[BC] HD's friends: Radio World and NPR Affiliates

[Rich Wood]

------ At 01:35 PM 2/17/2007, wpio fm radio wrote: -------

>When will Radio World start to reflect some of these same negative 
>observations in their articles.
>
>To me, Radio World is part of the problem.  They won't headline the 
>negatives, as Rich and others do here.

That's strange. I've seen a number of articles in Radio World that 
criticized IBUZ along side the press releases. In the Feb 14th issue 
Skip Pizzi wrote an article wondering how long IBUZ has to be 
successful. I've been approached by Radio World to write an opinion 
piece reflecting my opinions here about the operation and marketing 
of IBUZ. Radio Guide has asked me to write about my experiences with 
receivers, since I've played with nearly all of them. I've declined 
both. I've been sarcastically critical of this rollout. In national 
publications it isn't an ongoing debate. Unfortunately, it would be 
little more than a one-time negative review.

>And, will the NPR affiliates (who got Ray croc estate money to pay 
>for their IBOC) ever conclude that there aren't enough receivers in 
>the marketplace to shut their IBOC signals off.  I fear not.

NPR stations aren't claiming this technology is their salvation. 
There's very little puffery coming from that sector. I believe it has 
far more utility for a Public Radio station than it does for 
commercial ones. Public stations have far more programming than they 
have facilities to carry it.

>What is their incentive for shutting off IBOC transmissions.  The 
>IBOC license is a one-time life time to noncoms, as I understand it, 
>so once built, why wouldn't they continue to spend a little extra on 
>IBOC ERP power, and a couple of extra audio streams for niche audio.

It's my understanding that the FCC requires the IBUZ power to be no 
more than 1% of the analog. The NPR people I know would donate at 
least one child if they could increase power. It's the deficiency of 
hybrid operation that's strangling this thing. My local NPR station 
has a secondary running Talk when the main is running music and vice 
versa. If you don't have to continually shovel money down the dumper 
in royalties why would you feel compelled to shut it off once it's 
installed, especially if you're running talk and information.   and 
don't need the full bit rate

Rich