While the work of radio stations using terrestrial transmitters is a typical discussion topic on Radio Survivor, for this episode we find ourselves examining music and talk beamed down from satellites orbiting the earth. Satellite radio as we know it began in the 1990s, with its major players launching satellite radio services in the early 2000s. Brian Fauteux, Associate Professor of Popular Music and Media Studies at University of Alberta joins us on the show to discuss the fascinating history and relevance of satellite radio to both radio culture and the music industry. Brian is the author of the new book, “Music in Orbit: Satellite Radio in the Streaming Space Age,” released in 2025.

Show Notes:

• Music in Orbit: Satellite Radio in the Streaming Space Age (UC Press)
• Brian Fauteux
• SiriusXM
• HBCU channel on SiriusXM
• Aquarium Drunkard
• Sirius XMU
• Behind the Scenes of XMU’s “Student Exchange Program” (SpinningIndie)
• Matthew Lasar on “Radio 2.0” (Radio Survivor)
• Radio 2.0: Uploading the First Broadcast Medium by Matthew Lasar
• Flashback Radio Survivor articles by Brian Fauteux circa 2014-2016! (Radio Survivor)

Show Credits:

• This episode was produced by Jennifer Waits
• Hosted by Jennifer Waits and Eric Klein
• Edited by Eric Klein

The post Podcast #344 – Music in Orbit: Satellite Radio in the Streaming Space Age appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Eleven months after opening a proceeding to consider allowing AM stations to go all-digital, the FCC appears ready to render its verdict later this month. According to Radio World’s Paul McLane, “[B]ased on anecdotal evidence, the commission will likely approve it.”

To recap, the Commission is considering proposals to allow AM stations to voluntary convert to all-digital HD Radio transmission, turning off their analog signals entirely. The purported benefits are better fidelity with no audible noise or interference. The tradeoff is that digital stations will effectively disappear from analog AM receivers, which make up the vast majority of radios.

It is true that about half of all car radios on the road now are HD Radio capable, and that the car is the site of large proportion of terrestrial radio listening. However, HD Radio has very little presence outside the car. It seems to be a big bet to cut off anywhere from a quarter to nearly a half of your listeners by ditching analog radios.

That is the takeaway from the experience of oldies station WIOE-AM in Fort Wayne, IN, which converted to all-digital this past May as an experiment. According to Inside Radio, the station turned the analog signal back on in early June after getting complaints from listeners, some of whom assumed that technical difficulties were to blame.

On the surface, an oldies music format would appear to be a fitting application for digital AM, with the tunes better served by the increased fidelity and reduced noise. At the same time, the older audience is probably less likely to be listening in cars, and even less likely to have an HD Radio capable home receiver.

For what it’s worth, the other station conducting experimental all-digital broadcasts in Maryland reports more positive results, saying that an HD Radio awareness campaign has resulted in it showing up in the Nielsen ratings for the first time.

True All-Digital AM Very Unlikely

Gazing into the crystal ball, Radio World quotes a “veteran engineering professional” who predicts that no major radio company is likely to invest in all-digital AM. Of course, those are the companies that own the vast majority of stations.

If the FCC chooses to authorize voluntary all-digital AM broadcasts, it will be consistent with the Commission’s overall strategy on digital radio. HD Radio, the current digital standard, is also voluntary and squeezed into the current analog dial. By comparison, most other countries with digital radio dedicated separate spectrum to use the DAB or DRM standards. While those systems also required new receivers, the promise of fresh and differentiated programming – like BBC 6Music – gave listeners an incentive to invest in new radios, which cost as little as $50.

On the other hand, the commercial radio industry has provided little incentive for listeners to switch to HD Radio from a content perspective. Mostly it’s just been the promise of lower noise digital sound. While there are at least a dozen different HD2 or HD3 digital-only signals in any major market, they’re generally poorly advertised, and many of them are just repeaters of an AM or just used as a way to feed an analog translator repeater station.

US Digital Radio Continues To Be Weak

By failing to commit the US to a true all-digital broadcasting standard, the FCC and Congress have consigned the nation to a digital radio system that is still unknown by the average person because it offers nebulous benefits. Certainly the broadcast industry has been successful in forging adoption of HD Radio in dashboards, but since the average car is on the road for more than a decade, this has been a very slow road. The adoption outside vehicles is pretty much a failure.

Letting AM stations voluntarily switch to all-digital will be just as weak and ineffective.

My principal concern for all-digital AM broadcasting is that it would undermine the vital emergency communications service these stations provide. During a hurricane, super storm, wildfire or other natural disaster when power and cellular service are cut or intermittent, a person’s lifeline is often that battery operated analog radio receiver. Who is going to run out to the car to tune in that HD station in the midst of 75 MPH winds?

But if it turns out that most major broadcasters won’t be interested all-digital AM, then the worst-case scenario of a disappeared analog band probably won’t come to pass.

Instead it will be just another weak step in the so-called AM revitalization initiative, which has really just been about giving FM translator stations to AM broadcasters. And that’s just a bribe to entice them to keep their AM stations, by making the FM frequency contingent on staying on the AM band.

Seems like a lot of time in the kitchen to cook up a very weak sauce.

Feature image credit: N Migo / flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The post FCC’s All-Digital AM Plan Likely Will Be Weak Sauce appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Last week we declared that the 2010s were a banner decade for community radio. As Jennifer notes, though college radio had a tough start to the last decade, with the loss of prominent stations like KUSF, KTRU and WRVU, the service seriously bounced back, aided by factors like the low-power FM boom, internet radio, HD Radio and support from the new College Radio Foundation. That all adds up to the defensible declaration that it was also the biggest growth decade for college radio, too. We unpack all that happened.

Digging further into our second “Decade in Review” episode, Jennifer also looks at how efforts to preserve radio programming and materials stepped up, seen most prominently with the founding of the Library of Congress’ Radio Preservation Task Force. On that subject, we’re pleased to report that this show has been selected for collection by the Library of Congress as part of a new podcast program. We’ll talk to the manager of the Podcast Preservation Project on next week’s show.

Finally, we also dig into how video, and YouTube specifically, has become radio, in many ways. A picture may be required, but what does it matter if it’s the audio that’s most important?

But, wait, there’s more! Find out how Jerry Lee Lewis fuels a discussion of border blasters, the tempestuous relationship between radio and the record industry through times of both war and peace in some bonus content that didn’t fit into this episode. Our Patreon supporters can hear this bonus episode, and so can you for a gift of just $1 a month.

Show Notes

• More College Radio than Ever in the 2010s as it Takes New Forms
• Preservation is One of the Most Important Radio Trends of the Decade
• Podcast #207 – Building More Communities Around Your Station
• Is YouTube the Home of the New Radio Pirates?

The post Podcast #228 – College Radio’s Biggest Decade appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Can you save AM Radio by killing it?

The original broadcast band gets little love as it prepares to celebrate its 100th birthday. Plagued by electromagnetic interference from wi-fi routers, LED lights and all sorts of other modern electronics, and dominated by tired right-wing and sports talk programming targeting a shrinking demographic, there’s not much love for AM radio these days.

While the FCC has talked about revitalizing the AM band for something close to a decade, all that’s resulted is letting AM broadcasters have translator repeater stations on the FM dial. That’s not so much AM revitalization as welfare for AM broadcasters.

Another idea that’s been floating in the ether is taking the band all-digital. Just like the FM band, there are digital HD Radio stations on AM right now. Because AM stations have just a fraction of the bandwidth of FM channels, they don’t feature additional channels, like FM’s HD–2 and HD–3. Instead HD Radio stations on AM just have a digital channel accompanying the analog one which offers audio that is stereo and markedly free of noise and static, provided you have an HD Radio tuner and are in range of the lower-powered digital signal.

The idea behind an all-digital AM band is that stations would drop their analog signals altogether in favor of a digital HD Radio signal. The supposed benefit is that the new digital signals would be higher fidelity, free of noise, and somewhat more resistant to interference. The downside would be that they would be unreceivable by the hundreds of millions of analog AM radios in use around the country. Only HD Radio equipped car radios and the much-rarer home receivers would get the broadcasts.

As of now, approximately 50% of new cars are HD-capable. Taking into account that the average vehicle on the road is nearly 12 years old, a much lower percentage of all vehicles have the capability, meaning the majority of radio listeners still can’t hear HD Radio signals.

Nevertheless, for the first time this month the FCC is officially taking up the idea of letting AM stations go all-digital. The proposal, docket 19–311, wouldn’t force stations to go HD Radio. Instead, if approved, it would allow stations to choose this route.

Arguing All-Digital AM

To understand the motivations for this, we can look to a Radio World editorial, in which the petitioner behind this proposal, radio group GM Ben Downs, argues for the sonic advantages of HD Radio on AM. I admit that on its own the fidelity argument is hard to find fault with. But there are many more significant nits to pic. He takes up several common objections.

To the argument, “there aren’t enough [HD] radios,” he answers: “And if we broadcasters don’t step up, there won’t be any listeners either. Every year more and more HD Radios are hitting the market. Can we say the same about AM listeners?”

I think what he’s saying is that listeners are fleeing AM because of the noise and interference, but a growing segment of them are using HD-capable receivers that would relieve them of the sound constraints. I’m not certain there’s much evidence for this. Fidelity is not much of an issue for listening to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, or endless listener calls debating NFL stats. Audiences interested in anything else naturally turn to FM.

Downs anticipates this critique, writing, “There are always people who say poor programming damaged AM. I suppose that’s possible, but those choices were forced on us by radios that had such poor performance we were embarrassed to try to compete against FM music stations with what we had to work with.”

That seems a selective view of the past, at best, and ahistorical at worst. FM music radio became predominant in the early 1980s, way before the AM dial became so noisy. Moreover, I’m not sure when this mythical time of wide-spread high fidelity AM receivers was, but that’s one I wished I’d lived in (and I was a radio listener in the early 80s).

He also takes up the argument that, “I’ll lose listeners when I switch [to all-digital],” answering: “The beauty of the AM revitalization process was that it allowed us to pair our AM stations with FM translators. Your translator can carry the audience load while the audience becomes accustomed to all-digital AM.”

I find this just as paradoxical as the idea of FM signals for AM broadcasters representing any kind of “revitalization” for the band. My question is: if listeners have to hear your station on the FM dial, why would they ever go back to find it on AM? Would they even know to do so?

While much of radio listening has moved to the car, and HD Radio is far more prevalent in vehicle dashboards than in home receivers, my own experience is that most listeners are relatively unaware of HD Radio. Their tuners may bring in the signal, but since it sounds roughly identical to the analog one, it’s all in the background. I don’t think most seek it out. This is evidenced by the fact that there are no HD–2 or HD–3 stations – only receivable with an HD capable receiver – at or towards the top of the ratings for any U.S. market.

Now, I agree that the fidelity difference on AM is more pronounced and noticeable. But I’m still not sure that listeners really notice the difference as their radios shift between analog and digital signals. Any AM listener is accustomed to the signal strengthening and fading as they travel, and the analog to digital shift doesn’t really sound all that different.

Importantly, we’re only talking about listeners in vehicles here. AM stations that switch to all-digital will most certainly lose nearly all their listeners outside of a car. No doubt there are nerds like me who own HD Radio home receivers, or some die-hard fans who will go out to buy one of the handful of HD-capable models when it becomes necessary. But the vast majority will just listen to something else.

I have a hard time seeing how going all-digital will save stations. More likely, it will just alienate listeners, and make those stations even more niche and less viable.

The Problem Isn’t Digital Radio, Per Se

I do want to be clear that, despite my cynicism, I don’t actually wish for stations to fail, nor do I think digital radio is a bad idea. I think it would be good for the U.S. to have a truly viable digital radio service. However, it would be better as an additional service, rather than a replacement for analog radio. Something more like the DAB service prevalent outside the US.

Even with its limitations, there are significant advantages to analog AM radio. It’s a proven technology that has lasted a century, and there are millions upon millions of receivers out there. Heck, it’s so simple that you can build a crystal set receiver that doesn’t even require electricity. Moreover, AM signals can easily travel hundreds to thousands of miles.

All of this means that AM is an efficient want to broadcast to large groups of people over a large area. That is particularly important during emergencies, natural disasters or other times when communications by cellular phone or internet is compromised.

Who Loses When Stations Go All-Digital?

What I’d hate to see during a wildfire, hurricane or earthquake thousands of people resorting to their emergency radios, only to find that where there used to be a reliable source of local information there is only digital hash.

Though I have doubts that all-digital AM broadcasting will be any more successful, nor as sustainable as analog, I certainly prefer it to be optional rather than mandatory. On the one hand I suppose it’s not terrible to let station owners to make their bets and choose their own fates.

On the other hand, these consequences are not borne only by stations alone. Communities continue to depend on broadcasters, and there is still something of a remnant public service obligation in exchange for the monopoly license to use a frequency on the public airwaves. If going all-digital ends up driving a station out of business, what’s the likelihood that another one will take over the license and take its place?

I honestly don’t doubt the sincerity of many all-digital AM proponents, that they honestly would like to see a higher fidelity, “improved” service on the dial. However, they may be naïve.

Is This Even About Radio?

A more suspicious take would be that a drive to all-digital AM has nothing to do with radio as an audio service. Rather it’s an effort to turn the band into a data service, with audio as a justification, but more of an afterthought. That’s not unlike the required, but mostly useless video signal of channel 6 low-power TV stations, that mostly serve as “Franken FM” radio stations sneaking onto the FM dial at 87.7 FM. Think of all-digital AM as a cheap way to send traffic, weather and other commercialized data to in-car receivers without the need for mobile internet.

That said, I also have doubts about how many broadcasters would take advantage of all-digital operation. I have difficulty seeing top rated big-city AMs dump the millions of analog listeners that keep advertisers coming back just to gain a little bit of fidelity for a minority of the in-car audience.

The question becomes: Is all-digital AM Radio actually AM Radio? If we’re being pedantic, no, it isn’t. AM means Amplitude Modulation, which is an inherently analog technology. If all the stations on the AM dial were to go digital, that would in fact mean the death of AM broadcasting in the U.S., along with the death of many of the technology’s advantages.

It’s possible this wouldn’t be as tragic as I predict. Maybe analog FM and more robust internet technologies would pick up the slack. Maybe even such a transition would stimulate the production and sales of more HD Radio receivers.

I’m not committed to being a luddite, and I wouldn’t mind being wrong. I just won’t bet on it.

The post Can We Save AM Radio by Killing It? Considering All-Digital AM Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Radio World reports that Switzerland’s FM radio broadcasts are due to end by the end of 2024, according to a release from the country’s Federal Office of Communications. OFCOM says at the end of July only 17% of people in that country listen to FM exclusively.

I am a bit chagrined that this story flew under my radar until now. Back in December 2014 the Digital Migration working group formulated a plan to switch entirely over to digital DAB+ broadcasting, and in 2015 “more than 80 percent of private radio stations agreed to this decision,” according to OFCOM. So this has been in the works for several years.

DAB+ is a digital radio standard used through much of Europe, including the U.K. and Norway, the latter of which turned off national FM broadcasts in 2017 – many local FM stations are still on the air. OFCOM reports that 65% of Swiss listen to the service, while only 35% use analog FM.

In addition to commercial and state-supported public broadcasters, Switzerland has about 15 community radio stations. According to a 2018 article in Swiss Review, OFCOM will subsidize 80% of DAB+ broadcast costs for non-commercial stations, and is offering financial support for the installation of digital studios. Presumably, community stations would qualify for these grants. Searching around some stations’ websites indicates that quite a few already simulcast on DAB+.

Subsidizing a station’s DAB+ transmission is not quite the same as building it a brand new transmitter, as it would be with FM or HD Radio. A single DAB+ transmitter can accommodate multiple stations’ signals as a multiplex. Thus, in most countries with DAB+, like the U.K., Norway and Switzerland, each station actually leases space, rather than owning its own transmitter. In that way DAB+ is more efficient than FM.

One trade-off of DAB+ is that a centralized infrastructure makes the system inherently more vulnerable in times of natural disaster, or just run-of-the-mill calamity, like a power outage. It also leaves stations less independent. In Switzerland the DAB+ infrastructure is owned and operated by the for-profit company Digris.

While Digris is investing to grow its infrastructure – like building transmitters in mountainous roadway tunnels – DAB+ listening is still mostly in motor vehicles, rather than homes. This is not unlike HD Radio in the U.S., where it’s difficult to even find a digital-capable home tuner.

What this means is that most home listening in Switzerland may simply move to internet radio in 2024. No doubt it’s likely much home and office listening already is online, and those who want to hear DAB+ outside the car have plenty of receivers to choose from, though reception might be challenging outside of urban areas.

From what I can see now, the path to an FM turnoff in Switzerland seems even clearer than it was in Norway, where public opinion hasn’t been altogether favorable, and many stations remain analog. In part this is likely due to relative consensus amongst Swiss broadcasters in general, not just major national broadcasters. A significant government subsidy, combined with overall strong support for public broadcasting also help.

Because of these factors, magnified by the country’s small geographic size and high per capita income, Switzerland is an outlier – just like Norway before it. Although the idea of a full digital transition has been floated in other European countries that have DAB+ broadcasting, both large and small, it hasn’t gained traction, often owing to the cost and complexity of sunsetting an established, proven and reliable technology that exhibits few downsides. Moreover, it’s easier to transition a relatively affluent population of 8.4 million to digital radio, than the larger, more economically diverse 66 million of the U.K. or 82 million of Germany.

No, this is not a bellwether of analog radio’s demise, nor an indicator of a digital transition here in the U.S. I suspect as 2024 draws closer we may hear more critical voices in Switzerland, when Swiss citizens realize that millions of their radios will become obsolete – at least for listening to radio from their native land.

Folks in Geneva and other cities and towns along the border will still be able to tune in stations from France, Italy, Austria, Germany and Liechtenstein. That’s something less accessible to Norwegians, who are much more geographically distant from other FM broadcasting countries.

In the meantime, keep an enormous grain of salt on hand for when you see the torrent of clickbaity “Is this the end of FM radio” stories, if and when this news hits the feed of a tech writer on a quota.

The post Switzerland To End FM Broadcasts in 2024 appeared first on Radio Survivor.

When Norway completed the shutdown of its national FM radio signals the tech sites and blogs were all breathless in reporting the news. But, despite the strong currents of digital triumphalism, the way of Norway is not a sign of things to come for analog radio.

As Norway paved the way for the wholesale move to digital radio, other European states have been watching from the sidelines. The UK, in particular, has a well developed DAB digital radio infrastructure, with plenty of stations and decent penetration of receivers–now around 36%. So eyes and ears have been on that much larger nation, where some politicians and regulators have floated the idea of a digital radio transition.

However, just recently the BBC weighed in on the issue, voting soundly in favor of keeping analog FM radio alive “for the foreseeable future.” As the 900 pound gorilla in British broadcasting, it’s unlikely that government regulators would strongly oppose the Beeb’s desire to keep transmitting in glorious analog.

Speaking at a radio conference in Vienna, BBC director of radio Bob Shannon said, “Great progress has been made,” in digital broadcasting, “but switchover now would be premature.” He emphasized that audiences want a choice of broadcast systems, and one of those choices is good old FM.

Though widely reported in the British press, nary a peep of Shannon’s pro-FM comments appeared Stateside. Sure, the internet is global, making these UK stories just a search away. But how many average American readers are trolling the papers across the pond? It’s sort of telling that the U.S. tech press took almost zero note, especially after getting so hot and bothered when an advanced industrialized–but also tiny–country forcibly shut down most of its analog radio signals.

Given that the UK was the next big hope for digital radio to succeed analog, don’t expect that many other countries will be sunsetting FM any time soon. Least of which will be the U.S., where by comparison we barely have digital radio broadcasting.

While HD Radio is digital, it coexists and hangs off of analog FM signals. Moreover, home or portable HD Radio receivers are rare, whereas in the UK you can walk into just about any retailer and buy a digital radio receiver right off the shelf. Such ubiquity is just a pipe dream in the U.S., where the only reason the average listener knows about HD Radio is because of the ads that get run perpetually on commercial radio. Yet if you ask that average listener if they know how, or why, they would listen to HD Radio, you’d likely just get a shrug in response.

More than 90% of the American population still listens to AM/FM radio every month. And while plenty of other options, from satellite radio to podcasting, compete and provide alternatives to radio, the old analog broadcast medium persists. That’s because it works, works well, and reliably.

If there’s any reason to turn off radio, that has more to do with the abysmal programming brought on by the nation’s largest commercial station owners, who are more interested in treating stations like real estate on a Monopoly board than being broadcasters. Turns out, that was a bad bet, but that has nothing to do with radio, and everything to do with reductionist profiteering that saw a cheap buck in consolidation and disinvestment.

Broadcasting in digital doesn’t make crappy programming any better.

So don’t worry. You’ll probably break your FM radio before it becomes obsolete.

The post FM Radio Is Here To Stay in the UK appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Our latest podcast is all about the first, and—to the best of our knowledge—only low-power FM station broadcasting digitally with HD Radio. The episode has stimulated quite a bit of conversation on social media and raised some questions about the relationship between LPFM and HD Radio. Here I’ll try to answer the most common questions and clear up some of the confusion.

The station we profiled is KVCB-LP, a high school station operated by Vacaville Christian Schools in Vacaville, CA. Ralph Martin, the operations director, contacted us months ago to let us know about his experiment in broadcasting in HD Radio. For those who are unfamiliar, HD Radio is a digital broadcasting standard that works on the analog AM and FM dials, allowing stations to add a digital signal that can carry one to three channels of programming.

Because the digital signal is a sideband to the primary analog transmission, it expands the amount of space a station takes up on the dial (a reason why critics oppose the technology in the first place). To mitigate the effect this has on adjacent stations, the digital HD signal can broadcast at no more than 10% of the station’s rated power. So a 10kw station can have an HD signal broadcasting at no more than 1kw.

A LPFM station, then, which is limited to 100 watts, can have an HD signal with no more than 10 watts of power. But, as Martin explained, that isn’t the primary barrier for LPFM stations to broadcast in HD. What he found is that there simply aren’t any LPFM-approved transmitters available for HD.

You see, HD Radio requires a specialized transmitter. It’s not just some kind of add-on, like a signal processor. But HD Radio transmitters are designed for full-power stations, presumably because manufacturers—correctly—presume there is very little market amongst LPFM stations.

As he explains on the podcast, Martin eventually found a LPFM transmitter model that is similar to one used for translator repeater stations, that can have an HD module added to it. Essentially, putting KVCB on air in HD required some hacking, with willing assistance from the manufacturer.

Although KVCB’s HD signal is only 7 watts strong, Martin tells us that the signal is about as robust as the analog signal, often coming in better in places where the station’s analog signal is weak. In addition to the main HD–1 digital signal, which is required to simulcast the station’s primary analog signal, KVCB broadcasts HD–2 and HD–3 channels with alternative programming, with all student-created programming on HD–2, and HD–3 broadcasting school information.

Should LPFMs Go HD?

The question we’ve been hearing since releasing the podcast is: Is HD Radio a wise, or even necessary, investment for LPFM stations? Based upon the scant evidence we have so far, it’s hard to make that case.

Martin told us that one of his motivations for doing the interview is to network with other LPFM stations interested in HD, with the goal of convincing equipment manufacturers to make the necessary transmitters. While my intention is not to oppose his goal, I have to honest in my assessment.

Frankly, it’s even tough to make a strong argument for a full-power station to adopt HD Radio. Home HD Radios are rare. Most HD Radio receivers are in cars, where listeners are often unaware of the fact that they’re listening to a digital signal, as their radios seamlessly shift between analog and digital signals, depending on what’s stronger.

Sure, there are the additional HD–2 and HD–3 channels, but these aren’t easy to scan like analog stations. It takes a few extra seconds for an HD receiver to lock on to the digital signal and then find the HD–2 or 3 channel. Doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but when you’re used to the near instant tuning of analog stations, a few seconds is an eternity. In practice, this means the the driver scanning the dial on her HD-capable car radio will only occasionally stumble upon an HD–2 or HD–3 signal.

Of course, if you know about an HD–2 or HD–3 signal that you want to tune in, you can do that. But, really, how many HD–2 or HD–3 stations do YOU know about? If you have an HD Radio capable radio in your car—and you know it’s HD capable—how often do you seek out HD–2 or HD–3 signals?

So, if HD Radio is a questionable investment for a full-power commercial station, it’s an even dicier proposition for a non-profit, non-commercial LPFM. The big question is: How will HD Radio enhance an LPFM’s service?

Though having one or two additional channels to program is enticing, as it is, plenty of new LPFMs have a hard enough time filling all 168 hours of the broadcast week for their main channel with fresh, live programming. How do they expand to 336 or 504 hours?

An even bigger question is: How many people in your community have HD Radios, and use them within your broadcast radius?

If HD Radio were an inexpensive technology, these questions would still be relevant, but would constitute speed bumps rather than roadblocks. But HD Radio is not cheap. As Martin explained to us, the one transmitter that can be modified for HD costs between $5,000 and $8,000—more than most LPFM transmitters.

Plus, most new LPFMs are already on air. So, going HD would require replacing their current transmitters wholesale.

On top of equipment costs, HD Radio is a patented and licensed technology. Unlike analog FM tech, it’s not free to use. Stations pay a licensing fee to adopt HD Radio channels, and then an annual fee for digital sub channels.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get into this free structure with Ralph Martin in our interview. So I’m not certain on how much a noncommercial LPFM would be expected to pay, given that the annual fee is based on 3% of revenue.

But any additional fee is a burden for many LPFMs, whether it’s the money or the additional paperwork.

As it is, I can’t advocate for your average LPFM to adopt HD Radio technology. For most stations, I simply can’t see how it would enhance their local service enough to justify the additional cost and complication.

That said, if you’ve got the money and the time to mess around with it, I can’t make a strong argument that it’s an utter waste. Rather, it’s best considered an experiment, in that the results and impact are unknown. It may be that listeners in your community are ready to take advantage of an HD signal and any sub channels. But that’s a question only the broadcaster can answer.

If you’re interested in learning more, you’re invited to reach out to Ralph Martin at KVCB.

What About These LPFM HD-2s I Hear About?

It’s not uncommon for commercial and non-commercial stations that use HD Radio to rent or lend out their HD–2 and HD–3 signals to other broadcasters. As we’ve reported, in some cases an HD–2 signal on another station has been offered up as a consolation prize to college stations that had their licenses sold, making them otherwise internet-only.

In other cases there are LPFMs or small community stations that also broadcast on a larger station’s HD2 channel in order to reach a somewhat wider audience. A more common use is to feed a translator repeater station that extends the station’s reach.

As Michelle Bradley of REC Networks informed me, it’s legal for LPFMs to own and operate up to two translator stations, but those repeaters are limited in how far away they can be sited; generally between 10 and 20 miles away, and the repeater must be fed by the LPFM’s over-the-air signal. But if a full-powered station’s HD–2 channel is used to feed the translator the repeater doesn’t have to be limited to the low-powered station’s broadcast area–it only has to be within reach of the broadcast area of its higher-powered host.

But it’s important not to confuse a LPFM that is rebroadcast on a larger station’s HD–2 as the same as the LPFM having a HD Radio broadcast itself. It’s more like an AM station that gets onto the FM dial by leasing some HD–2 space on an FM station. It has nothing to do with a LPFM actually getting an HD Radio transmitter and broadcasting in HD.

Isn’t HD the Future?

In our interview Martin tells us that one of the reasons he looked into HD Radio is to sort of future proof the station, in the eventuality that it becomes the radio broadcast standard in the U.S., in the same way that digital broadcasting replaced analog on television in 2009. Though not impossible, a digital radio transition is not likely in the near future.

For perspective, note that the digital television transition required an act of Congress, paired with a subsidy so that Americans could buy reduced price converter boxes for their analog TVs. Moreover, digital TV offered a very obvious and visible upgrade, by supporting a high definition picture with four times the resolution of analog broadcast.

While the “HD” in HD Radio implies that it’s somehow “high definition,” the same quality upgrade doesn’t quite apply. Digital HD Radio signals are not susceptible to noise and interference like analog signals, but the quality difference between a HD Radio signal and good analog reception is minor in most cases. The addition of more channels per stations qualifies as an upgrade of sorts, although as someone who regularly surfs the HD–2 and HD–3 signals, it doesn’t seem like most broadcasters have figured out any profitable purpose for them.

HD Radio was sold to the FCC based upon its ability to work alongside analog signals, to supplement, rather than replace. It seems as though there was not, and is not, much of an appetite to transition the country to an all-new radio standard, obsoleting millions of receivers in the process.

I suspect it would require a similar act of Congress to transition the nation to digital radio, and I frankly don’t see that happening. Mostly because I don’t see the broadcast industry lining up in support, seeing little return on investment for the massive infrastructure upgrade. Plus, there are millions more radios out there than televisions, with the most valuable ones (from a broadcaster’s standpoint) installed in cars, where they are less likely to be upgraded. Instead, a driver with a newly obsolete radio would probably just switch to her smartphone.

Therefore, I don’t see HD Radio as a strategy for future-proofing. Even in the unlikely event of a digital radio transition, stations will get years—if not a decade—of notice.

LPFM + HD: A Valuable Experiment

I’m grateful to Ralph Martin and KVCB-LP for experimenting with HD Radio and low-power FM. We’ve always relied on the tinkerers and experimenters to push radio forward.

Frankly, I was surprised to learn from him that KVCB’s HD signal is nearly as strong as its analog signal, even at 7% of the power. It goes to show that we can’t necessarily generalize based upon the performance of a 10 kilowatt transmission to a 100 watt transmission; not everything is linear.

Even if HD doesn’t gain traction in LPFM, Martin and KVCB have contributed useful findings to our knowledge of the medium, and have valuable experience and tips to share for any stations that want to try out HD.

The post What’s the Deal with LPFM and HD Radio? appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Norway will turn off national FM broadcasts on January 11. However, about 200 local FM stations will continue to broadcast for at least another five years, as we reported last year when the story first hit the international press. That crucial detail was missing from international coverage then, and it continues to be overlooked now.

In fact, only three broadcasters will be shutting down their FM signals: NRK, P4 and Radio Norge. NRK is the the Norwegian government broadcaster, P4 is the nation’s largest commercial station group, and Radio Norge is another national commercial music station. What these broadcasters have in common is that they’re all national in scope, with centralized broadcast facilities strategically located throughout the country of 5 million people. Both P4 and Radio Norge lobbied hard for the FM transition, primarily because transitioning to digital DAB broadcasts represents savings for them.

65% of Norwegians oppose the FM shutdown, according a survey conducted last summer by the Dagbladet newspaper. Given that listeners would prefer to hang on to their FM receivers, local broadcasters are optimistic that will turn into an advantage for them, since they’ll still be heard on good old fashioned analog radio. According to the Norwegian Local Radio Federation, the group’s chairman said that local radio will see a “new renaissance” in 2017.

The national stations’ shutdown will happen region-by-region beginning with Nordland on January 11, with other regions following over the course of the year.

Besides the simple loss of broadcasts on FM, one of the biggest concerns with the shutoff is that citizens will lose access to important emergency information. This is particularly relevant for motorists, who may not be able to tap into other media while on the road. There are an estimated 2 million cars in Norway that do not have DAB radios, and a DAB adapter for a car radio costs the equivalent of about $175 US, an added expense not every motorist is ready to make.

Countries with relatively established digital radio broadcast systems, like the UK, certainly will be watching Norway’s experiment, since many of their national FM broadcasting systems resemble Norway’s. However, as I observed last year, it will still be difficult to generalize from Norway’s experience because the country is an outlier due to the relatively small size and consolidated structure of its national FM broadcast facilities.

In particular, Norway, with fewer than 300 stations, is difficult to compare to the U.S., which has more than 7,000. Moreover, even though ownership of commercial radio in the States is quite consolidated, broadcast facilities are not combined on the scale that they are in Norway. Plus, the U.S. does not have a well-developed digital radio service, like Norway’s DAB, which has sufficient penetration of receivers such that it could plausibly replace FM. The difference between the two countries is truly night and day.

So, yes, Norway is turning off a segment of its FM broadcasts in favor of digital broadcasting. But don’t get suckered by the digital triumphalist argument that this is the first nail in the coffin for analog radio. Even in Norway a complete nationwide shutdown is years away, and is not yet guaranteed. Everywhere else in the world analog FM broadcasts continue, with billions of people tuning in every day, while even older services like AM and longwave solider on. When push comes to shove listeners aren’t ready to give up their radios, and so far no company or broadcaster has offered that one killer technology that gives them any incentive to do so.

The post Norway to Shutter Nat’l FM Broadcasts, 200 Local Stations to Remain appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Back in April of last year news headlines across tech and news sites screamed that Norway was about to turn off all FM transmitters. The reality, of course, is a bit more complex–only 23 stations in the three biggest cities will turn off their analog signals in 2017, while some 200 FM stations outside this area have a longer lease on life. At the same time there were rumblings that Sweden was also mulling its own analog to digital transition.

However, it looks like the Swedes are going to wait and watch how it goes with its Nordic neighbor’s FM switch-off before moving forward with any plan of its own. Earlier this month the Swedish parliament officially ended any digital radio transition, following the recommendation of the Auditor General. Note that breathless headlines (in English) have not followed that bit of news.

The plan in Norway is eventually to move all FM broadcasters to what is known as DAB, a digital radio broadcast system that uses a different set of frequencies than analog radio. DAB broadcasts have been available in 30 countries beginning in 2001, with Europe home to the most stations. Still, Norway likely will remain an outlier when it begins its digital transition next year. Several other countries, including Germany, France and the UK, have entertained proposals to transition fully from FM to DAB, but these plans are also up in the air.

Nevertheless, this hesitancy to sunset analog radio doesn’t mean that DAB digital radio is dead on arrival. As John Anderson reports, digital radio adoption in Europe continues to grow, according to the European Broadcasting Union. Denmark, Norway, Switzerland and the UK lead the way.

While these top countries are just cresting a 50% adoption rate amongst radio listeners, this far outpaces digital radio in the US, where we are saddled with the very different HD Radio system that squeezes digital signals onto the analog dial. As a result a Norwegian-style analog radio turn-off appears far away. Exhibit A is that last fall the FCC chose not to implement proposals to “revitalize” the AM dial by authorizing all-digital broadcasts in that band. Chance missed.

I have no particular grudge against digital radio, though I do wish the US had implemented the technically superior DAB system instead of HD Radio. But I continue to be an advocate of analog broadcasting because it is simple, robust, proven and has yet to be actually surpassed by digital in terms of quality or reach. There may come a day when digital broadcast or mobile internet technologies are ready to offer the kind of nearly infallible service–especially in times of emergency or disaster–that analog radio has for nearly 100 years. But until then, I vote for analog.

The post Sweden Nixes FM Shut-Off appeared first on Radio Survivor.

As an experiment of sorts, I decided to shoot my first video blog (or “vlog”) for Radio Survivor. I’ve been wanting to share a bandscan of all the HD Radio stations in Portland, OR, where I live, and I finally got down to it.

Although I’m a critic of HD Radio, I do think it’s interesting to explore the HD-2, 3, and 4 signals, which offer some interesting alternatives and seem to change up fairly often. I thought this might be of interest to many of you who have never used or heard an HD Radio receiver, except for maybe one that’s in a car, which isn’t actually an ideal place to scan and find all the subchannels.

Yes, I know I’m a little out-of-focus. It wasn’t obvious until after I started editing, and I decided that perfect was the enemy of done. Better focus can wait for VLOG #2.

Let me know what you think in the comments–especially if you think there should be a #2.

The post VLOG #1: Portland HD Radio Bandscan appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Apple held its perennial fall unveiling today, and amongst the updated products on display were a new, bigger iPad Pro and a fresh Apple TV. Of course, you can listen to internet radio on an iPad, though I don’t see how the iPad Pro will be any better for that application than any other model.

I am a little intrigued by the new Apple TV, which is a product that has sorely needed a refresh for a while. Though I’m now a Chromecast and Amazon Fire TV user (and I owe you a review of Fire TV radio apps), before getting those devices I considered Apple TV several times, but was put off by how infrequently Apple updates it, apparently treating it as a “hobby” rather than an important product.

Apple has provided a pretty nice ecosystem for listening to internet radio and podcasts via iTunes on MacBooks and iMacs for quite some time. Apple TV has shipped with the Radio app pretty much since the beginning of the product line, which brings in streaming stations in addition to Apple’s own iTunes Radio. It also features a dedicated podcasts app.

Frustratingly for current Apple TV owners, up to now there has been no direct access to Beats 1 Radio. The new version of this set-top device adds Apple Music, which includes Beats 1. Though I haven’t seen the new device yet, I presume and hope that Apple retains the Radio app, too. At the same time, a new App Store means that third-party radio apps should become available, potentially expanding the range of audio entertainment options.

At a starting price of $149, the new Apple TV is a much pricier option for living room internet radio compared to comparable competitors like Roku. Of course, Apple TV is much more than radio (as all these set-top devices are), so the added gaming and streaming video features are likely the principal selling points, along with the tight integration with other Apple devices and services, like Apple Music.

I don’t think I’ll be buying a new Apple TV, but I’d be glad to take it for a test ride and review if one somehow crosses my path.

John Anderson on DTS/iBiquity Deal

HD Radio historian and expert John Anderson has weighed in on DTS’s acquisition of iBiquity last week. He observes that the sale likely saved iBiquity from “a bailout (presumably from broadcasters) or trusteeship.”

He also notes that most of the research and development on HD Radio has come from broadcasters, which leads him to wonder, “Will these and other development-partners continue to throw resources into a system now held by a non-broadcast company with its own Wall Street presence?”

Anderson doesn’t foresee any major changes in the near term, since iBiquity is retaining its current corporate structure, though he does spell out some best and worst-case scenarios. I recommending checking out his post.

HD Radio Adoption Rate Is Like Color TV?

Speaking of HD Radio, Radio Magazine talked with the recently retired SVP of engineering for CBS Radio, Glynn Walden, who has been a long-time advocate of that technology. He compared the slow adoption of that technology to that of the adoption rates of FM radio in the 1950s and color TV in the 1960s, which each took well more than a decade to catch on. It’s an interesting parallel, though I also think that technologies are adopted a much more rapid rate now, more than fifty years after color TV’s debut.

Comparing HD to FM is like comparing touch-tone dialing to smartphones. Touch tone was introduced in 1963 and it wasn’t widely used until the breakup of Ma Bell in the 1980s. Whereas the first modern smartphone (Palm Treo 650) was arguably introduced in 2004, leading to 50% adoption rate just a decade later.

Consumers generally buy, upgrade and replace their technology more often than they did fifty years ago, in part because it’s all much cheaper in real dollars than it was then. HD Radio hasn’t been adopted as quickly as smartphones because it doesn’t offer significant upgrades over regular broadcast–especially on FM–and those upgrades, like additional channels, are not as easy to access because of the compromises of squeezing HD into the existing analog radio bands.

As smartphones show, a new consumer technology platform really shouldn’t take more than a decade to find wide adoption. That seemed like a reasonable span of time in the 1960s, or even the 1980s. But in the post-DVD era (at that time the most quickly adopted consumer electronics platform in history) HD Radio’s time to adoption is glacial and more indicative of fundamental flaws than anything else.

The post Digital Watch: Is the New Apple TV Your Next Internet Radio? Is HD Radio Adoption Like Color TV’s 50 Years Ago? appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Today iBiquity, the parent company behind HD Radio technology, was acquired by DTS, which is best known for creating multi-channel digital cinema sound systems. DTS is a public traded company, while the majority owners of privately held iBiquity are banks and private equity firms.

The primary reason for the $172 million deal appears to be two-fold. First, it places iBiquity in the hands of a company that specializes in digital audio. Second, DTS creates products for automotive integration. iBiquity CEO Bob Struble told Radio World that, “it’s a complementary business overlap.”

While HD radio is typically thought of as an audio product, the bigger reason why iBiquity is attractive to DTS is the technology’s ability to transmit traffic and weather data to cars over terrestrial broadcast stations’ HD signal. While mobile HD Radio reception can vary wildly with changes in terrain and a car’s position, data transmission doesn’t require constant reception. Access to this technology could give DTS an edge in creating in-dash information systems that are independent of cellular data and internet services.

Of course, this has nothing to do with actual radio as an audio medium. But as it has evolved HD Radio is less and less about actual radio, since receivers are mostly in cars and often spotty reception makes it a mediocre-at-best listening experience. My guess is that DTS clearly understands this, and so we can expect to see much more rapid development of the non-radio side of HD Radio.

NPR Podcasts Celebrate 10th Birthday

Ten years ago Apple added podcasts to its nearly-ubiquitous iTunes software, helping to push the nascent medium into the mainstream. In August of 2005 National Public Radio gave it another shove, when NPR podcasts made its debut, with a whopping 174 programs from the network and affiliate stations. Like now, most of those programs were podcast versions of broadcast programs, yet at the time it was an audacious leap into a new, untested medium.

In a blog post, NPR’s GM of sponsorship Bryan Moffett tells writer Caitlin Sanders how he remembers being pitched on podcasting by the team behind the Odeo podcasting platform, including Evan Williams, Noah Glass, Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone. Now they are better known for one of the most famous “pivots” in dot-com history, when they ditched podcasting for 140 character social messaging.

Today NPR is widely considered one of the strongest brands in podcasting, even if many of the top public radio podcasts actually come from member stations, the Public Radio Exchange or independent producers. That early bet on podcasting surely paid off for public radio in general, as podcasting has popularized the well-honed “NPR sound,” in turn providing new career avenues for public radio professionals at podcasting start-ups like Midroll Media (my employer) and Alex Blumberg’s Gimlet or at companies like Audible, Buzzfeed, and Slate, which have all made significant podcasting investments this year.

The challenge for NPR is that listeners spoiled by the bounty of audio programming now available are demanding more than just on-demand versions of syndicated programs (though, they still want those, too). While the network saw nearly immediate success with the debut of Invisibilia earlier this year, the key will be replicating the formula of launching born-digital shows that are broadcast-friendly, but don’t require the famously long gestation period most previous new NPR shows have required.

Still, I think all podcast fans owe NPR their thanks for its role in feeding this young medium.

The post Digital Watch: HD Radio Parent Is Acquired; NPR Podcasts Turn 10 appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Houston Public Media announced yesterday that it plans to sell off its KUHA 91.7 FM license (aka Classical 91.7) and will move its classical music programming to HD radio (via 88.7 FM HD2). Radio Survivor readers may recall that the license for 91.7 FM was previously held by Rice University and was the former home to college radio station KTRU-FM. Back in 2010 it was announced that the license would be sold to University of Houston (which runs Houston Public Media), which planned to use 91.7 FM in order to divide its talk and classical public radio programming across two frequencies.

Despite high profile protests, legal filings, and petitions to the FCC, the $9.5 million deal went through in April, 2011, allowing Houston Public Media to have a dedicated classical station.

Rice’s student radio station KTRU has continued as an online/ 90.1 FM HD2 station. Earlier this year, Rice University was also awarded a construction permit in order to build a new low power FM (LPFM) radio station, which KTRU hopes to get on the air by the end of the year on 96.1 FM. According to an announcement on the KTRU website in February, 2015, “KTRU, Rice University’s student-run radio station, will use this permit to broadcast a signal from atop Rice Stadium, at 96.1 MHz. The construction of the transmitter is being funded from the proceeds of the 91.7 sale in 2010.”

In recent years there were rumblings that University of Houston’s classical station KUHA was struggling. We reported back in 2013 that local hosts were eliminated and replaced with syndicated programming.

According to a post by Houston Public Media,

General Manager Lisa Shumate told University of Houston officials she wants to sell the frequency and transmitter for the station. No layoffs are planned. Since the classical music station is licensed to the University of Houston, the UH Board of Regents has final say over any changes. Full-time classical programming will be available on 88.7 HD 2, online streaming at Houstonpublicmedia.org, free applications like iHeartRadio and TuneIn, and via television at TV 8.5.

‘We are making this change in recognition of the growing popularity, superior broadcast quality and greater efficiency of digital broadcasting,’ Shumate said in a statement. ‘Placing our focus on HD radio and digital streaming for our classical music programming enables us to make the best use of technology and resources to continue providing the music and arts and culture content that our listeners enjoy.’

The University of Houston Administrative and Finance Committee made the recommendation to the full board of regents, which is expected to approve the plan during its meeting on Thursday.

KUHA 91.7 FM was purchased from Rice University for $9.5 million in 2010. Most of the classical music and arts programming produced by Houston Public Media moved to the new station, along with live broadcasts with the Houston Symphony, the Houston Grand Opera and local performing artists and groups. KUHF then adopted a 24-hour all news and information format.”

This has to be bittersweet news for KTRU fans and supporters who fought so hard to try to keep the license only to see it up for sale 5 years later. There’s no word yet on if there are any interested buyers for the 50,000 watt license.

Other College Radio Headlines

U.S. Court of Appeals Rejects IBS’ Challenges to Copyright Royalty Board Webcasting Rates (Radio Survivor)

The skinny on the recent decision over royalty rates for student stations that webcast

Radio Survivor Podcast #11: National Radio Day, Princeton Review Rankings, and More (Radio Survivor)

In this week’s podcast I go into further detail about the U.S. Court of Appeals decision regarding copyright royalty rates for student webcasters. I also fully dissect the recent Princeton Review list of the “best” (really “most popular”) college radio stations, walking listeners through the survey methodology, explaining what the list really means.

Radio Punks: The Student Radio Story Documentary Covers History of Student Radio in New Zealand

I would love to see this documentary. Stuff describes it as a “fascinating chunk of New Zealand social history,” which shows how vital pre-Internet student media was, saying, “It’s hard to realise now – in these electronically-connected days – that student newspapers and student radio were the only links available to the young.” View some highlights from the documentary here and read another review here. Also take a look at another New Zealand station’s website, where there is a 40 part audio documentary about bFM’s station history!

New Documentary Looks at Influential College Radio Hip Hop Show (The Chicago Defender)

According to the Chicago Defender, the new film Stretch & Bobbito: Radio That Changed Lives “looks at the eight years the two DJs spent on the airwaves at WKCR 89.9 FM, or 89 Tec 9 as some fans may remember. The show came to earn a special place in hip-hop history…”

Radio Host will Talk about Her Student Days (Sunderland Echo)

Former student radio DJ (and recent graduate) in the UK spoke about her transition to commercial radio

CBI Begins to Announce Finalists for its Student Production Awards

Check back on the CBI website for updates. Winners will be announced at CBI’s convention in October.

Remembering Pump up the Volume: Pirate radio as Inspiration for Future College Radio DJs and Podcasters (A.V. Club)

A.V. Club’s loving ode to the classic pirate radio flick Pump up the Volume is full of great college radio anecdotes as well as reflections on how a teen pirate radio DJ is akin to today’s podcaster.

Big Band Radio Show Moves to College Radio Station (Tulsa World)

Interestingly, the Tulsa Community College station, The Grid, had to make some adjustments as its DJs don’t use records or CDs.

Behind the Scenes at Rat and Roach-Infested WBAR

This short video from earlier this year really gets at the sad conditions at some college radio stations, with anecdotes about vermin and roaches in WBAR‘s basement digs. I visited the station in 2009 and remember hearing similar stories even back then! It’s unfortunate, as WBAR is an extremely popular student activity at Barnard College.

We cover the culture of college radio every Friday in our College Radio Watch feature. If you have college radio news to share, please drop us a note at EDITORS at RADIOSURVIVOR dot COM.

The post College Radio Watch: University of Houston to Sell Former KTRU Frequency + More News appeared first on Radio Survivor.

On Tuesday AT&T, the nation’s second largest wireless carrier, announced that it is activating the FM radio chips on Android smartphones subscribed to its service. Beginning in 2016, subscribers buying new compatible phones will be able to use the free NextRadio app to listen to both terrestrial broadcasts and those stations’ internet streams.

Sprint, the fourth largest carrier, was the first US carrier to support FM in smartphones, beginning in 2013. Still missing from the FM team are the country’s number one and number three carriers, Verizon and T-Mobile.

Since most Android smartphone manufacturers include an FM receiver chip in their devices by default, the issues has always been whether or not the carrier that sells the phone specifies it should be activated. That means that most Android smartphone users in the US have had FM radios on their phones that are rendered useless by their service provider.

By comparison, the small percentage of Americans who buy unlocked Android phones rather than buying discounted ones that are tied to their wireless contract, have mostly been able to use the radios in their devices. And in Europe, where carrier-tied phones are much less common, FM radios have been turned on by default for years.

The US wireless carriers’ refusal to activate the FM radios in smartphones has always been kind of a mystery, since the cost to the carriers is next to nothing. The only conceivable reason why the carriers keep the radios turned off is because that forces customers to use wireless data to listen to streaming radio, which is something they can charge for.

I’ve had smartphones with FM radios in them and have always been a fan not only because the radio doesn’t use any expensive data, but it also uses a lot less battery power than keeping a constant internet audio stream going. It also means when traveling I don’t need to bring a separate radio. When I’ve been overseas and without a local data plan I can still get some local information and entertainment, for free.

It’s not yet known what caused AT&T to have a change of heart. The 2013 deal between Emmis Communication–the company behind NextRadio–and Sprint required the radio company to give $15 million a year in advertising industry to the carrier, along with a 30% share of any ad revenue generated by the NextRadio app. It wouldn’t be surprising if AT&T got a similar deal. AT&T also likely wants to head off any FCC or Congressional mandates regarding the FM chip, even though FCC Chairman Wheeler has said he prefers the wireless and radio industries to work it out themselves. Perhaps, then, the Commission helped to grease the skids a little.

iPhone users, however, are still out of luck, no matter which carrier they use. Although long rumored, there is no evidence or acknowledgement that Apple has ever included

The post Digital Watch: AT&T Android Phones Get FM in 2016 appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Update: the show archive is live.

I’ll be a guest on WAMU-FM’s Kojo Nnamdi Show today at noon Eastern Time for a discussion about the future of digital radio entitled “Radio After FM.” This is part of the show’s “Tech Tuesday” series. WAMU is the public radio station serving the Washington, D.C. area.

Scheduled to join me are Doug Brake, Telecommunications Policy Analyst with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and Paul Brenner, President of NextRadio. It should be a lively conversation.

You can listen live to WAMU’s internet stream, or the archive will be available for on-demand listening later.

The post Radio Survivor’s Paul Riismandel on WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi Show Today appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Network neutrality is in effect, as of last Friday, June 12. That’s despite a request by major ISPs for the DC Circuit Court to put the FCC’s Open Internet Order on hold until their challenges get their day in court. Not unexpectedly, the DC Circuit denied that motion.

Effectively, the Court wasn’t impressed with the ISPs’ exhortation that they would suffer irreparable harm if the rules took effect, and that there was nothing prima facie defective with the FCC’s rules. That isn’t necessarily a strong indicator that the Open Internet rules will have an easy victory, though it does offer a glimmer of hope for the future of net neutrality.

Public Knowledge’s Harold Feld observes that the decision has some political value with regard to a Congressional Republican-led effort to write alternative open internet legislation that would end the Title II regulation of internet service as a utility, while attempting to still preserve some semblance of network neutrality. If the ISPs had won a stay against the FCC’s rules, that would have given Republicans more leverage to bring Democrats to their side to craft a bill that might get the president’s signature, under the reasoning that weaker a net neutrality law is better than no rules at all. However, now the Republicans will have to either make their bill even more attractive to Democrats, or just throw caution to the wind, make it a political play, and draft something far more partisan that is also more likely to get a veto, if it even passes.

Unless Congressional Republicans are able to pass their own net neutrality bill or successfully squeeze a rider killing Title II protections into a bill the president can’t afford to veto (like this one), challenges to the FCC’s Open Internet Order probably will start being heard in court sometime early next year. In the meantime the ISPs claims that real net neutrality protections will seriously undermine their businesses will be put to the test.

For internet radio listeners it means that wired and mobile broadband internet providers are prohibited from throttling or otherwise inhibiting your ability to access any particular station or service. If it happens, you have the ability to file a complaint with the FCC. At the moment this hasn’t been much of an issue for internet radio services, though it has been an issue with Netflix and video services in the recent past. But as more radio and music platforms start to offer high fidelity and higher-bandwidth services, it’s good to know that the risk of throttling or blocking is now lower.

One question that remains for me is the status of T-Mobile’s “Music Freedom.” This service allows T-Mobile customers to stream selected internet radio and music services without it counting against their data plans. While that sounds like a gift to users, the problem is that not every station or service gets this gift. In fact, as I argued last year, it looks a heck of a lot like discrimination, or an “internet fast lane,” something that should be prohibited under the Open Internet Order.

I’m not even sure the service would be legit if all music services and internet radio stations were given a free pass. That’s because music and radio would still be prioritized over all other traffic, whether its videos or app downloads.

These are the early days of net neutrality, yet. I’ll be watching to see how things pan out.

Apple Music To Serve Fewer Bits than Competitors

As a slight follow-up to my look at Apple Music last week, there has been some investigation into the bitrate and quality that the service will be serving up. Apparently it will stream music at 256 kbps, which is a lower bitrate than the paid subscription levels of its competitors, and also lower than the Beats Music service that Apple Music subsumes, all of which deliver 320 kbps, though in different codecs, like MP3 and Ogg Vorbis.

Apple has not confirmed what codec it will use, though I would be very surprised if it doesn’t use AAC, since it’s the standard of the iTunes store. However, a tangle of licensing contracts with labels and mismatches between the catalogs of tracks already in iTunes and Beats might make it difficult for Apple to unify a single codec standard.

As I’ve noted, because AAC is a more more modern efficient codec than MP3, I think 256 kbps in AAC is at least equivalent to 320 kbps MP3, if not actually better sounding. Still, 320 kbps AAC should still be just a little better, and provide some additional headroom to eek out more quality.

That said, most iTunes store customers seem perfectly happy with 256kbps files. I’ll admit that I’m hard pressed to hear any difference between iTunes 256kbps AAC files and those coming from any other paid streaming or download service, whether it’s Amazon or Google Play, Spotify or Rdio. Uncompressed Deezer Elite and TIDAL, however, are superior to my ears.

Of course, the proof will be in the listening. We have to wait until June 30 for that to begin.

Radio Survivor, Now in Podcast Form

Though we’re trying to make it hard for you to miss, I would be remiss not to note that we at Radio Survivor have finally launched our own podcast. We’ll certainly be covering issues important to digital and internet radio, including podcasting.

Our first episode has a feature on the Free Music Archive, which provides a valuable service to both musicians who want their music to be heard and shared, and to podcasters and internet stations looking for music unencumbered by high licensing or royalty rates.

We released episode #2 yesterday, where I discuss the DC Circuit’s net neutrality decision and we talk with Sabrina Roach of Brown Paper Tickets about her work supporting low-power FM in the Seattle area:

Please take a listen, then subscribe and rate the show at iTunes. Or subscribe with your favorite podcast listening app using our RSS feed.

The post Digital Watch: Net Neutrality In Effect; Apple Music Delivers Fewer Bits appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Here are the first ten licensees (courtesy of Ofcom’s press release):

• Angel Radio, bringing Angel Xtra, Express FM, JAMM Radio, Mango Vibe, The Flash and Triple Hits to Portsmouth.
• BFBS Aldershot, bringing BFBS Aldershot, BFBS Radio, BFBS Gurkha, Radio Frimley Park, Radio Woking and The Breeze to Aldershot.
• Brighton & Hove Radio, bringing Juice 107.2, Radio Reverb, Smile Sussex, Totallyradio, Resonance and Brighton City Student Radio to Brighton & Hove.
• Celador Radio , bringing Hub Radio, BFBS Gurkha, Ujima Radio, BSR 103.4fm, BCfm 93.2, Somer Valley Radio, The Breeze and BFBS Radio to Bristol.
• Future Digital Norfolk, bringing Future Radio, Norwich 99.9, The Music Machine, Solar Radio, Jazz FM, Totallyradio and Future Plus to Norfolk.
• Niocast Digital, bringing Panjab Radio, Revolution 96.2, Manchester Business Radio, The Steve Penk Wind-Up Channel, Chris Country and Gaydio to Manchester.
• Switch Radio, bringing Switch Radio, Scratch Radio, Gaydio, Oak FM and Touch FM to Birmingham.
• Scrimshaws Information Directories, bringing Your Radio, Celtic Music Radio, Pulse FM and Go Radio to Glasgow.
• U.DAB, bringing Resonance, London Greek Radio, Rinse FM, NuSound Radio, Reprezent, Solar Radio and Crackers Radio to London.
• UKRD, bringing Star Radio, Gaydio, Chris Country, Core Radio and Cambridge 105 to Cambridge.

All told, 60 applicants will win access to these trials. These ten winners above will receive license windows lasting nine months. They’ve got 12 weeks from the date of the award to hook up to the small scale DAB system and show their stuff.

The post UK announces 1st winners for “small scale” digital radio trials appeared first on Radio Survivor.

I received some constructive feedback on my post arguing that internet radio should retire MP3 streaming.

Twitter user Mark Mollineaux pointed out that browser-compatibility is a consideration:

@RadioSurvivor MP3 has by far the best cross-browser compatibility. I'd prefer an open standard like ogg, but many browser's won't play it–

— Mark Mollineaux (@bufordsharkley) May 11, 2015

This is important because having in-browser support for your stream’s codec means that the listener doesn’t have to download or install any kind of player app or plug-in. Even though plug-ins like Flash often seem ubiquitous, there are schools and work-places that prohibit adding any plug-ins. So, if your station’s stream requires one, then you won’t reach listeners in these places.

HTML5Test.com lets you compare browser feature sets, so I assembled a comparison of all major web browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari) for their audio codec support. It turns out that both MP3 and AAC are supported by the most recent versions of all of them. Only users of much older versions, like Internet Explorer 8 (the current version is 11) are out of luck. This means that a station can safely switch over its primary stream to AAC stream with very little risk.

Nathan Moore, General Manager at WTJU-FM, let me know that his station uses the open source and royalty-free Ogg Opus codec as its streaming default. Opus can be seen as a more modern descendent of the Ogg Vorbis codec which was developed to provide an alternative to MP3 that wasn’t restricted by royalty fees.

I tuned in to WTJU’s 256kbps streams and found that they sound very good. The principal knock against Opus is that it is much less widely supported than AAC or MP3. Amongst major desktop browsers Chrome, Firefox and Opera will all play Opus streams, but the default browsers for Windows and MacOS, Internet Explorer and Safari, will not. Neither Android nor iOS support Opus natively, either. That said, Opus is the newest audio codec–version 1.0 was released in 2012.

The point still remains that there are very good alternatives to MP3 that provide superior quality at lower bitrates, and which are widely supported enough that MP3 can be made secondary, or even abandoned altogether.

The post Retiring MP3 Streaming – A Follow-Up appeared first on Radio Survivor.

I have been listening to computer-based digital music for nearly two decades now. This includes streaming internet radio as well as music files like MP3s. It’s amazing to recall my first efforts to play then-new MP2 and MP3 format files I downloaded, very slowly, over my 56kbps dial-up connection, around 1996 or ’97. In fact, my computer at the time (a first-generation Pentium class PC) couldn’t even handle the computational overhead needed to play back an MP3 file smoothly.

These compressed files were fascinating to me because they represented the first practical way to distribute something that resembled high fidelity audio files over the internet. Sure, Real Audio and Windows Media Audio were also early, and successful, methods for streaming audio to listeners who were mostly accessing the ’net at glacial dial-up speeds. But over a modem their sound quality was closer to shortwave or AM than FM–good for talk, but not so great for music.

MP3, like RealAudio and Windows Media Audio, belong to a class of audio compression formats (a/k/a “codecs”) known as “lossy.” That means audio information is discarded when the file or stream is created. The neat thing about lossy codecs is that they’re clever about what info they throw away. The strategy is to get rid of frequencies and information that are less likely to be heard or important to the overall intelligibility of the audio. In general, they work remarkably, but not perfectly. While some argue that CDs are also imperfect, pretty much every file encoded with a lossy codec, like MP3, is inferior to the CD original, though the differences range from nearly imperceptible to glaringly obvious.

Now with both home and mobile broadband, downloading MP3 files is trivial, requiring mere minutes to get a whole albums’ worth of music, rather than the hour or two it took over dial-up. Furthermore, there are much superior alternatives. That’s why I’m ready to bid the MP3 farewell.

The Right Tech at the Right Time, but that Time Has Passed

Don’t get me wrong, I have very warm feelings for the MP3 format. The eventual standardization on MP3 helped make internet radio nearly ubiquitous, especially by unchaining listeners from having to install two or three different proprietary players–I’m looking at you Real Player and Windows Media Player–in order to hear different stations. For broadcasters, MP3 still keeps bandwidth bills under control.

Moreover, podcasting owes its very existence to MP3, which still reigns as the medium’s default format, even if there are plenty of podcasters who pine away for something better.

The reasons for MP3’s popularity are also the reasons why it’s ready for retirement. MP3 was a brilliant solution at just the right time. At the turn of the century the format brought the ability to store and share a full CD’s worth of music in about 1/10 the space (at 128 kbps) at the same time that computers became powerful enough to play these files effortlessly and hard drives became big enough–holding as much 100 GB, or 1,500 CDs in MP3–to amass a sizable music collection. Though far from sonically perfect, MP3 was better than anything else you would find online.

Now, even MP3s have improved over the last fifteen years as the compression and playback software have gotten better. Also, the distribution of music has moved to higher bitrates (256 kbps – 320 kbps) that deliver substantial sonic benefits while maintaining bandwidth efficiency.

At the same MP3s have been outclassed by newer compression technologies–like AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) and Ogg Vorbis. While there is a strong case for internet radio to continue using lossy codecs, MP3 is no longer the best choice.

When it comes to selling music downloads, I also think that it’s unnecessary to use MP3s. Even other lossy compression formats (including AAC) no increasingly less necessary. At the very least they should be only one of many available options. I’ll take up this aspect in a follow-up post.

MP3 No Longer Needed for Internet Radio

Using lossy compression for streaming music and internet radio is still both reasonable and practical because there are good reasons for both broadcasters and listeners to want or need to conserve bandwidth. For broadcasters, it costs money to serve each listener, and so the difference between delivering 128 kbps and 1 mbps per stream can add up quickly when we’re talking about thousands of listeners.

Listeners on mobile may only be able to receive so much bandwidth, and they’re much more likely to be paying for every megabyte, or have a monthly quota. At home the case for lossy compression is less clear-cut, especially when people routinely watch streaming video that consumes several times the bandwidth. But I’m also realistic, recognizing that users listening through tinny PC speakers or cheap earbuds have little for full CD quality. Plus, a home with a few teenagers in it can quickly test the bandwidth limits of your cable modem service.

But not needing full CD quality is not an argument for MP3. Alternative formats like AAC or the open source Ogg Vorbis deliver a better experience at equivalent bitrates. Importantly for mobile users, variants of AAC provide surprisingly good fidelity over very restricted bandwidth conditions where MP3 streams sound pretty atrocious.

For the most part, internet radio listeners are ready to migrate away from MP3, too. Most desktop player apps–like iTunes or WinAmp–handle formats like AAC. Plus, many desktop listeners use embedded web players that can handle other formats, too. So do the Android and iOS mobile operating systems, meaning some 96% of mobile users in the US are ready for a switch.

Pretty much the only listeners not ready for the switch are those using older dedicated internet radios that either don’t have the capability to use other formats, or that don’t support the protocols used to deliver them. That’s the problem with the BBC’s recent near-wholesale transition away from MP3, which has left some internet radio users less well served. However, from both a cost and technical standpoint, in most cases it’s not a big deal to leave a legacy MP3 stream running.

Better Alternatives for Internet Radio

Realistically, while analog radio analog FM radio can sound very good, broadcasts only occasionally approach fidelity one might call CD-quality. So, I’m perfectly happy with internet radio that achieves similar results. I’ll even admit that high bitrate MP3 streaming (256kbps and higher) can meet that standard.

The thing is, AAC definitely qualifies as near-CD quality at 256 kbps, and I’ve heard AAC+ streams at bitrates as low as 96 kbps that meet or beat 256kbps MP3 streams (Radio Swiss Jazz’s 96kbps AAC+ stream is one example). That means using AAC offers potential cost savings for stations in terms of bandwidth, while also offering higher fidelity to listeners. I’d call that a win-win.

On top of AAC’s greater bandwidth efficiency, using it actually costs a broadcaster less than MP3. That’s because running an MP3 stream requires a royalty fee that many people–and broadcasters–are probably not aware of. Those fees start at $2,000 a year, though non-commercial and non-revenue-generating broadcasters should be exempt. Although MP3 is freely used and feels free to average user, it still contains technologies that are licensed under patent.

Now, AAC has patent-protected technology, too. The difference is that it is explicitly licensed for broadcasters to use for free.

Why MP3 Persists

Given all of this, the only reason why MP3 still seems to dominate internet radio is just tradition, really. The support for AAC, in particular, is nearly as widespread as MP3, and it costs less. Pretty much all MP3 has going for it is name recognition and the fact that many stations otherwise don’t have the incentive to fix what does not appear to be broken.

Surfing around stations I certainly find many that do offer AAC streams. My completely unscientific sample shows that amongst terrestrial broadcasters public and community stations are more likely to offer an AAC stream, or even make AAC the default format, as Seattle’s KEXP does. Commercial stations often only provide an in-browser player where the format is unknown, or direct you to a platform like iHeartRadio, which is similarly opaque (though I suspect iHeartRadio actually uses AAC for its mobile apps).

Pure-play internet stations are all over the map. However–again, unscientifically–it seems like stations with a web presence that are music-focused are more likely to offer not just AAC, but a variety of different codecs and bitrates. San Francisco-based Soma FM is one example. This listener-supported platform of 28 different stations offers at least three bitrates each of MP3 and AAC.

To be clear, I don’t necessarily care if a station explicitly tells me what format it streams in, as long as that stream sounds good. It’s just that too much internet radio doesn’t sound that great, and when I dig under the hood I usually find an MP3 stream (and usually a lower bitrate one, at that). I don’t blame a broadcaster for wanting to save money with a lower bitrate–I only wish they’d use a better codec than MP3.

What About Full CD-Quality Internet Radio?

Given my preference for full CD-quality digital music that doesn’t use lossy compression, I’m also an advocate for its use in internet radio. I’ve even written about the few stations that deliver these streams.

However, I’m also aware that streaming CD-quality FLAC or ALAC means 5 to 10 times more bandwidth for a station to cover, at a commensurately higher cost. Additionally, support for lossless streaming is much less universal than it is for AAC. For instance, iTunes doesn’t support FLAC, while pretty much only Apple products support ALAC natively. A station can offer an in-browser player that will work on most desktops, but that still counts out a healthy percentage of potential audience.

For the same reasons why I’m OK with analog FM’s near CD-quality fidelity, I’m fine listening to a good internet stream that matches the sound quality of a decent FM broadcast. Sure, I’d love to hear more uncompressed internet radio, but I can live without it.

Streaming music services are a different deal. First, I’m pretty sure the major streaming services have all abandoned MP3. As one would expect, Apple-owned Beats and iTunes Radio both use AAC, as do Rdio and Pandora. Rhapsody has used both AAC and MP3 in the past, while Spotify uses Ogg Vorbis. Google Play Music and Amazon Prime Music are stuck with MP3. That said, the paid subscription versions of these services generally sound pretty good under most circumstances–paid subscribers, predictably, get served the highest bitrates. I think they’re a reasonable value, but I’m personally not terrifically happy to pay for access to lossy streams.

I’m glad to see the recent introduction of full CD-quality streaming services like TIDAL and Deezer Elite, and I’m perfectly good with paying the subscription fee to get them. I also have no problem with the fact that CD-quality costs more than the lossy versions because I do hear and appreciate the difference.

The War of Attrition

The good news is that I do think AAC is edging MP3 out, primarily due to its superior sound quality over bandwidth restricted mobile broadband. For big streaming platforms using AAC means both savings and preventing mobile listeners from choosing other apps that sound better.

Yet, there are still hundreds, if not thousands, of internet stations–commercial and noncommercial–that still only offer MP3, often with middling to poor sound quality. I don’t want to call any out, but I’m surprised how many great community and college stations I like still offer up mediocre-sounding MP3 streams. They could sound better without any additional cost–maybe even some savings.

It may seem too geekily technical or esoteric, but I think internet radio can and should sound good, and that radio stations–especially great independent stations–will only thrive by embracing new, better sounding technologies.

The post It’s Time for Internet Radio to Retire MP3 Streaming appeared first on Radio Survivor.

At the top of this week’s digital radio news is an analog broadcast station. In a deal that took nearly two years to complete, on Monday the FCC removed the first barrier to Pandora buying Rapid City, SD FM station, KXMZ.

The Commission granted a waiver of foreign ownership rules which otherwise prohibit a company with more than 25% non-US ownership from owning a broadcast station. In its ruling the FCC decided that since Pandora is publicly traded company, and it would be nearly impossible to track the nationality of all, then “it would serve the public interest to permit a widely dispersed group of shareholders” to effectively own the station. The Commission will allow there to be up to 49.9% foreign ownership of shares in Pandora before the station license is in jeopardy.

Pandora’s objective with the station is to obtain more favorable royalty rates from the songwriting royalties groups ASCAP and BMI. Both groups collect lower rates from broadcast stations that have online streams than they do from strictly online-only services. As Pandora’s general counsel explained in a 2013 op-ed, Pandora pays more to ASCAP than competitor iHeartRadio, only because the latter is also a terrestrial broadcaster.

Pandora then won a second victory on Wednesday, this time in the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled in favor of the online radio company in a suit against ASCAP.

Pandora pays blanket license fees on music to ASCAP under a consent decree dating back to 1941 that authorizes ASCAP and the competing BMI to collect such royalties. There exists a consent decree because the two groups effectively hold a joint monopoly under which all commercial users of music must negotiate. Therefore the rates Pandora pays are determined by a federal rate-setting procedure, overseen by federal judges.

What triggered the suit was that a number of music publishers decided to withdraw their catalogs from ASCAP, forcing Pandora to negotiate separate agreements with them, at higher royalty rates. The Appeals Court upheld a lower court ruling which found that this separation violated that original consent decree. The Court also said that the 1941 decree “unambiguously” prevents music publishers from independently negotiating higher rates than those set by the rate court.

The battle over music royalties is far from over. In fact it’s just heating up, as the music industry continues to press Congress to end terrestrial radio’s exemption from paying performance royalties (not the songwriting royalties that are collected by BMI and ASCAP), which are paid by online broadcasters. We should not be surprised if there is also Congressional attention to songwriting royalties, intending to modify or end the 1941 consent decree.

HD Radio Patent Troll Dismissed

Another digital audio patent troll has suffered a loss. The patent holding company Wyncomm LLC and its subsidiary Delaware Radio Technologies LLC had filed suit against fourteen radio groups over their use of HD Radio. That suit was dismissed by the holding companies, with prejudice, which means it cannot be refiled.

Wyncomm had claimed that the HD Radio system infringed on three patents it owns. In 2014 iBiquity, the company behind HD Radio, filed suit against Wyncomm, challenging the validity of those patents, and taking the lead in defending Wyncomm’s suit.

Wyncomm’s tactic of going after station owners rather than iBiquity smacks of trollish behavior, since the stations only license HD Radio technology, and did not develop it. Though this is an out-of-court settlement–not a civil judgement–it stands to reason that iBiquity brought out some pretty big guns to get Wyncomm to back down.

A separate, but similar, suit filed against major automakers including HD Radio in their cars was dismissed last year.

The post Digital Watch: FCC Approves Pandora Broadcast Buy; HD Radio Patent Troll Dismissed appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Reports of FM’s death in Norway are premature. That’s according to the Norwegian Local Radio Association (NLF – Norse Lokalradio Forbund in Norwegian) which sent us a press release saying that 200 local commercial and community radio stations outside the country’s four largest cities will continue broadcasting in analog. Waves were made in the international press the last few days with the initial report that Norway will shut down FM radio service in 2017.

However, according to the NLF, only 23 local radio stations in Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim and Stavanger, along with major national broadcasters, will make the transition from analog to digital DAB broadcast. The group also highlights a recent report from the Government Statistical Bureau that says only 19% of listening is on broadcast DAB, below the 50% threshold set as a prerequisite for the change.

Apparently, the analog switch-off still requires approval in Parliament, where it has majority support, but opposition from the Progress Party–part of the governing coalition–and the Green Party. Part of the objection is based on claims by groups like the NLF saying DAB’s adoption was spurred by lobbying from the Digitalradio Norge AS company, not by consumer demand. That should sound familiar to HD Radio critics in the US.

There is also concern that foreign motorists from across Europe, where DAB penetration is much lower, will have no access to radio while visiting Norway’s major cities, cutting them off from news and information like traffic reports and emergency alerts.

I’ll admit that I was skeptical of the broad, sweeping claims of FM’s demise in Norway, especially since only the big national stations were mentioned in the Culture Ministry’s release. While I argued that the country is an outlier in making such a transition, I should have been more forthright in expressing my doubts that it would affect all FM stations.

Unfortunately, my inability to read Norwegian hampered my ability to do better research. That’s not an excuse, by the way. I have now found that Google Translate does a very good job with Norwegian.

Instead it’s just another lesson that I, and journalists in general, shouldn’t abandon our critical eye in the face of a juicy headline. I’ll keep a closer eye on what happens in Norway, because the political and regulatory aspects certainly hold lessons for communication policy in all countries.

The post FM in Norway Isn’t Dead, Says Norwegian Local Radio Association appeared first on Radio Survivor.

The news from Norway is that the country plans to dump FM and go all digital by 2017. The United Kingdom isn’t quite ready to do the same, but over fifty radio outlets have responded to the UK’s invitation to apply for a digital experiment for smaller broadcasters. Ofcom, Britain’s broadcast regulator, has announced trials to help smaller, local and community based radio stations access the UK’s digital audio broadcasting (DAB) system. The agency is working with an approach that it thinks will be more affordable to indie operations because it takes advantage of free software from opendigitalradio.org. The method is called “small scale DAB.” It targets smaller scale geographic areas, “ideal for community and local radio stations,” Ofcom says.

Among the 51 applicants: Dover Community Radio, Oldham Community Radio, Radio Scarborough, Seaside Radio East Kent, Bradford Asian Radio, Bright & Hove Radio, Chorely FM, Coventry and Warwickshire Media, University Radio York, Elastic FM of Derbyshire, and Riviera FM. There’s also Radiowey, which runs a radio service for the patients at Ashford and St. Peters Hospitals and Garrison.FM, “your online army station.”

Less conventional applicants include a broadcasting software company called P-Squared and Ringtone.net, which owns the SevernFM online radio network. Some applicants are already broadcasting on DAB contours, but presumably want to see if they can get in on smaller, more affordable DAB deals.

Ofcom has ten trials planned, each of which will run for nine months. “Each trial will allow new digital radio services to broadcast to a local area and will help explore how groups of radio stations can work together,” an announcement for the project disclosed. “The trials will also inform Ofcom’s work on identifying suitable frequencies for broadcasting smaller digital stations and help understand how these services could be licensed.”

The post Dozens of UK community radio stations apply for digital experiment appeared first on Radio Survivor.

See our most recent update to this story: FM in Norway Isn’t Dead, Says Norwegian Local Radio Association

Last Thursday Norway’s Ministry of Culture announced the national transition from analog FM to digital DAB radio beginning on January 11, 2017. This move, akin to the digital television transition the US made in 2009, has been years in the making. At least one major reason for the switch is the stated savings of over 200 million Krones a year by the state NRK broadcaster, equivalent to about US $25 million. That money is planned to be invested in programming.

The Ministry first published a report calling for the end of analog radio in 2011. One of conditions stated in that report was being able to reach more than 90% of the population with a digital signal, equalling the coverage of the national NRK P1 station on FM. Additionally, at least half of all listeners had to listen to a digital station daily by this past January 1. Both of these conditions were met.

There is less analog radio in Norway than in many other European countries, and significantly less than in the US. Many press reports have repeated the Ministry of Culture’s statement that there are only five nationwide FM stations. Because DAB offers capacity for 42 national channels–22 are in use now–the Ministry says there will be more nationwide service.

However, mostly gone unmentioned is that there are dozens of additional local FM stations, many of which are part of the NRK public radio service, that will have to transition. Norway has no medium wave (AM) stations since NRK P1 ended broadcasts on that band in 2006.

Over the last decade other European countries, including the U.K., Germany and France, have entertained proposals to phase out FM, though none has followed through. The U.K. has the most well developed DAB system, with 36.8% of listening hours dedicated to 34 BBC channels and over 200 commercial stations. At the same time, it should be noted that many listeners complain about relatively low sound quality, due to the aging circa–1990 MP2 compression used by DAB. The newer DAB+ standard–used by many Norwegian stations–offers higher fidelity by using the more modern AAC codec.

Norway, therefore, should be considered an outlier in making an all-digital transition, even amongst countries that rolled out digital radio around the same time–some two decades ago. Moreover, this long gestation period for DAB in Norway means the country is not a bellwether for the US, where at best 2 – 3% of listeners tune in a digital radio signal.

Certainly, Norway’s comparatively centralized broadcasting infrastructure, combined with a population 1.5% that of the US, contribute to the ability to make a digital transition. While Norway has to transition maybe a few dozen stations, in the US 15,542 would have to adopt digital–only about 1,900 broadcast HD digital signals now. (In 2009 only about 2,200 US TV stations had to go digital, and they had 13 years advance warning).

Another significant factor is that DAB is a very different standard than HD Radio. DAB uses separate spectrum from FM, and is more efficient to broadcast. In most countries adopting DAB, the incentive to upgrade to DAB receivers was to access new, digital-only stations.

By contrast, HD Radio is broadcast alongside its partner analog FM broadcast, with identical programming as on the main digital channel. While HD offers fidelity-limited HD2 and HD3 channels not necessarily available in analog, most broadcasters in the US have invested little in these digital-only signals, giving listeners very little incentive to go HD. Nearly all the growth in HD receivers is due to automakers integrating the technology into car radios. In Norway and other countries DAB radio receivers of all kinds are widely available, beginning at around US $50. Good luck finding a non-automotive HD receiver in the US that’s not integrated in a thousand dollar A/V receiver.

While FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler recently asked in blog post if the top end of the AM band, 1605 – 1705 KHz, could be carved out for digital-only stations, this is the closest the US is likely to come to digital radio transition plan. Also note that this was just one of several ideas he proposed for utilizing that section of bandwidth. He promises we’ll see a concrete proposal soon.

It will be informative to watch how the digital radio transition unfolds in Norway, especially as listeners make the inevitable mad rush to buy DAB receivers at the close of 2016. Whether broadcasters in any other country–including the US–actually learn anything is another matter.

The post Norway’s Digital Radio Transition Is an Outlier appeared first on Radio Survivor.

We got some interesting e-mail and Facebook updates this week from various developers who wanted to catch our eye (or ear). These included:

Boomboxfm. “Let us introduce you to your next favorite song,” the site explains. “Get free, downloadable songs every week directly to your inbox, personalized to your tastes. . . . We scour the world for the best undiscovered music so you don’t have to.” Basically you sign in and choose some genres and soon some tunes will arrive in your e-mail inbox. Will you like them? Let us know.

There is also the DJ Boombox, which has a Facebook page describing it as so:

“The DJ Boom Box is a 20 foot shipping container expertly fabricated into a giant ’80s boom box complete with sound and lights. The ‘tape decks’ open to reveal a full DJ booth, creating a concert/party vibe wherever your event may be. The boom box can be delivered and picked up before and after events easily. The DJ Boom Box has an on-board generator for events where power is an issue or can be plugged into a power source.”

Apparently the DJ Boom Box will make its first appearance at the 2015 Kentucky Derby Pegasus Parade. “We’re already starting to get booked up, so give us a call and reserve the Boom Box for your event now!” (The phone # is on the Facebook page).

Lastly there’s Sonicbids, which is a band networking site. You can search for bands. You can narrow down to the search to location or other criteria. You can get audio samples. And, of course, if you are a band you can sign up to be (hopefully) searched for and found and perhaps even be shipped somewhere in a 20 ft container (or not, maybe you’ll prefer to fly or drive).

The post DJ Boombox! stuff to check out this weekend appeared first on Radio Survivor.

It’s 2015, and that means Howard Stern’s SiriusXM five-year contract is up for renewal again. Last time around, in 2010, Stern milked the protracted “will he or won’t he” drama nearly right up to the end, finally signing on at the beginning of December.

Back then the biggest rumor swirling around was that Apple had offered the King of All Media an unbelievable $600 million to join iTunes for exclusive distribution. There’s no evidence that was ever real, especially since Stern’s SiriusXM deal is reportedly worth $80 million, a fraction of that supposed Apple offer, albeit still an enormous sum of money.

In 2010 Stern also declared that these would be his last five years in radio. His stance seems to have softened a bit since then. Bloomberg Business just published a lengthy profile of Stern and the state of his relationship with his bosses. In it Bloomberg quotes Stern’s on-air musings about retiring, though given how many hours the host is on air every week, reading much into these utterances is a fool’s errand.

This time around there’s still speculation about Stern jumping ship for a new pier, ranging from his own online venture to a subscription service like HBO or Netflix. Again, it’s important to note that he comes at a great price. By most measures SiriusXM made its investment in Stern pay off, but it’s taken nearly 15 years. Stern turned 60 last year, so I doubt many other media companies are ready to take their own decade-plus risk with him.

Bloomberg’s lede is the question if SiriusXM can survive the departure of Stern. More so than ever before it appears the satellite service’s overall business is strong enough. A SiriusXM customer survey found that 12 percent said they listen to Stern, and five percent said they’d cancel if Stern were lost. The company would feel that kind of loss–about $240 million in lost revenue–but it wouldn’t be a mortal wound, given that the company grossed $4.2 billion in 2014.

SiriusXM has reached sustainability in the last five years, primarily due to staking out territory in the car dashboard. That space is hotly contested, with smartphones and in-car internet vying to put podcasts, internet radio and streaming services just a button press away from satellite radio. But, kind of like making Stern’s big money contracts pay off, SiriusXM’s dashboard play has been a long game that competitors are going to have to play in five to ten-year increments. Automakers simply don’t update models as quickly as smartphone manufacturers, and consumers upgrade even less frequently.

Even if internet audio services aren’t yet positioned to eat away a significant portion of SiriusXM’s market share, I do think they have a good shot at stunting satellite radio’s growth. If SiriusXM loses Stern at the end of this year, it may not be able to make back those listeners and that revenue, as young people simply connect their smartphones as if the AM, FM and satellite radio buttons on their dashboard were useless vestiges of an earlier time.

In the Bloomberg article SiriusXM CEO acknowledges that their customers tend to be, “people who buy new cars, who on average are 46 years old and make $100,000 a year.” That’s a good business to be in now, but I wonder if satellite radio will age with that demographic, or continue to appeal to affluent 30- and 40-somethings as millennials enter that demo.

The more immediate question is, is Howard Stern part of SiriusXM’s future or its past? This isn’t just a question of whether or not he renews his contract, but whether this seemingly pivotal moment actually impacts where satellite radio goes from here. While your 46 year-old commuter might be relieved, will the 25 or 30 year-old even care? And will SiriusXM have what it takes to lure her into a subscription, with or without Stern?

The post Is Howard Stern Part of SiriusXM’s Future, or Only Its Past? appeared first on Radio Survivor.

As if it wasn’t already obvious, online audio of all types is growing by leaps and bounds. In fact, 44% of all Americans over age 12 listen every week.

It’s most popular with young people, though also quickly gaining traction with everyone under age 55. This is according to the the 2015 edition of their Infinite Dial survey of American listening habits, released last week by Edison Research and Triton Digital.

The key number for all broadcasters to pay attention to is that 77% of listeners aged 12 to 24 listen to internet radio in a month, and 73% of them use a smartphone, compared to 61% who use a desktop or laptop computer. While broadcast radio holds onto its dominance in the car, 59% of 12 to 24 year-olds have listened to internet radio in the car.

When it comes to choosing a service the runaway winner is Pandora, which 54% of that age group listened to in the last month, with Spotify and iTunes Radio coming in a distant second and third, with 23% and 20%, respectively. iHeartRadio comes in an even more distant fourth, with only 14% of listeners 12 to 24 saying they listened in the last month.

On the one hand iTunes Radio’s popularity is impressive given that the service is barely 18 months old. On the other hand, the fact that it’s included on every iPhone makes it an easily accessed default for a lot of users.

As a whole these numbers are a bracing wake-up call for all terrestrial broadcasters. Public radio has bolstered itself a little better with its investments in podcasting, which also saw gains in listenership this year. Yet not all public or non-commercial broadcasters have leveraged podcasting equally, and commercial radio has barely made a dent.

What we’re watching is a whole generation of listeners skipping broadcast radio altogether, not just over the air, but on their smartphones and computers as well. Not to put too fine of a point on it, Pandora is eating broadcasters’ lunch… and dinner, and dessert. Teens’ and young adults’ preference for Pandora, Spotify and iTunes Radio is an unavoidable indicator that they are not interested in the poor to mediocre music programming served up by the vast majority of radio stations, and they’re sure as hell not going to listen to it online when there are simply better choices.

It’s a tough situation for the biggest commercial radio owners, since they’ve spent so much effort gutting their local talent, without cultivating much national talent, choosing instead to grind away with the same basic programming formulas from the turn of the century. Loading up hundreds of barely differentiated stations into a smartphone app and promoting it relentlessly on your broadcast properties doesn’t do much good when the youngest generation of listeners isn’t tuning them in to begin with.

There’s more hope for other broadcasters that are not so laden with debt or handcuffed by outmoded assumptions. Community, college, public and independent commercial stations aren’t going to compete head on with Pandora, but do have an opportunity to capture millennials’ ears online. To do this, they first have to recognize that it’s necessary. Now is that time.

HD Radio Is Not the Global Choice

This week John Anderson published a examination of global digital radio. The most popular format across Europe, now making incursions into Asia, is the DAB standard, not the HD Radio standard used here in the US. John notes that Norway is even planning to end analog broadcasting altogether in 2017 since digital signals now reach 99.5% of the country’s population.

The question is: in five or ten years will the rest of the world be enjoying more advanced (and maybe higher quality) digital radio than we do in the States, where most people don’t enjoy it much at all?

Update on BBC Radio Streams

Finally, I have a follow-up to my mention of listeners upset by changes to the BBC’s online streaming two weeks ago. Writing in the Guardian, Jack Schofield has published a very clear explanation of the situation, along with suggestions of how to best play the Beeb’s new streams, though with an understandable emphasis on listeners in the UK.

The short answer is that most PCs, tablets and smartphones should be able to play them. It’s internet radios, which have their capabilities mostly baked in, that are still in limbo, though Schofield lists a couple of models that might do the trick.

The post Digital Watch: Broadcasters Are Losing Young Listeners Online appeared first on Radio Survivor.

The United Kingdom’s broadcast regulator has announced trials to help smaller, community based radio stations access the UK’s digital audio broadcasting (DAB) system. According to Ofcom, nearly half of adults in the UK (48.9 percent) say they own a DAB radio set. But getting access to a DAB “digital multiplex” service area is expensive; most smaller radio stations can’t afford the price of admission.

Now Ofcom is experimenting with a new approach that it thinks will be cheaper, because it accesses free software from opendigitalradio.org. The method is called “small scale DAB.” It targets small geographic areas, “ideal for community and local radio stations,” Ofcom says.

Ofcom has ten trials planned, each of which will run for nine months. “Each trial will allow new digital radio services to broadcast to a local area and will help explore how groups of radio stations can work together,” the announcement continues. “The trials will also inform Ofcom’s work on identifying suitable frequencies for broadcasting smaller digital stations and help understand how these services could be licensed.”

The deadline for applying for one of the tryouts is April 7.

Meanwhile Ofcom has announced bids for a second national, commercial DAB multiplex. The first is operated by Digital One. The hope is to launch number two in 2016. The agency says it has received applications from Listen2Digital and Sound Digital.

I have to admit that I’m liking the 18 stations proposed by Listen2Digital, which include a Sabras Asian contemporary channel and a Wireless oldies channel (of course I’m not making this call; it’s all up to the Brits and their duly appointed representatives; I’m just saying . . . ).

The post UK to community radio: sign up for a digital experiment appeared first on Radio Survivor.

HD Radio is back on my mind after reading a recent article in Current about how public stations are using the technology. iBiquity, the company behind HD Radio, has hired the former director of NPR Labs to survey stations on the technology, obviously with the hope of encouraging more use.

Writer Scott Fybush talks to a handful of stations about their HD Radio operations. Only some of them use their HD2 and HD3 channels to broadcast additional program streams. It appears that one popular use is not necessarily to reach listeners directly with digital subchannels, but to use them to serve programming to translator stations. One station in Rhode Island re-started its previously dormant HD transmitter for the express purpose of leasing its HD2 channel to a former commercial station so that it could feed an previously online-only broadcast to a translator.

I’ve not been shy expressing my opinions about HD Radio. Squeezing a digital signal in with analog is too much of a compromise to deliver consistent digital reception, while at the same time it exacerbates congestion on the dial, in the worst cases causing interference with fringe stations. The good-on-paper idea of doubling or tripling the number of channels available on the dial is faced with the hard reality that those channels are mostly only receivable on car stereos–HD receivers exist in very few homes–and only for a portion of a station’s analog service area. On top of that, in my listening tests the sound quality of HD2 and HD3 channels ranges from acceptable to pretty awful.

What this adds up to is that HD Radio isn’t really a radio service–at least not one aimed at listeners. While iBiquity claims that 50% of new car models include HD Radio, and nearly 10 percent of those on the road can receive it, I seriously doubt many actual listeners are taking advantage of it. Sure, they may have a slightly less staticky signal when in the digital service area. But as my experience driving across half-way across the country demonstrated, it’s takes incredible luck to scan the dial and turn up an HD2 or HD3 channel. A listener has to know the HD2/3 channel is there, actively seek it out, and then be in range to receive it reliably. Not a formula for attracting big audiences.

The rule change that created the ability to feed an HD2 channel to a translator has been a boon for these repeater stations, which are specifically prohibited from originating programming. In effect, that means most listeners to an HD2 station are actually hearing it on an analog translator. That’s made translators more valuable, and increased their market value. It also turns HD2 channels into something more like a satellite distribution system or an ersatz studio-to-transmitter link, not a radio service like originally intended.

Some data, like album art or traffic information, can be served over HD, with a slightly larger geographic reach than an audio program, since the data stream doesn’t have to be continuous and is more tolerant of interruptions. Again, that’s not radio, but traffic data in particular is a potential revenue stream for broadcasters when licensed for use in hand-held and in-car navigation systems.

Even so, you might ask why anyone should care about HD Radio, since it seems like just a fringe service. A reason for concern is that HD Radio represents a shift from AM and FM radio being primarily for listeners to becoming utilities for broadcasters and data services. This is a subtle shift, and not one that has gone very far yet. But do not doubt that many broadcasters, as well as iBiquity, would not mind at all shifting much of their business to wireless data transmission.

It’s not that such wireless data transmission can’t be a good supplement to radio broadcasts; I’m not arguing real-time traffic info in the car is a bad thing. What concerns me is that any push to expand HD Radio isn’t really about providing better broadcast service to listeners. Rather, it’s a trojan horse to move the broadcast bands away from actual broadcasting.

Consider the very serious proposals to have the AM dial go all HD, a concept that was tested last year in Seattle. Even if stations are permitted to go all-digital on a voluntary basis, as proposed by iHeartMedia (née Clear Channel), just who is going to be tuning in those HD-only stations on the AM dial? How many listeners will go out of their way to get HD receivers to tune them in?

Will these really be broadcast stations, or effectively just a repurposing of AM bandwidth for traffic or other information services?

Since 2009 we’ve had digital television in the US, with most viewers switched over to the service. And it’s still primarily a TV service, with even some new burgeoning networks finding a home on the digital subchannels.

Arguably, the success of digital TV stems from the fact that all full-power stations had to make the transition, requiring viewers to buy digital TVs or digital tuners. It wasn’t a painless transition, but it worked. Perhaps a hybrid analog/digital system also would have worked. Though, I suspect the transition would have taken even longer, despite the fact that television receivers tend to stay in one place, unlike radios.

HD Radio is a compromise that doesn’t force a digital transition, but also ends up not offering much incentive for listeners to make that transition, either. I don’t expect HD Radio to go away, and as long it remains mostly harmless I’m fine with leaving it be. But I am suspicious of efforts to grow its use, especially in the form of all-digital stations.

Indeed, the digital radio ship may have sailed in the US. It was already well out of port by the time HD Radio finally came on the scene a dozen years ago, and has passed over the horizon as the growth of mobile broadband makes digital radio even more accessible.

This all begs the question of whether digital broadcast radio is even necessary. That’s a topic for another day.

The post Digital Watch: Why HD Radio Isn’t Actually Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

A number of prominent musicians have complained loudly about the royalties they receive from streaming music services like Spotify and Pandora, from indie rock veteran David Lowery to pop star Taylor Swift, who pulled all of her music from Spotify. Mike Masnick at TechDirt decided to look closer at the numbers and determined that “Yes, major record labels are keeping nearly all the money they get from spotify, rather than giving it to artists.”

This pie chart of after-tax payouts shows the situation pretty graphically:

Masnick aims his criticisms at the labels, which he notes don’t encur the costs of manufacturing vinyl and plastic discs that then need to be shipped around the world. With Spotify or Pandora, “distribution is an ‘upload’ button.” I find it kind of hard to argue with that logic, not that I was ever a fan of the major labels to begin with.

Speaking of streaming music services,Pandora reported its 2014 fourth quarter and year-end earnings. The company says it paid out $439 million in royalties last year, on $920.8 million of revenue, $732.3 of which came from advertising. That made for a profit of $58.2 million. Alas, those numbers were below expectations and the stock dipped on the news.

The company also says it now surpasses 1 billion streams a day on occasion, and has a whopping 79.2% of the internet radio market.

That share of the market pretty well dwarfs every major broadcaster, not that the commercial radio industry in the US has worked all that hard to establish a strong online service. iHeartRadio is the most prominent, though it’s kind of a hodge-podge that is primarily known for offering up streams of its terrestrial stations, which aren’t exactly rocketing the company to profit in the first place.

Radio industry analyst and consultant Mark Ramsey published an incisive guide on “how to monetize your online radio streams.” Pretty much all of his points are spot-on and apply equally well to non-commercial community, college or public stations as well, whether or not the goal is to generate revenue.

For commercial stations advice like “cut the (commercial) spot loads to a maximum of half of what you do via broadcast,” is utterly obvious when you compare the Pandora listening experience to any given commercial station. Yet, this is one of the only times I’ve read this tip.

Commercial and non-commercial stations alike should heed strategies like “create channels that stream on-demand content in a loop all day long,” and “use a robust podcast engine to cut up, catalog and distribute short-form audio.” The idea is that a station’s web site should do everything possible to help listeners find and access programming without being tied to the broadcast schedule. Stations that only serve up a live stream of the terrestrial signal are squandering 90% of the advantages the internet offers over and above the AM or FM broadcast.

Read the whole piece to get all seven of Ramsey’s excellent tips.

Finally, for stations that do generate revenue from their online streams, one persistent challenge is getting reliable ratings that advertisers trust as well as traditional broadcast audience numbers from Nielsen (formerly Arbitron). Today WideOrbit announces that Nielsen has certified its Clarity online radio streaming platform, making it the first one to receive such a certification.

Along with live and on-demand audio streams, Clarity does what is called ad insertion, allowing internet broadcasters to place ads in their internet streams that may be different from the broadcast, or even differentiated by other factors, like a listener’s location or the time of day.

With the Nielsen certification stations that use Clarity will be able to offer ratings for online programs that look more like ratings for terrestrial broadcast. While I have long-standing criticisms of radio ratings, I also understand how it’s important to have an ostensibly neutral third-party say audience numbers are reliable. It’s just that, especially in broadcast radio, I wish there were competition. At least with online radio and audio there is another company, Triton Digital, providing audience measurement, too.

The post Digital Watch: Where’s All That Streaming Music Money Going? appeared first on Radio Survivor.

If you received a new Sonos then you’ve got a great portal for listening to radio, music and podcasts with nice sound quality. This is our recommendation guide to the sources available on the system. I’ve tried every one of them and provide a short capsule review for each.

In addition to sound quality and convenient operation, I particularly like how the Sonos system connects seamlessly to most major streaming radio and music services. To me, the killer feature is the ability to create playlists that combine tracks from different services, like Spotify, along with tracks from your own library.

These are my recommendations for getting started with Sonos for listening to music, radio and podcasts.

Broadcast and Satellite Radio

These include both free and subscription services for getting your radio fix.

• DAR.fm – DAR stands for Digital Audio Recorder, and it’s essentially a cloud-based DVR for radio. While podcasts give you on demand access to many popular radio shows, not every show out there is podcasted, especially music shows and many local and national commercial talk shows. DAR lets you record their live streams for later playback, just a like a radio TiVo. Both free and paid subscriptions are available. Learn more in our review of the service.
• SiriusXM – Get access to hundreds of satellite radio stations, including Howard Stern’s channels and commercial-free music channels without using a satellite radio receiver. This service costs $14.99 a month for internet-only, or you can add the internet service to a satellite radio plan for $4.00 a month.
• TuneIn Radio – TuneIn is nearly ubiquitous across all sorts of devices, and its availability on Sonos means you have access to an enormous catalog of broadcast and internet-only streaming radio for free.

Lossless Streaming Music

In September Deezer Elite introduced the first lossless, full CD-quality streaming music service in the US. A little more than a month later Tidal debuted, offering a competing uncompressed service. Both of these services offer on-demand access to an enormous catalog of music, and are now available on Sonos. Here’s an overview.

• Deezer Elite – I reviewed this service in November and found that a real sound quality advantage compared to MP3s and other compressed music services. That said, this is most obvious with critical listening, and less important for background music. Deezer Elite is only available on Sonos, though subscribers can access the compressed premium service on web browser and mobile apps. With an introductory price of $9.99 a month the service is a great value, costing the same as compressed services like Spotify and Rhapsody.
• Tidal – I’ve just started listening to Tidal, and my initial impressions are that its fidelity is comparable to Deezer Elite. Tidal’s primary advantage is that the full uncompressed service is available on multiple platforms, including web browsers and mobile apps. The disadvantage is that it costs $19.99 a month–twice as much as Deezer Elite (at the introductory price), Spotify and other competitors.

Podcasts

You can stream any podcasts stored on your mobile device or computer directly to your Sonos, which is likely the easiest way to listen to podcasts on the system. These apps are also good choices.

• Soundcloud – Soundcloud is becoming a big podcast host, so you’ll be able to find many of the most popular shows here. A nice feature is that if you encounter episodes while browsing the web you can easily tag them for listening later without having to go through the rigmarole of subscribing.
• Stitcher – This popular platform gives you free access to nearly every podcast out there, along with other talk radio programming. If you use Stitcher on your mobile device or computer your listening will be synchronized with your Sonos.
• TuneIn – TuneIn now offers podcasts, although it’\s catalog isn’t as extensive as Stitcher or iTunes.

Streaming Music Radio

All of these services are free or offer free tiers, which make them solid ways to get started listening right away without using your credit card.

• 8tracks – Another free ad-supported service with human curated playlists, many contributed by outside experts and publications. A commercial-free subscription is $25 for six months. For some listening suggestions, Matthew recommends classical playlists and ones inspired by Welcome to Night Vale.
• Pandora – Unlike many other streaming music services, Pandora lets you use its free, ad-supported service with Sonos and other devices. It’s the most popular streaming music service because it’s easy to get started building stations customized to your music tastes. One advantage to Pandora is access to some artists–like the Beatles and King Crimson–who don’t make their music available on Spotify, although you won’t be able to listen to tracks on demand.
• Slacker – Also offers human-curated stations in a wide variety of genres and styles, along with talk programming from ABC News, American Public Media and ESPN. Many stations are artist curated or decade focused. The subscription Plus goes ad-free and gives you unlimited song skips as well as the option to add ABC headline news and Weather Channel updates, while Premium gives you on demand access to tracks, like Spotify.
• Songza – This is a free service that offers human curated playlists tailored for different moods and activities. It’s a nice alternative to Pandora, especially when your stations start to get a little repetitive and you want to shake things up.

Streaming On Demand Music (Compressed)

All of the major on demand streaming music providers are available on your Sonos: Beats Music, Rhapsody, Rdio, Spotify and Google Play Music All Access. They all require a subscription, although Rhapsody offers a free 30-day trial to Sonos users that doesn’t require a credit card. I find all four services to be more-or-less equivalent, and so your choice likely depends on which you’ve used before or if your mobile carrier offers discounts.

Streaming Music You Bought

These services let you stream music that you’ve bought from the cloud, without ads.

• Amazon Music – Amazon has a big MP3 music store, but the company also gives you MP3s of nearly every CD or vinyl LP that you buy from them, too. It’s a convenient way to add tracks from your CDs or LPs to playlists without having to rip them yourself.
• Bandcamp – I’m a big fan of Bandcamp because it lets me buy high quality digital tracks and albums directly from artists and labels, often including music that’s not available on Amazon, Google Play or iTunes. Many albums are available in lossless CD-quality files, in addition to MP3 and AAC. On Sonos you can stream any music you’ve bought on Bandcamp, though it isn’t specified what quality they stream at.
• Google Play Music – If you buy music from Google’s Play store, then you can access it to stream from the cloud on your Sonos. It also includes any music that you’ve uploaded to Google. You can store up to 20,000 tracks for free, and subscribe to store even more.

A Little Bit of Everything

• Soundcloud – This platform is turning into the YouTube of audio, hosting a wide gamut of music, mixes, playlists, radio shows, podcasts, audiobooks and other kinds of audio. It’s free to listen, and a fine choice to dig in to some unique and independent sounds. Check out Matthew’s recommendations for classical music, world music, dance music and space music on SoundCloud.

Are you a Sonos user? Are there other services or platforms you like to us on your Sonos system? Let us know in the comments.

The post Radio, Music and Podcast Recommendations for Your Sonos appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Six more low-power FM construction permits were issued this week, brining the total to 1302. But the big news is that the FCC released the list of 111 MX groups of applicants competing for frequencies in 24 eastern states and the District of Columbia.

Yesterday Matthew took a quick look at what could turn out to be some curious and interesting time-sharing arrangements. Time-sharing happens when the FCC is unable to declare a winner amongst competing applicants because they all have the same number of points that awarded for things like keeping a publicly accessible local studio, or promising eight hours a day of locally originated programming.

Commercial HD on LPFM? Not So Fast.

Last week I mentioned the audacious proposition that LPFM stations might adopt HD Radio and then use one of the digital subchannels to broadcast commercial services. While the author of that commentary quotes an FCC official who said that there are no rules against such an arrangement, REC Networks’ Michi Bradley published a blog post this week that deconstructs the FCC rules that would likely apply.

In essence Bradley argues that a noncommercial station may only broadcast commercial services on a subchannel if that subchannel is only accessible via specialized receivers, and not available to the general listening public. Such existing analog services include Muzak and reading services for the blind. HD Radios, she argues, don’t count. Even though HD radios aren’t common, they are easily purchased. As well, the additional digital TV channels that came with the digital transition are counted as broadcast by the FCC, making it likely that HD-2 and HD-3 channels and FM would be similarly classified.

Bradley also comes to a similar conclusion on the practicality that I argued last week: the maximum of 10 watts that can be dedicated to an HD signal on LPFM just isn’t worth it to begin with.

I think new LPFM stations would be well advised to focus on creating the best local service they can, rather than be distracted by the temptation of having additional digital, but obscure, ultra-low-power channels.

The post LPFM News: 6 More Stations; Questioning HD On LPFM appeared first on Radio Survivor.

There are just two new construction permits since last week’s LPFM Watch. Both are religious stations, in Adelanto, CA and Yuma, AZ. The holiday weekend probably slowed things down, but we’re also getting close to the next batch of MX groups of applicants competing for frequencies to be opened for resolution by the FCC.

Recall that there were more than 200 low-power FM applications associated with one person, Antonio Cesar Guel, raising suspicions amongst many in community radio, triggering informal objections, petitions to deny, along with an investigation by the FCC. A significant number of these applications were dismissed by the Commission, but on August 29 petitions for reconsideration were filed for eight of them in Appleton, WI, Minneapolis, MN, Seattle, WA, Garland, TX, Pecos, TX, and Texarkana, TX. All were dismissed because the Commission was unable to confirm that applicants had proper assurance to use their proposed transmitter sites.

In a combined filing for all eight applicants, attorney Daniel J. Alpert argues that the dismissals should be reversed because the applicants themselves were not notified about the inquiries made to the site owners, and therefore they had no opportunity to defend themselves. He also submits sworn declarations that the proper site assurances had indeed been obtained prior to filing their original applications.

These declarations are statements from representatives of each applicant retelling discussions they had with tower operators. It should be noted that for four of these applicants it was Guel who contacted the tower owners and makes the declaration. In none of these declarations is there an indicator that the applicant had obtained a lease. Rather, in each case it appears they called a tower owner to confirm if there was availability.

This verbatim declaration from Guel on behalf of Seattle Community Radio is an example:

In mid-October 2013 I called King Broadcasting Company to ask for space in the tower. The person that answer my call said she was in the front desk. She tell me that they rent space on the tower but I had to speak to Deny Humble to enter into any lease for the tower. I didn’t call no more since we were still waiting for the approval of the FCC, so until that occurred, the client would have had no need to actually rent space on the tower.

Based on the forgoing, I believe that I acquired sufficient assurances for the use of the tower in the application I helped prepare for Seattle Community Radio.

I do not know if this qualifies as assurance according to the FCC, so we’ll have to wait for the Commission’s response.

HD on LPFM?

Finally, a commentary published at Radio World last Thursday has caused a bit of a stir in LPFM circles. Radio engineer and broadcaster Dan Slentz proposes that low-power FM stations could go on the air using HD Radio. He writes that a station he advises, WDPE-LP in Dover/New Philadelphia, OH, has decided to launch “as what might be the first LPFM HD Radio station in the nation.”

Slentz addresses up front the reasons why HD hasn’t been adopted by LPFMs. First, the transmission equipment is much more expensive than analog, and includes an annual licensing fee to use the technology. Perhaps more importantly, only 10% of a station’s power can be used for the HD signal. Given that LPFM broadcasts with a maximum of 100 watts, he acknowledges that the resulting HD power level of no more than 10 watts “could barely ‘light a night light’.”

In fact, depending on geography, 10 watts might be good enough to cover a mile or two radius from your transmitter. In the middle of a town that signal on analog likely would reach quite a few listeners, given that nearly every household has at least one radio. But how many have HD radios? And if someone has an HD receiver, it’s probably in the car, which would travel in and out of the reception area within minutes.

Despite these considerable obstacles, Slentz outlines a number of ways that the three additional HD channels might be exploited by a station (although, in practice few stations use more than 2 of the subchannels). The most controversial of his proposals is that an LPFM might lease out the HD2 or HD3 channels for commercial broadcasting.

While LPFM is an explicitly noncommercial service, Slentz writes,

“This came as a huge surprise; but current rules do not prohibit this, according to Deputy Chief, Engineering, James Bradshaw of the FCC. He emphasized that this doesn’t mean the commission couldn’t change the rules later; but at this time there is nothing prohibiting this.”

Again, these would be 10 watt (at best), digital-only commercial signals.

This seems more like a thought experiment than a truly practical proposal, though it will certainly be interesting to hear from WDPE once the station starts transmitting in HD. In particular, it will be impressive if the station is able to find any takers willing to lease an HD subchannel, commercial or noncommercial.

What is more broadly concerning is the implication that any noncommercial station broadcasting HD Radio could run commercial programming on its subchannels. That would certainly appear to violate the very principle upon which the noncommercial band is based. But even with a full-power station, the value of leasing out an HD subchannel is strictly limited by the dearth of listeners with HD receivers. The very impracticality of such an arrangement probably means it’s not something to worry about.

The post LPFM News: Petitions for Reconsideration; HD on LPFM? appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Prof. John Anderson has been covering radio and communications freedom for more than a decade at DIYMedia.net. He recently filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FCC regarding a recent decision that effectively put the Commission in the role of determining what is and is not news. Last year his first book, Radio’s Digital Dilemma, rolled off the presses, opening the doors of the sausage factory that authorized HD Radio in the US.

John is also a friend of Radio Survivor, and so we’re thrilled that he is going to join us for our very first live video Hangout on Air this Wednesday, April 30 at 8 PM EDT (5 PM PDT). We will take live questions, and the program will also be recorded. Follow this link or come back to this post to tune in live.

The post Join us at 8 PM EDT Tonight for a Hangout with Prof. John Anderson appeared first on Radio Survivor.

The United Kingdom’s broadcast regulator Ofcom is considering letting “re-advertised” analog radio station licenses extend for twelve years, the maximum possible license length. The current policy is to set licenses approaching their expiration date at seven, but “market and regulatory developments” since 2010 suggest a reconsideration, a Ofcom consultation concludes:

” . . . we have not identified any further factors which might justify a shorter licence period than the statutory maximum. As a longer licence period would provide greater commercial certainty for operators, we are proposing a new policy that licence durations will be set at 12 years.”

The consultation also indicates that the government thinks that its transition to DAB digital broadcasting is succeeding:

“DAB is a significantly more widely adopted technology now, with greater availability of a greater number of services; more DAB sets in homes and cars; and more listening to DAB in terms of both reach and share. The trends since 2010 and going back further, plus the recent policy announcements by Government, suggest that there will be sustained growth and development of the DAB radio platform.

We consider that these developments will reduce the need for flexibility for Government, Parliament and Ofcom in introducing new licensing regimes or spectrum planning for the FM band, since it now seems that these would not be necessary, post-switchover.”

Here in the United States, broadcast radio station licenses extend to eight years. Ofcom is soliciting feedback on its proposal through May 6.

The post UK ponders 12 year terms for “re-advertised” analog radio stations appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Looking for info on how to listen to this 2021’s Super Bowl LV? Click here.

Sports are nearly as popular on the radio as on television. As USA Today observes, there are 289 more all-sports radio stations on the air since 2006, and this weekend’s Super Bowl is their “summit.” All these stations will be discussing the big game, endlessly, for the next four days, though not all of them will carry the game.

Nevertheless, folks who are working, driving or not near a TV this Sunday, or those who don’t own a TV in the first place, can still listen in to Super Bowl XLVIII on the radio. While there will be fewer listeners than the 100 million-plus viewers who watch the television broadcast, there’s still a sizable radio audience. Edison Research reported that 23.1 million listeners tuned in to a Dial Global affiliate for Super Bowl XLVI in 2012.

Dial Global is now known as Westwood One again, and you can hear the game on a Westwood One Sports affiliate station. ESPN Desportes Radio will broadcast the game in Spanish, while SiriusXM offers the play-by-play in Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese and five other languages. The satellite broadcaster also gives English listeners the choice of hearing the Denver Broncos or Seattle Seahawks team broadcast (channel listings below). These programs are available via satellite and through SiriusXM Internet Radio.

Another online option is NFL Audio Pass, which has a playoffs only package for $9.99. Of course the playoffs are over, but since the package includes the Super Bowl, it’s a relatively inexpensive way to ensure you can hear the game online.

Members of the US military overseas, as well as those living near military bases, should be able to listen in on American Forces Radio. In the UK listeners can hear the game on independent broadcaster Absolute Radio. There may be other international radio broadcasters carrying the Super Bowl, but I wasn’t able to confirm any.

It’s not at all clear if the live internet streams of broadcast stations are blacked out, or blacked out by region. This year I’ll make it a point to check out some streams and find out.

If you’re a radio listener outside the US, let us know if and how you plan to listen to the Super Bowl.

Here’s the SiriusXM channel lineup:

• Denver Broncos team broadcast – Sirius 92 / XM 225 / Online 802
• Seattle Seahawks team broadcast – Sirius 86 / XM 86 / Online 827
• National radio broadcast – Sirius 88 / XM 88 / Online 88
• Spanish language broadcast – Sirius 157 / XM 157 / Online 157
• Portuguese broadcast – Sirius 119 / XM 232 / Online 961
• Chinese broadcast – Sirius 113 / XM 229 / Online 965
• German broadcast – Sirius 93 / XM 228 / Online 964
• French broadcast – Sirius 85 / XM 227 / Online 966
• Russian broadcast – Sirius 108 / XM 230 / Online 963
• Japanese broadcast – Sirius 117 / XM 231 / Online 962
• Hungarian broadcast – Sirius 136 / XM 233 / Online 960

The post Catch Super Bowl XLVIII on the radio this Sunday appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Clear Channel Communications has posted its response to the Federal Communications Commission’s proceeding on AM radio revitalization. The radio giant has many recommendations, among them the suggestion that the FCC should permit all digital AM operations “on a voluntary basis.”

“As more HD receivers are installed in vehicles and more consumer digital receivers are purchased, more Americans are experiencing the sound quality advantages of digital broadcasting,” Clear Channel Vice President Jessica Marventano writes. “While the levels of digital receiver penetration are not at the point where the Commission should consider mandating all-digital AM operation, individual AM broadcasters may find their listeners ready to embrace digital-only reception.”

Early testing of AM all-digital streams “has proven very positive,” the company claims:

“Particularly if an AM station can pair an all-digital AM operation with an analog FM translator, it can serve listener expectations while implementing a transition to all-digital. Consequently, [Clear Channel] proposes that the Commission consider in this docket allowing AM broadcasters to determine the best means, whether analog, hybrid or all-digital, to reach their audiences, by revising Commission rules to allow AM broadcasters to choose all-digital means of broadcasting by notification to the Commission (and the ability to revert back to analog or hybrid upon notification to the Commission).”

This is not the first time that Clear Channel has told the FCC that broadcasters aren’t ready for a digital mandate. The idea here seems to be to make it easier for AM stations to broadcast FM while they experiment with digital AM streams.

The post Clear Channel: let AM stations go all digital on a voluntary basis appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Two of our most enduringly popular “long-tail” posts are about the demise of Smooth Jazz radio in Chicago. This April, 2012 report about the changeover from the format to alternative rock on the FM backdoor station 87.7 FM and my July, 2012 followup detailing where to find other jazz programming on the Chicago airwaves consistently rank highly in our Google Analytics. This, along with the many plaintive comments to these posts, indicates that many Chicagoans desperately miss Smooth Jazz radio.

There’s some qualified good news for these listeners in the announcement that Smooth Jazz will return to the Chicago dial via the HD2 channel of 101.9 FM WTMX, as Robert Feder reports. Rick O’Dell, the former programmer for Chicago’s 25-year Smooth Jazz station WNUA and the short-lived WLFM on 87.7 FM, launched the online SmoothJazzChicago.net when the latter station went alt rock. Starting today that stream is now simulcast on WTMX-HD2.

Of course, being HD-only means that a large percentage of Chicago listeners will not be able to receive the station on their analog radios, though they can tune in online. While it is true that a growing number of new cars come with HD-equipped radios, my experience using them shows that it’s difficult to seredipitoulsy encounter an HD2 signal by scanning the dial as one would do with analog FM. Rather, dedicated listeners will have to specifically seek out the station, hoping that they’re within the smaller service radius of the HD signal transmitting from the North Shore suburb of Skokie.

At the same time, going HD2 offers the format a better shot at longevity than if it had remained on 87.7 FM. That’s because the signal isn’t actually a radio station, but rather a legacy analog low-power TV station operating on channel 6. The audio portion of the signal bumps up against the bottom end of the FM, able to be heard at 87.7 FM, which otherwise is not an officially licensed radio frequency.

LPTV stations were given more time to convert to digital than full-power stations, which made the shift in 2009. But in 2011 the FCC ruled that these low-power stations have to go all-digital by September 1, 2015, despite the pleadings of these FM operators on channel 6 to keep their back-door radio business models alive. So, Smooth Jazz’s former home on 87.7 FM in Chicago will disappear by the end of 2015, anyway.

There’s also news that 87.7’s current alt rock format will get a longer lease on life past the stations 2015 expiry date. After the demise of the commercial alternative pioneer Q101, fans cheered when the format reappeared on 87.7. They have further reason to be sanguine with the announcement that the nation’s second-largest radio owner, Cumulus, plans to bring alt rock back to its old 101.1 FM home as it takes over operation of WIQI-FM, currently owned by Randy Michaels’ Merlin Media. WIQI had been the Chicago site of Michaels’ failed FM news experiment, which replaced Q101 in the first place.

All indications are that Cumulus is renting WIQI and another Chicago station, WLUP-FM, from Merlin in a run up to buying them outright. Merlin doesn’t own the 87.7 signal–it operates it under a lease agreement–so one would guess that it will simply fade away once the rejuvenated Q101 goes live.

The post Smooth Jazz returns to Chicago airwaves via HD Radio 2 appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Hallowed New York City classical radio station WQXR’s “Q2” channel is now well over three years old. I am a big fan of the service. It is one of the few places in the classical music radiosphere in the United States where you can consistently listen to a high quality stream of contemporary classical music on a 24/7 basis. Let me dispense with my mixed feelings about classical radio in general before getting to the unqualified praise section of this post.

I believe that contemporary classical music should be integrated into the larger classical music picture. Instead, most classical radio stations restrict themselves to a very limited and conservative version of the “common practice period” of classical music. You hear lots of Baroque (Bach), Classical (Mozart), and Romantic (Chopin) content on these stations, but not much else. Pre-Baroque content is filtered out because it is mostly vocal and most classical operations avoid music that foregrounds the human voice. Post-Romantic content is filtered for anything that smacks of twelve-tonalism, non-western scales, pop music hybridity, prepared instrumentation, and, of course, the human voice again.

The result is that your typical classical music radio station functions as a sort of a portable easy listening museum for the work cubicle. This is unfortunate and sad. Real classical music is the music of God, of history, of nations, of utopia, dystopia, empire, and revolution. It is a wonderful conversation about the past, present, and future of the human race full of tone poems, operas, sonatas, symphonies, song cycles, and solo performances. But for a long time San Francisco’s principal classical music station adopted the very odd motto “Everyone Remain Calm.” This has nothing to do with real classical music. Ludwig von Beethoven did not want everyone to remain calm. “Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman,” Beethoven famously declared.

WQXR’s main FM signal in NYC more or less adheres to the cubicle approach, albeit better than most. Consider some of the Tuesday, December 3 schedule. You’ve got your Gluck, your Berlioz, your Chopin, and your Haydn. Looking for some 20th century sounds? There’s Richard Rogers and, to the station’s credit, the neglected composer William Grant Still. But beyond that the adventurous will find little of cheer.

But let us be fair—many classical radio stations barely make ends meet these days. They’ve been dropping like flies recently; see KDB in Santa Barbara, Wilmington Bach in North Carolina, and KXTR-FM in Missouri (now an Internet station). So it is understandable that the survivors have adopted risk averse, narrow format strategies, even if those strategies don’t always save them.

In that context, WQXR’s Q2 is a welcome adaptation and compromise. It is separate from WQXR proper, but still very accessible. You can listen to it via the HD2 channel of WQXR 105.9 FM, or via a 128k audio stream from your desktop, or via iTunes or Tunein.

Q2 has a variety of program hosts, all of whom are passionate and expert about 20th and 21st century classical music. My favorite show is The Brothers Balliett, identical twin composers and performers who say that they “work tirelessly to one-up each other. This drive creates a self-fueling passion to write the best work, listen to the best music, and learn as much as possible.” I strongly recommend reading their “ten point manifesto,” which begins with “We are the Brothers Balliett” and ends with “We believe in the groove.” Then there is “Sample Rate,” which explores “adventurous sonic manipulations,” and “Hammered,” a show dedicated to keyboard music.

As these program descriptions suggest, Q2 plays avant-garde content, but not too much. Lots of wonderful tonal music pervades the stream. Right now the station is broadcasting its “new music countdown.” Q2 listeners were asked to send in their favorite compositions of the last 100 years. They were broadcast through the weekend and into this week. Here are the last ten compositions played (last time I checked):

78. Kaija Saariaho – L’amour de loin
77. Jean Sibelius – Symphony No. 7
76. Igor Stravinsky – L’histoire du Soldat
75. Edgard Varese – Poeme Electronique
74. John Adams – Short Ride in a Fast Machine
73. Edgard Varese – Ionisation
72. Caroline Shaw – Partita for 8 Solo Voices
71. Alban Berg – Lyric Suite
70. John Adams – The Chairman Dances
69. György Ligeti – Atmospheres
68. Béla Bartók – String Quartet No. 6

In an ideal broadcasting world, these great pieces would stream alongside Mozart, Schubert, and Chopin. But that’s not going to happen any time soon, so I am grateful for Q2 and its innovative bid to keep contemporary classical music alive. You can contribute to WQXR’s Q2 here.

Further reading: a scholar’s assessment of WQXR and its website. We cover social music sharing communities every Monday in our Internet DJ feature.

The post Classical segregator or savior? The case for Q2, WQXR’s online “living composers” channel appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Radio World and Radio.NL report that the government of the Netherlands is considering sunsetting that country’s FM band and transitioning to digital radio broadcasting. This would mean DAB+. The decision rests on the pace at which Dutch consumers adopt the standard via DAB+ receiver purchases. An economic minister says radio receiver buyers will trigger the deliberation once the market penetration rate exceeds fifty percent. But that doesn’t mean the move is a done deal. Conundrums remain about how to get local radio stations up to speed.

Given this interesting development, I thought it would be fun to hop over to the WorldDAB.org site and check out its assessment of the state of DAB/DAB+ around the globe.

WorldDAB.org’s status map of DAB/DAB+ around the globe [WorldDAB.org]

WorldDAB has a nifty global map that shows which countries have or are in the processing of adopting DAB/DAB+. There are 21 nations with “regular” DAB/DAB+ service. Most of them are in Europe. They include the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and Spain, but also South Korea, China, Australia, and Ghana.

According to WorldDAB, about eight percent of China’s population can access DAB. Much of that availability centers around Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. Hong Kong started running DAB+ in the summer of 2011. The government granted commercial licenses to three companies, including the Digital Broadcasting HongKong Ltd., formerly known as Wave Media, which has a popular talk radio operation in that city.

Belgium, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland have particularly extensive DAB coverage: above 90 percent according to WorldDAB.

Then there are the countries with “trials and/or regulation.” These include Vietnam, Israel, South Africa, and Indonesia. Operators in Indonesia’s capital city of Jakarta have been running DAB trials since 2006. The latest in Vietnam took place in July on the Voice of Vietnam network. There have been DAB+ demonstrations in Bangkok, Thailand this year. Hungary has selected DAB+ for its digital standard and is testing radio programs in Budapest.

Finally there are countries “with interest,” which means they’re mucking around with DAB/DAB+ but it is all sort of tentative. WorldDAB lists Canada, Estonia, Greece, India, Lithuania, Mexico, Namibia, Portugal, the Russian Federation, Singapore, Slovakia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates in that category.

The United States isn’t on the WorldDAB map at all. The country is committed to Ibiquity’s HD Radio standard. How is that going? Check out our HD radio coverage for updates.

The post The state of global DAB and DAB+ radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Image: Ann Althouse / flickr

Now a company called Wyncomm is suing broadcasters who use HD Radio, along with car manufacturers who sell installed HD receivers, for allegedly infringing on a patent for “Side-Channel Communications in Simultaneous Voice and Data Transmission.” That patent was originally granted to AT&T in 1996, and is now owned by Wyncomm, which says a company called Delaware Radio Technologies is the exclusive licensee.

Curiously, Wyncomm has chosen not to sue iBquitity the company that owns and licenses HD Radio technology. As John Anderson observes, “the fact that iBiquity dodged this bullet is telling about the actual merits of the case.”

Anderson also argues that “iBiquity itself is subverting patent law to keep its technology perpetually proprietary.” While HD Radio is covered by several patents, the HDC audio encoding algorithm (codec) is undocumented. “Effectively,” he says “HDC is a black box that cannot be pierced by any means,” even though it has been chosen as the only FCC-approved standard for digital broadcasting, and is under consideration as the future standard for the entire AM dial.

HD Radio manufacturers and broadcasters, standing alongside podcasters, have the chance at some relief this week. The House of Representatives will vote on the Innovation Act (HR 3309), which the Electronic Frontier Foundation calls “the best troll-killing bill we’ve seen so far.” The bill passed the Judiciary Committee with strong bi-partisan support.

Committee chair Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) is a strong supporter of the Innovation Act and has published an animated video that tries to explain in plain language why patent trolls are bad and patent reform is good.

Broadcasters, podcasters and other trolling victims will certainly be crossing their fingers, and calling their Congresspeople.

The post Patent trolls target HD Radio, Innovation Act targets trolls appeared first on Radio Survivor.

To say that public comments on the FCC’s AM revitalization proposals are barely trickling in could be charitably called an understatement. As of yesterday there were a total of three comments filed. Two of these are from amateur radio operator Nickolaus Leggett, which Matthew reviewed last week.

In the absence of more commentary on the serious possibility that the AM band could go all-digital, it is instructive to look across the pond. In the UK the government and regulators are actively considering plans to phase out analog radio altogether, perhaps as soon as 2018, though not without some friction.

The UK has had digital radio since 1995, eight years ahead of the first digital HD Radio broadcast in the US. The DAB standard used there broadcasts on a band separate from analog FM and AM (MW), unlike HD Radio which broadcasts a digital signal alongside the analog one on the same band. According to the broadcast regulator Ofcom 19% of all radio listening hours in 2013 were on broadcast DAB, while 41.7% of UK households say they can listen to that service.

Plans to transition the UK to all-digital by 2018 are not coming without some push-back. Labour MP Helen Goodman said she thinks the government is putting the interests of big broadcasters ahead of listeners. “Given the cost of living crisis this is not the time to force the majority of people in this country to spend £50 or more on buying a new digital radio,” she said.

The Radio Centre trade group representing UK commercial stations is lobbying hard for the 2018 changeover. But another group of more than 80 commercial stations is saying a digital changeover would harm local radio and cost households “several hundred pounds” each.

The chairman of one radio group said that there’s no need to commit to a digital transition, noting that analog and digital services have co-existed peacefully for more than a decade. He noted, “We are not saying it’s bad technology but what’s the point of excluding listeners from the services they are comfortable with?”

At a House of Commons debate on the topic on November 28 Conservative MP Cheryl Gillan said that upgrading to DAB transmission is too expensive, making it “fundamentally the wrong platform for genuinely local stations.” A local broadcaster said that starting a DAB station costs between 2 and 10 times the cost of an FM station.

Responding to these criticisms, the UK’s Minister of Communications announced that digital transition date will not be announced anytime soon. He echoed MP Goodman’s sentiment, saying “There will be no switchover until the majority of listening is digital.”

Here in the States proponents of HD Radio would be thrilled if digital radio listening were nearly as popular as it is in the UK. While more than 1900 stations broadcast in HD Radio the technology is mostly found in car radios, where 20% of cars sold in 2012 had this feature. But on the whole HD Radio is widely believed to be available only on about 1% of radios in use, far below the penetration rate for DAB in the UK.

Even though many commentators and listeners alike regard the AM band as a fossil encasing the calcified remains of conservative talk and geriatric easy listening, I’d bet that a large percentage of the millions of AM listeners would protest having to buy new digital receivers. Further complicating things, an all-digital HD Radio broadcast very well may not be compatible with current HD receivers that are designed for today’s hybrid analog/digital broadcasts. So, even the comparatively small pool of HD Radio listeners (like me) would have to upgrade in order to stay tuned in.

If elected officials from both major parties in the UK can agree that a hasty digital transition is a bad thing, it’s not hard to imagine that a forced digitization of AM in the US might raise ire across the aisles of Congress, too. How many phone calls from loyal Rush Limbaugh listeners ticked off about having to buy a new, probably expensive, HD AM Radio will a Republican congressman have to hear before siding against a government-mandated transition?

Comments on the FCC’s AM revitalization plans are due January 21, 2014. We should expect to see more comments from inside and outside the broadcast industry as that date draws near. Expect your intrepid Radio Survivors to keep our fingers in the wind.

The post UK digital radio transition effort holds lessons for AM revitalization appeared first on Radio Survivor.

My friend John Anderson wrote his dissertation on the complex policy machinations behind HD Radio becoming the digital radio standard, and now he has a book coming out telling the story. He knows more about the topic than just about anyone else. So when he says that the all-digital option for AM revitalization is very much on the table at the FCC, I listen.

Last Thursday I raced to read and understand the FCC’s notice of proposed rule making. I noted that the all-digital option was “notably absent from the FCC’s specific proposals,” even though it is mentioned amongst the ideas that have been suggested. John argues that we shouldn’t be too quick to interpret that the Commission is minimizing that option.

As someone who has exhaustively reviewed the policy record, John has learned that these little suggestions are often the seeds that grow into policy. “Policy studies necessitate close reading,” he counsels.

John reads that the FCC “acknowledges that an all-digital transition doesn’t fit the bill as a ‘concrete’ proposal ‘that can be implemented expeditiously’; rather, it is a ‘complex’ idea that ‘would require additional comment, research, and analysis.’” He argues “That’s all the green-light action that HD Radio proponents need to start the regulatory campaign toward an all-digital transition.”

Read his full argument at DIYMedia.net.

The post Counterpoint: all-digital HD Radio on AM still on the table at FCC appeared first on Radio Survivor.

As we wrote back in August, changes were planned for Knox College radio station WVKC, following a deal with Tri States Public Radio. The student radio station in Illinois was slated to move off its 90.7 FM signal in exchange for a beefed up Internet feed and an HD channel. With the new school year in full-swing, WVKC is now heard on its new digital home and public radio programming from Tri States Public Radio is airing on 90.7 FM under a 20-year management agreement. The station itself is being spruced up and its record library will soon be accessible to all students. An article in the Knox Student states,

“Since the switchover to digital streaming, little else has changed for the WVKC staff apart from a new stream encoder that has been installed in the broadcast studio and has not impacted the day-to-day operations of the station.”

Former station staffer Andrea Miklasz penned a letter to the editor of the Knox Student, expressing sadness over these changes. She writes,

“I do not believe that giving up a 1000 watt radio broadcast signal in exchange for Internet streaming abilities and HD radio broadcast capability is a good deal for WVKC, Knox College or the Galesburg community. I believe that the Knox administration saw a way to save money and took advantage of what may have been the naivete of the student general managers to get their endorsement. HD radio technology has not been successfully adopted by most, and although ways to listen on the Internet are increasingly ubiquitous with the popularity of smartphone technology, there is still a digital divide that excludes people in their cars and those who live on the poorer side of the tracks.”

In a lengthy response, Knox College’s AV Coordinator Todd Smith argues that,

“Up until this change occurred, the streaming capacity of WVKC ranged between 25-40. Yes that’s right, 40 listeners at the most. That’s not even a party, just a gathering. Now we have virtually unlimited streaming. That means globally.”

He also suggests that terrestrial radio is not a part of the current undergraduate experience, saying, “Guess what Alum from the 90s, nobody has a radio anymore. Sure a few people do, they also have VCRs. We want people to hear the station. We want students to listen…”

In this online commentary, it’s unfortunate to see a generational divide as far as radio goes, especially since station alumni can be huge advocates and allies (and even financial supporters) of student radio stations. It’s tough, since there’s so much passion for one’s own college radio experience, it can be hard to understand different perspectives. I know first-hand that it can be sad to see one’s college radio station change and evolve. However, I’ve learned that it’s the nature of the beast and I’m more sympathetic after realizing that my own college station went through many different iterations before I even arrived on campus.

When I was in college, we didn’t have a licensed FM station and I still harbor hope that current students there will pursue the rare LPFM licensing opportunity this month (government shutdown-willing). Although it seems like a moot point at Knox (since terrestrial radio doesn’t seem important for current Knox students), the university IS free to apply for LPFM if there is interest. Even though the school holds WVKC’s FM license, since the FM signal is no longer controlled by students, Knox can apply for LPFM.

It’s good to hear that streaming will improve dramatically for the Knox College radio station, but it will also be interesting to see how many more listeners the station attracts. Based on anecdotal reports from other college radio stations, it’s rare for a stream to draw more than 40 simultaneous listeners unless a special event, like a popular sporting match or live concert is taking place. Attracting listeners is one of the ongoing challenges for streaming stations.

What do you think, is terrestrial radio unimportant for 18 to 22-year-old college students? Can a purely streaming station get as many listeners as a station with both terrestrial and streaming capabilities? And where does HD fit into the equation?

The post Is Terrestrial Radio Dead to Undergraduates? WVKC Changes Spark Debate appeared first on Radio Survivor.

I’m starting to think that HD Radio sub channels are turning into the land of misfit formats.

Last Friday Seattle’s 22 year-old Adult Album Alternative station The Mountain 103.7 FM flipped to the Hot Adult Contemporary format with nearly no notice from Entercom, its owner. But instead of disappearing, The Mountain’s format lives on as an HD2 channel on the same frequency, in addition to an online stream.

A couple of weeks ago Jennifer reported that Knox College’s student-run WVKC will give over its main analog frequency to Tri States Public Radio. In exchange WVKC will take over an HD2 channel and also go online. Something similar happened to Vanderbilt University’s student-run WRVU in 2011. The station is now primarily online, but also heard on an HD3 channel.

If a station has already invested in an HD transmitter then the cost of shifting a killed format to an HD2 channel is minuscule, especially if only the music, and not the air staff, make the move. But it gives the appearance that the station isn’t totally abandoning the old formats loyal listeners, even if it is actually abandoning those 99% of listeners who don’t have an HD receiver. Giving the HD2 to students booted off the main analog channel is also low-cost, but makes the new owners look magnanimous compared to giving the students nothing.

Aside from the possible PR boost, one has to wonder what the more tangible advantages are to shifting unwanted formats to HD sub channels.

In a recent column by Bob Struble, CEO of iBiquity which owns HD Radio technology, wrote that he sees “immediate” return-on-investment for stations that use an HD2 signal to feed a translator repeater station. The FCC recently ruled that translators, which for commercial stations are are intended to help fill-in areas with poor reception, can be used to rebroadcast a station’s HD2 and HD3 channels, not just the main analog/HD1 channel.

As Struble put it, “In effect, it’s like getting another unique analog FM signal for a tiny fraction of the cost of a new station. Get that translator’s antenna up high enough, and it’s basically a new Class A for the cost of the HD Radio upgrade.”

Of course, that’s sort of tantamount to admitting that HD-only channels aren’t really worth that much in terms of listenership. That’s despite how much Struble touts sales figures showing 50% annual growth 2010–2013 in HD receivers, driven almost entirely by the auto market. He claims 30% of new cars will have integrated HD radios in 2013. However, there are still only about 15 million HD-capable radios in the US right now. And tuning in an HD2 or HD3 channel in a car moving 55 MPH isn’t always as easy as just hitting the seek button.

If Entercom wants to put The Mountain on a translator in the Seattle area, then maybe the station will live on for the majority of its former listeners. Same thing for Knox’s WVKC, only the students are at the mercy of Tri States Public Radio, which I’m guessing would not be interested in even giving up a translator to the student DJs.

Otherwise I continue to think that giving an HD2 or HD3 channel to a station or format bumped off its main analog/HD1 channel is like giving them a year’s supply of Rice-A-Roni–a consolation prize that might look good on paper, but amounts to little more than something very few want to consume.

Being consigned to an HD2 or HD3 is being sent off to the land of misfit formats.

The post HD Radio channels 2 and 3 are the land of misfit formats appeared first on Radio Survivor.

As I publish this piece Wednesday evening it is increasingly likely there will be military attacks on Syria by the US, Britain and allies in response to evidence that the Syrian government carried out chemical weapons attacks on its own citizens.

It is certainly a tense situation, and for the people of Syria the situation must be getting only more frightening. Media inside the country is tightly controlled by the government which exclusively airs the Assad regime’s viewpoint, and so it must be difficult to know what the true threat is, and what to expect.

I have been trying assess what outside information resources are available to the people of Syria, particularly radio, since it is inexpensive to receive and more difficult to block.

Inside many war-torn countries outside news and information is available via shortwave radio. Global broadcasters like the BBC and Deutsche Welle can be important sources of information and international political debate. Often there are broadcasts from political opponents, as is the case with Zimbabwe. However, Radio Free Syria, the last known anti-Assad shortwave broadcaster, hasn’t been heard from since about 2004. As well, like in Europe and North America, it appears that shortwave is not particularly popular inside Syria.

Satellite broadcasts, however, are popular in the Middle East where both international television and radio services are available. Due to their wide regional footprint satellite broadcasts easily cross borders, as long as local residents have reception equipment. In 2012 the Assad government was accused by the European Broadcasting Union of jamming the BBC, France 24, Deutsche Welle and the Voice of America. It is unclear if that jamming continues.

There are a couple of internet radio broadcasts for Syrians, originating outside of the country. We previously reported on Radio Rozana, which originates from Paris and plans to launch a satellite channel. Deutsche Welle recently reported on Baladna FM, staffed by exiled reporters in neighboring Jordan. Baladna is internet only at the moment.

Because there are methods for internet users in Syria to evade government filtering, determined listeners inside the country can find ways to tune in these independent broadcasts. But that still makes them less accessible than if they were on satellite or shortwave.

I would appreciate it if any readers with information about media and information availability inside Syria would email us to share.

Speaking for myself, I do not look forward to any military attacks on Syria. I have deep sympathy for the innocent Syrian people caught in their nation’s civil war, subject to brutal attacks from their own government, and now fearing attacks from western powers.

The post What outside radio and information are available to the people of Syria? appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Copyright law can be a funny thing. Did you know that recordings made prior to February 1972 don’t enjoy the same copyright protections as those after?

I didn’t. But satellite radio broadcaster SiriusXM knew, and has been using that as an excuse not to pay royalties on those pre–1972 recordings it plays. By law, the company is supposed to pay royalties equalling 8% of gross revenues to SoundExchange, the organization formed to collect performance royalties on behalf of labels and artists.

In a suit filed Monday (PDF) in the U.S. District Court of DC SoundExchange is suing SiriusXM for subtracting plays of pre–1972 recordings from its royalty payment.

Now, beginning with 2013 the rules governing performance royalties set by the Copyright Royalty Board specifically permit the exception of royalties for these recordings from before 1972. But that does not apply for the previous regulatory period ending 2012.

SoundExchange claims that SiriusXM has underpaid by “$50 to $100 million or more.” SiriusXM has not yet responded to a request for comment by either Reuters or the Wall Street Journal.

1960s rock band The Turtles join SoundExchange in not being “Happy Together” with SiriusXM. The band sued the satellite broadcaster in L.A. Superior Court as lead plaintiffs in a class action suit for “at least $100 million” earlier this month, also for unpaid royalties for pre–1972 songs.

While there is limited federal protection for their songs recorded before February 1972, The Turtles are claiming protection under California law that was also recognized by the Supreme Court in Goldstein v. California.

When looking at these cases, it’s important to keep in mind that terrestrial radio is still statutorily exempted from paying these performance royalties. Artists’ groups and labels have been pushing to end that exception. At the same time, digital music services like Pandora are pushing for royalty rates to be lowered–something for which musicians are taking them to task, as I reported in issue #5 of the Radio Survivor Bulletin (subscribe here).

At this point it should be clear that the future of the music industry is very much bound up with the future of broadcasters, whether online or on the airwaves. While on the surface it looks like a fight between big corporations, the welfare of individual artists, small broadcasters and independent labels are all caught up in it, too.

My fellow Radio Survivor Matthew Lasar offered his own compromise called “The Local Radio and Performance Rights Act." As Matthew explains, the LRPRA would,

“would exempt from any performance royalty payment schedule radio stations that the Federal Communications Commission classifies as “Local Radio Stations.” The bill would instruct the FCC to come up with a definition for this phrase via a public rule-making, and to include some of the same criteria the agency is using to pick candidates for Low Power FM licenses: the proximity of the license owner’s headquarters or main studio to the transmitter and how much local programming and music the station broadcasts.”

The purpose is to reward small, locally-oriented stations for serving their communities with a valuable music service by exempting them from royalty payments. At the same time, big stations owned by the likes of Clear Channel and CBS Radio would be subject to payments.

Matthew’s proposal highlights how terrestrial radio’s exemption from performance royalties is intended to recognize radio’s unique ability to introduce listeners to new music and artists. It also puts into relief how that grand bargain has broken down after 17 years of industry consolidation and vital local blood being squeezed out of stations that are run by automation programmed thousands of miles away with little local input.

How SoundExchange’s and The Turtles’ suits turn out will have implications for all manner of broadcasting. These suits and the overall royalty question is something to take seriously, for radio and music lovers alike.

The post SiriusXM sued for royalties on songs from before 1972 appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Road trip radio listening is a great way to get a snapshot of what radio is like around the country. I just completed a move to Portland, Oregon from Chicago. We had movers take the majority of our possessions, but my wife and I, along with two aging tabby cats, packed into a rented SUV to make the 2200 mile drive to our new home. Along the way we mostly listened to the radio.

Quite to my surprise, we found FM stations that came in strong and had tolerable programming for nearly the whole trip. We tuned in classic rock, so-called “classic hits” and oldies stations that each played an entertaining mix of well-worn tracks that we know well. Certain artists, like Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones, made frequent appearances, with Floyd’s “Time” being the my vote for the song I really don’t need to hear again for a while.

My typical radio listening does not include much classic rock or similar formats, so hearing these moldy oldies was fun and refreshing, rather than repetitive and boring. However, as we pulled into the driveway of our new place, I was finished with these stations.

I appreciated that many of the stations in smaller towns and markets tended towards more eclectic selections, hewing a little less strictly to format than stations in bigger, more tightly competitive markets.

Early on in the trip we captured WLLT-FM in northwestern Illinois. Calling itself “the sound of Sauk Valley,” at about 6 PM in the evening the station was obviously automated. It seemed as though the station has no ad inventory to speak of, with the only breaks being IDs, a pre-recorded weather forecast and a phoned in promo from the head of the local chamber of commerce. The idiosyncratic music mix included Toto and Marvin Gaye.

Our rental vehicle, a GMC Acadia, had an HD Radio, so it was also interesting to experience that service across the west. In general, HD Radio is fairly useless while on a road trip, unless you’re stuck in traffic. My experience was that the HD signals were only sufficiently strong for a short stretch of maybe 10 to 15 continuous miles in most cities. I could hear the Acadia’s radio shift back and forth between the analog and digital signals, though it was impressively smoother than I’ve experienced with other HD receivers.

When sitting in traffic or moving about town I checked out some HD2 stations and found them to be quite varied, my favorite being the all-funk channel in Portland. But when traveling on the highway it was difficult to hang onto most HD2 signals long enough for it to be an enjoyable experience.

What I particularly appreciated was stations with RDS service. RDS adds text data to a radio signal, which can be used to identify a station, display title and artist info, or even provide traffic news. As a radio geek, I liked seeing the call letters of the station I was receiving, frequently supplemented by the station’s tag line, the name

RDS encoders are relatively inexpensive, so I am sort of surprised that more stations don’t have them. In the major cities along our route, like Omaha and Boise, most stations used RDS, and at least half had HD. Smaller towns were much more hit and miss with RDS.

I was also pleasantly surprised at how many stations sounded like they had live local DJs, or local voice-tracked DJs, at the very least. I also heard quite a few very awkward automated segues. I also heard a couple of automated EAS alerts break into programming to announce severe weather warnings.

On one station in western Nebraska a live announcer came on during the next break to update the warning. It was the first I’d heard of that announcer–I believe the station was on automation–so I’m guessing that he broke in to provide severe weather coverage outside of his normal shift. That is the kind of service local radio should provide.

My little road trip across the Midwest and Northwest demonstrated that radio is alive and mostly well along our nation’s interstates. I just hope you like Pink Floyd.

The post Road trip radio listening reveals the state of the medium appeared first on Radio Survivor.

People are listening to internet radio (which is delivered by a series of tubes).

As RAIN notes, Pandora also released its June numbers, with Wall Street reacting poorly to news that listener hours and market share were down from May, even though both were up significantly from June 2012. Thinking about this makes me wonder: how often does a major terrestrial television or radio broadcaster see its stock price slide based on a single month’s ratings?

Looking to the sky, satellite broadcaster SiriusXM reported 715,000 new subscribers in the 2nd quarter of 2013, nudging its total subscriber base past 25 million. That caused the company to predict it will add a total of 1.5 million new subscriptions in 2013, 100k more than it predicted last quarter. The company did not break down how many new subscribers are internet-only.

Even if summer means a slowdown in internet listening, what I see in these numbers is strong demand for radio, whether its online or satellite. Although Pandora is a music-only service, most of the other top online broadcasters–as well as SiriusXM–offer a significant quantity of news and talk programming.

Internet radio listening will only grow more if it becomes easier to listen using mobile networks, away from home or office wifi connections. This, of course, makes broadcasters dependent on mobile carriers, and threatens to favor big players, like Clear Channel, at the expense of smaller or non-commercial ones. Being able to listen to internet radio more easily in the back yard, at the park or at the beach may help to counteract the summer slump where terrestrial broadcast radio still rules.

In any event, people still want radio, no matter how it’s delivered.

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Pink Floyd lodging public complaints about Pandora and Tavis Smiley moving into online radio are just two stories in this roundup of streaming radio news.

• Pandora announced that more than 100 car models offer smartphone integration to control its app. The service is offering free commercial-free listening to listeners using an integrated car stereo through the end of the year.

• The impoverished millionaire members of Pink Floyd published an op-ed in USA Today to complain about Pandora’s efforts to bring down the royalty fees it pays for streaming music online. The band says that Pandora is trying to trick artists into signing a letter of support that will only hurt their own pocketbooks. Simultaneously the band’s music became available on Spotify for the first time this week.

• SiriusXM streaming radio now joins the dashboard, too. An agreement with Ford brings access to its smartphone app via the carmaker’s Sync, giving drivers access to on demand content not available via SiriusXM satellite service.

• Public radio and television host Tavis Smiley has signed on to anchor a weekday show on BlogTalkRadio, following his program being cancelled at several prominent stations. Smiley is the first well known media personality to be signed to the service.

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Will the industry try to force an HD radio upgrade on the AM band?

John Anderson says that “the stakes are much higher” than what I characterized in my post. “Getting AM to go all-digital is an audacious way to set precedent for an all-digital transition on both bands, especially since ‘marketplace forces’ aren’t cutting it.”

John expands on this point in a piece he published last week at DIYMedia.net, titled “Greasing the Skids for AM’s Digital Transition.” He argues that the pro-digital proposal offered by CBS Radio SVP Glynn Walden at NAB is a “test-balloon to see if the initial reaction is positive or negative,” which is the first step in crafting new policy and creating enough momentum in DC to make it appear like the change is “already well-established.”

Reader Matt reminds us that Paul Thurst wrote a four-part series on the revitalization of the AM band on his Engineering Radio blog. In this series he critically deconstructs WBCN-AM’s reportedly “nearly flawless” test of all-digital HD Radio broadcasts last December, noting that “From a technical standpoint this is about as favorable testing configuration as can be conceived for AM IBOC.” Yet, he notes that “the actual data from the tests has yet to see the light of day and may never be released.”

Thurst reviews the history of AM to give some needed perspective to demonstrate that the problems with the band result from “a death from a thousand cuts.” These lacerations include heavy debt loads taken on by broadcasters, as well as resources directed away from AM stations.

In part 3 he analyzes the causes of interference on the AM band and offers some potential technological solution.

Ultimately, Thurst’s arguments align with Anderson’s. Both are wary of an industry push to implement all-digital broadcasting using HD Radio technology on the AM band. It’s a technology Thurst calls “a yet unproven proprietary digital modulation scheme.”

Anderson concludes that such an initiative “reeks of hypocrisy,” since it seeks to use FCC power to effect a change that the marketplace clearly does not support, but under the auspices of “a U.S. policy environment steeped in the tenets of neoliberalism.”

The question is: will the FCC be moved to heed industry players with vested interests in HD Radio technology over the wishes of listeners, who have indicated their preferences by not adopting the technology in any meaningful numbers?

The post Is AM revitalization a cover to force an all-digital transition? appeared first on Radio Survivor.

This week is the annual National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas, which brings thousands of broadcasters, manufacturers, producers and journalists together to talk about and see what’s next for broadcasting. Radio tends to play a very quiet second fiddle to television and video at this show. But this year radio’s own second fiddle, the AM band, received some attention with a panel moderated by FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai.

This panel was inspired by remarks made at last fall’s NAB Radio Show where Pai called for a revitalization of the AM band. Radio World’s Leslie Stimson reported on Tuesday’s panel, where CBS Radio’s Senior VP of Engineering Glynn Walden called for “an analog sunset” and a move to all-digital broadcasting. The sentiment comes from the fact that the band is plagued with interference from all sorts of electronics, as well as inter-station interference from night-time skywave propagation, when AM broadcasts can travel hundreds of miles.

Going all-digital was just one of four possible solutions Pai raised in his opening remarks. He also mentioned letting stations increase power, making it easier for AM broadcasters to obtain translator repeaters on the FM dial and transitioning to a distributed broadcast method called “synchronous transmission systems.” According to Stimson’s report, the FM translator idea was the most popular of these three amongst the panelists, while the power increase was largely dismissed.

In anticipation of this panel Variety’s TV columnist Brian Lowry dismisses the AM band altogether, calling it a “cesspool.” Unlike the NAB panelists Lowry is evaluating the actual content of AM broadcasts, not the technical integrity of the band itself. Lowry points a finger at talk radio–an easy target–but also the “insidious… relationship between stations and advertisers,” where hosts hawk gold, hair restoration and diet aids in the middle of their patter about politics and sports. He is even more critical of the “poorly labeled infomercials that fill stations primarily on weekend mornings, often for questionable medical supplements or cures.”

While I agree with much of Lowry’s critique, I’m not sure it’s fair to tar an entire broadcast band with the same feather, even if it’s a big ass feather. I still see value in the AM band. I’m not convinced about going all digital, but I’m also not sure what the right solution is.

Living in a big city with a crowded dial full of electromagnetic pollution, I certainly agree that listening to AM is not nearly as much fun as it was 10 or 15 years ago, unless you’re tuning in the most powerful local stations. The long-wave propagation of AM was always one of its selling points. Traveling down a lonely interstate late at night, it is still a real pleasure to tune in an AM blowtorch and hang onto that signal for hundreds of miles without having to hit the seek button. Yet, that experience is getting rarer, as interference intrudes even in sparsely populated areas.

I wonder if my and others’ attachment to AM is driven more by nostalgia than practicality. No doubt, broadcasters’ attachment is financial; they don’t want to give up on their investments. But offered the opportunity to listen to the same program on AM or FM, I’d probably choose FM for the fidelity and low noise.

One could make an aesthetic argument in defense of AM’s unique sonic signature, just as some folks (like me) still listen to cassette tapes. It’s just hard to see (or hear) how this is motivated by anything but nostalgia.

Going all digital might solve the noise problem and mitigate some of the interference issues, but is it a solution that anyone wants? It would require additional investment from broadcasters and force listeners to buy new radios. And for what? The same Limbaugh, Hannity and infomercials, just with less electromagnetic static?

Maybe AM doesn’t need revitalizing. Are die-hard AM listeners that unhappy? In my home city of Chicago the #2 and #4 highest rated stations are AM. In New York City the #4 and #9 stations are AM, and in Los Angeles AM stations rank #4 and #10. That’s a lot of listeners still tuning in, even if fewer than FM.

Why don’t we just let AM be and let the broadcasters and listeners decide when they’re done with it? That would be the cheapest option by far.

Then, when some stalwart broadcasters give up their AM licenses at firesale prices because they’re unprofitable, there could be an opportunity for a little retro-inspired, back to basics innovation. AM radio could become the broadcast version of artisanal Brooklyn pickles, sponsored by Vice Magazine infomercials.

Or maybe the erosion of station will relieve some of the crowding on the dial, mitigating the interference by attrition. Either way, nobody needs to buy new transmitters and radios, or waste any more precious FCC resources.

I vote artisanal AM.

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Looking for an alternative perspective on world news on your FM dial? If you live in Chicago or Washington, DC you can now tune in the Russian government’s Voice of Russia service, which began broadcasting English language programming at the beginning of March on the HD2 channel of WTOP-FM in DC, a news-talk station, and WILV-FM in Chicago, which airs the adult hits format.

These stations add to AM stations in New York City and Washington DC that carry the service, as well as WKIS-HD2 in Miami, which has country music on its main analog signal.

Tuning in Thursday evening to WILV-HD2 in the far north side Chicago neighborhood of Rogers Park the channel comes in clearly. I listened to news headlines at the bottom of the hour followed by an interesting longer documentary piece on the Folk Box program about the Sami people, who speak a Finno-Uralic langauge in the far northwest of Russia.

The BBC World Service is broadcast on several public stations’ HD2 channels and Radio Netherland’s Spanish-language Ahora service is also broadcast on some public radio HD2 signals. Otherwise the VOR is the only other international state broadcaster that I’ve heard of broadcasting full-time on a US HD Radio signal.

While HD Radio may still be a niche service, it still may be a good way for VOR to reach more US listeners than shortwave. According to a recent Arbitron report there are 3.6 million people over age 12 in listening to HD Radio multicasts every week. This is quite small compared to the overall radio audience of 242 million listeners weekly. Nevertheless, I’d bet that 3.6 million compares favorably to the number of weekly shortwave listeners in the US.

Like most international broadcasters, the Voice of Russia is available for online streaming as well.

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