[BC] Split level combine and the loss of the analog-only transmitter

[RichardBJohnson@comcast.net]

Maybe even cheap!

In the "good old days," when WCRB was owned by Charles River 
Broadcasting, I worked for Richard L. Kaye. WCRB was involved in the 
initial development of FM stereo with Daniel von Recklinghausen of 
H.H. Scott. These were pioneers with which I had the fortune of 
working. WCRB also worked with the NAB to codify the RIAA record 
frequency-response curve as the NAB standard so we could throw away 
the equalizer switches on turntable preamplifiers. They would all 
have the same response. A lot of my early work at the station 
involved building and testing equalized preamplifiers. I discovered a 
RIAA equalized preemplifier in the "GE Transistor Manual" that, with 
a single component value change, perfectly centered the curve. 
Richard Kaye tried to get GE to change the component value so that 
every radio engineer who used that circuit would have a decent curve. 
GE refused. They said they were RIGHT, WCRB was WRONG! Anyway, many 
years later while working for General Electric, I realized h!
  ow wron
g they could be. Politics was everything, engineering was secondary. 
Richard Kaye was able to keep the Theodore Jones Trust from selling 
off its property. As soon as Richard died, all was lost.

The "bottom-line" managers rationalize like this:

Why hire an engineer when the cost of replacing equipment when it 
fails is far cheaper than an engineer's salary? Even in the 
"five-year-plan," where transmitting equipment may need replacement 
or the trees may need to be cut down to restore an AM ground-system, 
the repair and replacement cost is far cheaper than maintaining an 
engineer on the payroll. If you want to be a "radio engineer" 
nowadays, you need to answer that question in the privacy of your own 
inner sanctum. Then you make sure that the station can use your other 
talents as well. Perhaps as a sports-caster, a salesman, an 
air-traffic reporter, disc jockey, or even general manager. Maybe you 
are lucky and got to be Chief at some major market, perhaps even a 
union, station. All the rest need to exercise additional talents or 
they are running on borrowed time. There just isn't as much money 
available in "conventional" broadcasting anymore as there was in the 
fifties and sixties. The NAB has lobbied the FCC to where!
   any "T
V repair" technician can muck with the radio transmitters and even 
the crop of TV repairmen (persons) are not being replaced because 
broken TVs are thrown away, not replaced anymore.

I loved working in the broadcast industry, reporting to work when I 
felt like it, claiming that I had worked all night at the transmitter 
(sometime true). However, the handwriting was on the wall. Even after 
I went to college, radio was till in my blood so I joined the 
broadcast transmitter industry as an equipment designer. I loved to 
travel, rubbing elbows with radio engineers around the world. I loved 
working for the likes of Paul Gregg and Ray McMartin. It was great. 
It is no more.

If you still love radio engineering, you need to do it as a hobby. It 
can't be your primary means of support anymore. This may sound cruel, 
but radio is obsolete, even TV is going away. Even satellite 
broadcasting is only temporary. Where we are going is "fiber fiber 
everywhere." You can't even get telco to fix POTS anymore because 
they are working on fiber installations. With optical multiplexors 
and fiber, every household will have simultaneous one-way bandwidth 
of 1.3 gigabit per second and 600 megabits per second outgoing. That 
will handle all media for the next fifty years. The AM transmitter 
sites can be sold off as Wall Mart parking lots and the TV and FM 
mountain tops either converted to wind-generator farms or "restored 
to their natural beauty!" Just watch! I hate it, but it's true.
--
Cheers,
Richard B. Johnson



 >   -------------- Original message ----------------------
 > From: Rich Wood <richwood at pobox.com>
 >  > ------ At 02:38 AM 4/21/2007, Xmitters at aol.com wrote: -------
 >  >
 >  > >   Clearly, for non-emergency operation the digital power must 
be reduced
 >  > >   to maintain the mask, but, if the operation is declared and justified
 >  > >   as emergency operation, and there are no rules for what you ask
 >  > >   specificly, it's a good question ! Reasonable and prudent men
 >  > > would allow the full power HD level, but the
 >  > >   Commission is full of lawyers, who are not known to be reasonable,
 >  > >   nor prudent.
 >  >
 >  > It seems reasonable and prudent men would know there are so few
 >  > digital receivers that, even if the digital power were allowed to go
 >  > to analog levels, virtually no one would hear it. How can anyone make
 >  > the case at this point in time that digital can be used for emergency
 >  > communication? New England has recently had major flooding. Every
 >  > IBUZ station here has had long periods with no digital operation. If
 >  > we relied on it we'd all have been washed away.