A Quest to Save AM Before It’s Lost in the Static

[ChrisSmolinski]

The digital age is killing AM radio, an American institution that brought the nation fireside chats, Casey Kasem’s Top 40 and scratchy broadcasts of the World Series. Long surpassed by FM and more recently cast aside by satellite radio and Pandora, AM is now under siege from a new threat: rising interference from smartphones and consumer electronics that reduce many AM stations to little more than static. Its audience has sunk to historical lows.

But at least one man in Washington is tuning in.

Ajit Pai, the lone Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, is on a personal if quixotic quest to save AM. After a little more than a year in the job, he is urging the F.C.C. to undertake an overhaul of AM radio, which he calls “the audible core of our national culture.” He sees AM — largely the realm of local news, sports, conservative talk and religious broadcasters — as vital in emergencies and in rural areas.

...

Mr. Pai also wants to examine a relatively new technology known as HD Radio, which has allowed some stations to transmit a digital signal along with their usual analog wave, damping static. (HD Radio is a brand name; it does not stand for high definition, as in HDTV.) But some critics still fault the F.C.C. for allowing too many broadcasters to crowd into a relatively narrow AM band of airwaves.

In the longer term, Mr. Pai said, the F.C.C. could mandate that all AM stations convert to digital transmission to reduce interference. Such a conversion, however, would cost consumers, who would have to replace the hundreds of millions of AM radios that do not capture digital transmissions.

...

Full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/09/us/a-quest-to-save-am-radio-before-its-lost-in-the-static.html

[skeezix]

In the longer term, Mr. Pai said, the F.C.C. could mandate that all AM stations convert to digital transmission to reduce interference. Such a conversion, however, would cost consumers, who would have to replace the hundreds of millions of AM radios that do not capture digital transmissions.

I'm ecstatic he wants to save AM. But with his quest for digital, not only would it cost us, it would also cost the broadcasters, some of which could not afford the new transmitters. Some are lucky to keep their stick lit as it is.

What the FCC should focus on are all the electronic devices pumping out the RFI causing the problems. They admit the devices are causing problems, there is existing law on the books, so enforce it!

Further, who says that the IBOC signal would be better? What happens at night?  I have a Sony receiver with IBOC and have found its quite hit or miss. At least with analog, if there's a disruption, the station will come back right away. If the digital loses its lock, it will be a bunch of seconds of dead silence until it locks again (assuming it does). When it does lock on a local 50kW sta, it sounds like a low bit-rate Internet stream. No thanks.

Leave AM alone. If they want IBOC that bad, shove all IBOC in a new band, say 76-87 now that TV is mostly(not completely) gone. (87-88 for low power FM stations   )

A few things to make AM/MW better:
- Enforce Part 15 emissions on these devices. And I mean hardcore.
- Bring back C-QUAM!  This will give wide bandwidth for good audio quality for stations that have it, and for talk stations, they don't need C-QUAM and can keep the narrower bandwidth. Radios can detect the C-QUAM signal and adjust their bandwidth accordingly (e.g. Sony SRF-42). Most importantly, make this optional, not required.
- Us listeners & the broadcasters need to encourage the radio manufacturers to make their radios with a decent AM section.
- Broadcasters need take a more active interest in AM as well. Don't relegate the craptastic programming to their AM outlets.  Even recognize that their signal travels beyond their local listening area and could somehow leverage that, esp the high powered stations.

While that was easy to type, obviously putting any of that into practice is much harder.

[atrainradio]

I agree completley skeezex! Although, I'd like a bit more room the LPFM-say 86-88. I have used an IBOC radio before I personally was not impressed with it. When a local 50kW is tuned in perfectley it sounds great to me. Sometimes it sounds like FM if you run the radio through a  EQ mixer.

[Rockpicker]

Amen Amen Amen
Never listened to an IBOC unit but if it is not any better than DRM - NO THANKS
I believe the IB in IBOC stands for In Band?
And who has greased who's hands at the FCC and or elsewhere to approve licensing of a
technology that we have to "pay for" to listen to on the traditionally free to air MW Broadcast band??
Same for DRM but at least that code has been "cracked" for it but as far as I know the IBOC consortium has kept IBOC specs out of public view?
Here is a shot of two "Locals" in my area
560 KMON Great Falls, last I checked they have not yet been authorized to use IBOC  but I have seen them testing one night.
They have their new transmitter (badly needed) up and running and to their credit they have been sending out a 20 khz wide analog sig that sounds terrific!
Yeah I Know, they play both kinds of music, Country & Western...
On the other Hand - KJOM in Havre Montana (I believe one, if not the, oldest licensed stations in the area)  have gone full IBOC
Note the pitiful low fidelity 9 khz wide analog sig and 30 khz wide total sig. What a waste of bandwidth and energy!!!!!
Too bad - The do play a nice selection of classic rock..

[redhat]

Lets not forget that the FCC approved this "I Bother Other Channels" thing in the first place.  Get rid of it.  Either go back to analog or go away.  I enjoy DX'ing on a stock Delco radio while galavanting around the country.  I hate country music, but like taking in WSM when possible.  They seam to care, even if their engineer promised us CQUAM and didn't deliver.

+-RH

[BoomboxDX]

Amen Amen Amen
Never listened to an IBOC unit but if it is not any better than DRM - NO THANKS
I believe the IB in IBOC stands for In Band?
And who has greased who's hands at the FCC and or elsewhere to approve licensing of a
technology that we have to "pay for" to listen to on the traditionally free to air MW Broadcast band??
Same for DRM but at least that code has been "cracked" for it but as far as I know the IBOC consortium has kept IBOC specs out of public view?
Here is a shot of two "Locals" in my area
560 KMON Great Falls, last I checked they have not yet been authorized to use IBOC  but I have seen them testing one night.
They have there new transmitter (badly needed) up and running and to their credit they have been sending out a 20 khz wide analog sig that sounds terrific!
Yeah I Know, they play both kinds of music, Country & Western...
On the other Hand - KJOM in Havre Montana (I believe one, if not the, oldest licensed stations in the area)  have gone full IBOC
Note the pitiful low fidelity 9 khz wide analog sig and 30 khz wide total sig. What a waste of bandwidth and energy!!!!!
Too bad - The do play a nice selection of classic rock..

Re: KMON: their new transmitter may explain why their signal has all of a sudden appeared west of the Cascades this DX season.  I've been hearing KMON about three nights in a row.  Not strong, but definitely in the mix.... never heard them like this before.

Re: your screenshot: looks like CBK 540 was coming in also.  Was this screenshot taken during the evening?

[BoomboxDX]

I don't think more than a small fraction of radio listeners listen to HD radio, FM or AM, even now after it's been going for the last ten years or so. HD radio is not going to save anything.  As for noise, FM is basically a noise free band (unless you're a DXer -- I'm referring to FM reception not being affected by things like light dimmers and plasma TV's), and yet it faces dwindling listenership, just as AM radio does. 

The problem isn't the technology itself, as much as the culture -- the younger demographics use their internet devices and Mp3 player / smartphones for music, entertainment, and information. 

They could devote the entire AM band to HD only, and Sony and the other manufacturers could swamp the stores with new HD only radios -- but I doubt that would cause people to go out and buy them and start listening to them.  They already have what they want in their internet devices.  The rest of us already have our analog AM and FM radios in our cars and homes.  It's an impasse I don't see changing.

I think AM is a better medium for emergency communications in the event of disaster (or national catastrophe) than satellite, internet, or even FM.  One 50 KW AM station can cover half the continent at night, and millions of AM radios are already out there -- the AM band is definitely a valuable national resource.

I applaud Mr. Pai for at least caring about AM radio, though.  Someone in government who sees it as valuable, especially in time of emergency.  How unusual. 

[The Late Movie]

I think (hope) within the next decade the cultural meme that 'digital' will be the answer to everyone's prayers will be revealed for the backwards, simulacra-of-19th-century-industrial-revolution-foolhardyness it is.  As a perfect parallel to AM radio, see what's happening in the movie industry right now: "the big players" have decided it will be better for them to save like, maybe a few pennies per ticket, not to have to ship 35mm film around, (and thus, they hope, stave off the downward spiraling ticket sales)...and because everyone's eyes glaze over at the great god-word "digital", a large percentage of theater owners (and hence public, voting by paying the higher ticket prices) fall in lock step for this massive conversion to expensive, guaranteed-obosolete-in-a-few-years, digital projectors. Like AM, the quality of 35mm film duplication has taken such a nose-dive in the last twenty years to the point where digital actually does offer an "improvement".  Like the noise on the AM band, shaky, unsharp 35mm prints are not the normal state of the technology, but the result of years of rushing and trying to save a buck.  (To me that's the perfect definition of insanity--an industry that spends upwards of 100-200 mil. on a blockbuster then skimps on the end product.)

Some of these cinema conversion agents' contracts demand the outright scrapping of thousands of perfectly good, tried and true, mostly American-made film projectors, some of them still ticking like the proverbial Swiss watch after 30, 40, 50 years with little more than regular grease jobs.  But I'm already hearing this wholesale conversion is neither whole, not will it be, thank god for Latin America, Eastern Europe, India and those few hundred or so independently owned drive-ins and small town theaters--businesses for whom even an expense of a few thousand dollars might mean closing the doors for good (the current price of 'digital conversion' is around $75,000-$100,000 per screen.)  

The "fuzzy logic" in all this that somehow this New Era of digital will magically enliven an industry so laden with corporate bureaucracy, downtrodden by the tyranny of 'focus groups' and plain old fear of saying/doing/believing the 'wrong thing' and losing one's job (from CEOs on down), the chances of even one millisecond of actual creativity making it onto a screen are next to zero.  And I won't even go too deeply into the aesthetic loss, why I personally regard AM radio and 35mm motion picture film to be wonderful mediums that CAN (if given a chance) speak to the soul, despite their not "matching up" to the "numbers" that digital possesses in test situations (frequency response/resolution and so on.)  All I can add is that I firmly believe analog sound and image do speak very CLEARLY to the human 'quirks' of perception (their strongest subtleties in the same 'alpha'-range of hearing and vision we have evolved to favor for survival).  

Of course where the comparison of cinema diverges is that in AM radio, the onus of forced obsolescence is on the individual--how crazy are they to think all the (billions?) of analog AM radios will just go away? And even more crazy, that they'd be replaced?  For what?  To listen to stuff that's already streaming on the web?  (I mean, I'm guessing that, like me, probably something like 1/4 of AM listeners only listen because they collect and admire vintage technology--not just the end-users' hardware, but the whole package--DX propagation and sound peculiarities too.)

The above thoughts aren't even on the table for most, including those so-called industry 'leaders', but in plain language it doesn't make a stitch of difference for either media, whether its IBOC, DRM, Digital Cinema, or analog, when the system won't allow for any creativity in programming.  Our biggest enemy is an industry walled off from creative individuals, saddled with spectacular costs, and those in control clinging tight to the foregone conclusion that they've been-there-done-that and there's no point in trying.  And maybe they're partly right, for fragmentation really is the new order, and AM radio will never be so important as it was in the last century (same for movies).  But it also doesn't have to be a graveyard. I wonder when, or if, people will tire of living life as the walking dead.  Even if you are not passionate about radio, film or anything, and its 'just a job', what kind of life, (and larger culture) do you want to have?

[cmradio]

- Enforce Part 15 emissions on these devices. And I mean hardcore.

"...RFI wipes out a dead industry. If we enforce [our equivalent of part-15] for RFI on all modern electronic devices, we would destroy the nation."

Part of a phone call between myself and Industry Canada on the AM/SW band wiped out by digital crap.

Peace!

[Rockpicker]

"" Boombox says
Re: KMON: their new transmitter may explain why their signal has all of a sudden appeared west of the Cascades this DX season.  I've been hearing KMON about three nights in a row.  Not strong, but definitely in the mix.... never heard them like this before.
Re: your screenshot: looks like CBK 540 was coming in also.  Was this screenshot taken during the evening? ""

Hi BBDX
Their old transmitter was a mess and even I could not get a decent clear signal from them until the new one was installed. I don't care much fro modern country music but on weekends - they often play a nice bluegrass show and some old Cowboy Music I do like to listen to some. "I'm back in the saddle again".....sing it Gene....

That screen shot was from May at 11 AM MT - The day I joined this discussion a neighbor had a travel trailer plugged in for visitors and the battery charger in that unit sends out a multipath signal that is very strong in the Medium wave band that extends all the way up to nearly 30 Mhz so I fished the old screen shot out of my archive!  Even in the middle of no where I have to put up with the same interference crap that others do - probably much less than those of you in populated areas but it took me months to get my own house "quiet" after I got serious about SWLing again... He also has some egg incubators that used to plague my hobby in the spring time but I installed ferrite rings on them and they helped a lot! I need to make another order and maybe install some on the battery charger of his trailer. He does not plug it in often and to my pleasure it is always out in the field in the spring during calving and lambing season.
RP