[BC] Radio engineering not a profession - 50 kW Vs. 2 Watts

[Broadcast List USER]

Listening to the radio today is evidence that getting rid of the  
requirements was not good.

Listen to the audio of many stations today.  No, I'm not commenting  
on overly squished audio -- I've been guilty of that at the request  
of many Program Directors or General Managers.  I'm writing about the  
obvious audio problems on more than a few stations.  I listen in mono  
in my bedroom and it's attached bath.  I am no longer surprised at  
the audio just disappearing on promos and commercials.  It turns out  
those elements are out of phase.  Back in the day, I listened to my  
stations in mono in my office.  I guess nobody does that anymore.   
There ARE alarms for this, but nobody bothers.

I would put a very inexpensive 'scope in the production studios for  
the Production Director and announcers to see.  They were instructed  
that the line should look like "/" not "\" and what to do about it.

One AM station in DC consistently cuts off the end of shows, and goes  
into a promo then the news.  I don't have any idea why.  They also  
keep playing Friday's financial news clips all weekend!  This station  
has had the same promo for a national show on for two years!  They  
just don't bother to keep up.  When they cut away for a baseball  
game, they just cut away.  The host of the show on the air is just  
cut off, not just in mid sentence, but in mid word.  They just don't  
care.

One day I listened to this station for quite a while playing two  
things on the air at the same time.  I was getting ready to call them  
when everything went away.  Both feeds came back a few times until  
someone figured how to have only one of them on the air.

Then there are the promos that appear to be recorded at 32 kHz  
sampling rate, then just played back at 44.1 kHz.  I mean, come on,  
can't you HEAR how fast and high pitched the elements sound?

Several AM stations in more than a few cities I visit air shows that  
are obviously done over the phone.  Now, it isn't expensive to do  
something reasonable, but they don't bother.  I mean, these are daily  
shows, but the host (who  is likely just buying time) literally just  
"phones it in."

A major market Texas station aired high school football.  The  
boosters bought the time.  It was delivered to the station by this:   
There was a mixer at the school fed by OK mics.  This was clipped  
into a telephone on a POTS line.  This was phoned into an Internet  
streaming company.  The station brought the stream up on a computer  
and aired it.  SOMEONE monitored the station at the game, so they  
generally hit very lose cues.  It surely wasn't the announcers as  
there would be no way they would be able to stand the delay.

Stations obviously air very low bit rate MP3 files.  It is also  
obvious that some stations use STLs and have other issues which would  
never pass an audio Proof.

The specifications for an audio proof were pretty lax anyway, and  
every station I ever worked for tried to do much better than  
minimum.  If you cannot start with a very good signal to noise ratio  
before you add the audio processor, you are going to be just pumping  
noise, as one example.

Technical people DO deserve more respect, but I don't know that one  
can legislate or regulate it.  It's too bad that owners don't  
understand that awful audio (and awful programming) are hastening the  
demise of the industry.

On May 4, 2008, at 6:00 AM, broadcast-request at radiolists.net wrote:

> Message: 20
> Date: Sun, 04 May 2008 00:10:41 -0700
> From: nakayle at gmail.com
> Subject: Re: [BC] Radio engineering not a profession - 50 kW Vs. 2
> 	Watts
> To: "Broadcasters' Mailing List" <broadcast at radiolists.net>
> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20080504000954.0428e2b8 at oldradio.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
>
> [...]
>
> You may knock the first class ticket, but I think it did add respect
> to the profession and the much more stringent requirements the FCC
> had on station operations- numerous logs, inspections, proofs, etc
> made engineers much more essential and important to a station than  
> today.
>
> [...]