[BC] Re:monitoring IBUZ secondaries

[Xmitters@aol.com]

In a message dated 2/18/2007 5:12:06 PM Central Standard Time, 
broadcast-request at radiolists.net writes:


> >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!
> 
> If that one stream is the format I've been waiting for all my life 
> I'm going to be upset. I'd be devastated if the Swedish Hip Hop Polka 
> stream went dead. It would seem to make more sense not to sell 
> receivers in that market until stations are up and running. I doubt 
> consumers will come back for a second try once they've seen there's 
> nothing there. The analog quality of these receivers isn't any better 
> than something I can get at Wal-Mart for $29.
> 
> >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.
> 
> Then shut it down. If the HD-2 isn't there because of technical 
> issues no one is the wiser. If the signal is there with the logo lit 
> and titles and artists scrolling away it's clear someone is screwing 
> up. That's inexcusable by most broadcast standards.


Rich:

When I said there was one HD station in my market, that meant exactly that. 
One HD signal not one HD2 signal. In fact, I do not know if this one HD station 
has an HD2 stream. Lack of signal is not going to be a big problem until 
there are receivers out there. Once my boss tells me that there is a significant 
number of HD radios out there that he wants to provide service to, then the 
Burk remote control will be wired with a silence sensor that will initiate a call 
to my home after hours, like it does now for main channel.


An outage on the HD2 is "inexcuseable" when my staff tells me that there is 
an Arbitron rating motivation to keep it up. We have talked about HD2 a little 
and so far, HD2 is a toy. If it's on, ot's on, if it's not then we'll fix it. 
We have a lot of receivers to sell before the HD2 service is going to have 
much attention at my station, assuming we put it on at all. I would rather use 
that HD2 bit stream to provide a nicer sounding HD signal, in my personal 
opinion. Time will tell where this all goes. 

BTW, if you heard an HD2 signal today and then did not hear it for two or 
three days, how would you know if the signal is gone because nobody at the 
station cares enough to notice, versus the station experimenting with it and simply 
shut it down? I'll probably put my HD2 on for a while just to screw around 
with it, but it will not be on permanently, unless of course my boss wants it on 
permanently.

My engineering department is a customer service department. I provide the 
service that my customers require of me. When Programming tells me that the HD2 
signal is mission critical, I will give it the support that it needs. Untill 
then, I have plenty of other things at the station that keep my ulcers active. 
It's all about what my customers want and what is important to them. I then do 
my best to provide for their needs.

Jeff Glass
Northern Illinois University