[BC] Re: Monitoring IBUZ secondaries

[Xmitters@aol.com]

In a message dated 2/17/2007 11:04:16 PM Central Standard Time, 
broadcast-request at radiolists.net writes:


> Good grief! This is worse than the Keystone Kops! <:( 
> 
> Dead air for *days*?! What? No silence sensors?? Egads!
> 
> Rich reports from the East Coast, Bob reports from the West... and it's the 
> same thing all over!
> 
> Can anyone blame me for being skeptical, now?? The bathtub of IBUZ is just 
> about filled to the brim with cement. HOW, again, do they expect to make 
> this 
> thing fly?
> 
> Willie...
> 

Willie:

There are virtually no receivers out there. If my station adds an HD2 stream, 
I'm certainly not going to have a heart attack if it goes dead. My 
understanding that the bit stream for the main HD has to be reduced to make room for 
HD2, right? If so, I do not want HD2. The primary bit stream is chincy enough as 
it is, without ctuuing it yet again! Maybe I'm wrong here?

Until there are a significant number of receivers in the hands of diary 
keepers, we ae not going to be particularly concerned if HD2 goes dead, assumin we 
even put that in. We have too much work to do keeping our analog signal up, 
keeping the AudioVault system updated and maintaining our main HD signal when we 
get it, to worry about HD2. If there is no money stream there, there is 
little point in making a big deal out of it.

I doubt that am HD receiver consumer is going to freak out because a station 
that had an HD2 stream yesterday, does not have an HD2 stream today. In my 
market, you are going to be doing a lot of tuning just to find an HD signal. The 
local radio shack store has HD receivers and there is ONE FM HD signal to pick 
up; ONE!

So I dont think the public is going to be particularly concerned if that HD2 
signal goes away. For the forseeable future, most listeners are going be doing 
a lot of searching on the dial to find just an HD signal.

I agree that having an HD2 signal dead for days is far from the ideal 
situation. Hoever, I would not call it inexcusable. There are simply bigger fish to 
fry than worrying about HD2 at least right now. 

A lot of receivers need to be deployed before an HD2 transmission failure 
produces the same sense of urgency as when our main FM goes down. I think some 
stations are putting in HD so they can get new transmitters. Sure, money is 
spent on HD-only components and the cash outlay is at a premium amount, but those 
stations will at least have  new transmitters. 

The Harris split-level combine for example, gives you two transmitters that 
are putting out some analog (with one transmitter putting out ONLY analog). I 
can use the combination HD-analog lower powered transmitter as an auxiliary 
analog transmitter, at least until HD takes off :-) I'll take a transmitter 
system with a 21st century backup transmitter any day:-) So even if IBOC gets 
scrapped, I will have a real nice backup transmitter for many years to come, 
assuming of course that I install Harris split level. I use this as a hypothetical 
example. Even the high level combine system will leave you with a very nice 
lower powered transmitter that can be used as a backup for the main.

One more thing then I'll shut up. I see that theHDTV people are getting lazy; 
they are referring to their HDTV sevice as simply HD. Now, ain't this going 
to be an interesting situation for the consumer to sort out; HD promotions on 
TV and HD promotions on the radio. Wouldn't that be a kicker if our HD 
promotional campaigne to promote radio HD actually helped boost HDTV sales more than 
it will radio HD! This whole digital thing is getting too complicated for the 
consumer; maybe I don't give them enough credit.

Jeff Glass