to the local market.

I would think the distribution would have to be done the same way as 
Directv and Dish Network.
They use a severely compressed back-haul and uplink to satellite.  If local 
radio is only
carried on the terrestrial repeater, then it would seem to be necessary to 
implement a
means of switching back and forth between over-the-air traditional 
broadcast reception and
the terrestrial repeater.  That adds a level of complexity that may make it 
impractical.
The other question is whether path reliability is sufficient when the 
choice is between
traditional terrestrial broadcast frequencies, particularly AM, and a 
terrestrial repeater
on a satellite frequency.  It would be interesting to know what percentage 
of the time a
typical XM or Sirius receiver is using the direct satellite signal versus 
the signal from
a terrestrial repeater, especially outside of big city "canyon" areas.

Xen Scott