[BC] DRM broadcasting to begin in USA

[Robert Meuser]

Mike:


I must vigorously disagree, you are usually much more factual.  First, 
there is nothing in Eureka that equalizes stations. There are pods of 
various sizes the match analog coverage. At the worst smaller AM 
stations get either class A or class D coverage. Conversely, given the 
proper site Class C stations can duplicate analog coverage with one 
transmitter but improve dead locations with fillers.  There could also 
be the alternative where a station leaves an expensive tall tower site 
and the real estate associated with it and relies on a network of 
synchronized low power transmitters which have better penetration over a 
wider area.

I am not sure what you mean by must carry as it never existed for radio 
and these days few cable systems even carry FM at all.

Also I am not sure what you mean  by " The USA is very different than 
Europe where many AM's are not 50KW and
FM's are not 100KW Class C's." In Europe most AMs are way higher in 
power than 50 KW and FMs are worst cases equivalent to class B. That was 
the state of the industry at the time Eureka was developed.

R


Mike McCarthy wrote:
> The bottom line to the objection is simply the smaller stations would be 
> given equal footing as the big guns on the transmitters they would be 
> carried.  Thus the class A suburban and rim shots would have the same 
> signal in some areas in metro's as the home metro's.  The same would 
> apply to the little daytimers who would have the same signal as the 
> Class A's in their areas.  Further, the Class A's and big Class B/C's 
> would need to pay to be on MANY transmitters if they wanted to sustain 
> their current coverage.
> 
> In short, it was sot down by all the big guys protecting their turfs...
> 
> Then there was the issue of where the must carry inclusion would end and 
> who would be responsible.  Many argued the 54dBu contour was it.  Others 
> said something lower to as low as the 34dBu contour for the FM's. Which 
> created a nightmare for metro stations. On AM, many argued the 1mV or 
> 0.5mV.  For the Class A's that could be hundreds of transmitters which 
> they'd need to send their signal.
> 
> The USA is very different than Europe where many AM's are not 50KW and 
> FM's are not 100KW Class C's.
> 
> MM
> 
> At 06:13 PM 10/21/2007 -0700, Glen Kippel wrote
> 
>> On 10/21/07, Dana Puopolo <dpuopolo at usa.net> wrote:
>> >
>> > But Rich, we have perhaps ONE decade before broadband Inernet is widely
>> > available in your car. How relevant will the radio be then?
>> >
>> > -------
>>
>>
>> An article I read about 15 years ago wisely asked, are we in the 
>> programming
>> business, or the transmission business?  If we had adopted Eureka-147 and
>> all the radio stations had to do was create programming to send to a
>> centralized transmitter site, how would that change the industry?  If we
>> change from sending out programming on AM or FM transmitters to 
>> sending it
>> out on WiFi, does that change our business model all that much?  TV 
>> stations
>> already have about 95% of their viewers on cable -- if they turned off 
>> their
>> transmitters, how much would that affect their bottom line?  Just 
>> something
>> to think about.