[BC] Re:monitoring IBUZ secondaries

[Rich Wood]

------ At 09:35 AM 2/19/2007, cld at admin.umass.edu wrote: -------

>I was a little young at the time so I don't know this first hand, but a past
>employer of mine once related to me about how the FM side of the station
>operated for years in the early 60's; if it went off the air someone would
>eventually go out and fix it. Eventually. Coud be a few days.
>What goes around comes around.

I was there. The difference was that there wasn't an FM "revolution" 
going on. IBUZ has the HD Dominion touting the awesome benefits of 
the technology and the programming. A significant part of their 
puffery is to sell receivers. It wasn't until FM had been around for 
a while that Mitch Hastings and friends established the NAFMB. I can 
guarantee they didn't have $450 million in distressed inventory on 
their AMs (if they were combos) to promote the FM. Mitch owned a 
group of FM-only stations in the largest Northeast markets. It was 
known as the "Concert Network" and had stations in New York, Boston, 
Providence, and Hartford. All were Classical until WBCN, Boston, went 
truly free-form and became a cult in the early 70s. Every one is now 
worth fortunes.

In the case of IBUZ, as evidenced by the HD Dominion's Head Dude 
virtually pleading with stations to pay attention, there's a large 
but ineffective thrust to get stations on and receivers sold.

The AMs were the cash cows and FM was a threat. Read the story of 
Armstrong and Sarnoff. Many companies gave their FMs away or turned 
in licenses, something they regret today. When an FM came with a 
purchase it was often spun off to a noncomm. Chicago is a good 
example. As I recall, WGN gave WFMT to WTTW-TV. We're in the same 
market. Can you justify the Enfield, CT, HD-2 being audio free going 
on five days now? HD-1 is working fine. Wouldn't it be a better idea 
to take HD-2 off the air, if it's a technical issue, rather than 
keeping those titles and artists coming and making the 8 people with 
receivers believe they got a bad unit? The fact is, they may actually 
have a bad unit, but that would affect all stations. WPKX-HD-1 is 
still operating fine. It's tough to receive since it's a class A with 
2200 watts at 529 ft HAAT about 15 miles from me. Isn't that 22 watts 
digital? I could receive digital fine with my attic antenna before 
this vow of silence was taken. I can't help but wonder how long it 
would take if Randy Michaels were still in charge and how many heads 
would roll even after a few hours of silence.

>This is not to say that if I *knew* our HD2 was off that I would take it
>leisurely. I think that if you have the resources to attend to it 
>ASAP, then by
>all means it should be done as this is going to effect how valuable this
>service grows to be for listeners (and when we did have our HD2 
>down, I did get
>a couple of calls from people understandably irritated that they "spent all of
>that money" on their special receivers and the service wasn't there).

As I've said before NPR stations aren't making outrageous claims 
about IBUZ. You also have compelling programming to fill the time and 
tremendously loyal listeners in a market with very little variety. 
When we try and sell receivers based on the "stations between the 
stations" there had better be a station there. It had also better be 
worth listening to. I doubt you'd let your HD-2 go five days silent 
without shutting it down until repairs could be made.

It's interesting that I get clobbered by the cheerleaders when I try 
and reach someone at the stations to tell them their HD-2 is screwing 
up. I'm trying to help the revolution and don't get no respect. There 
was a time when stations cared about all their products.

Rich