A followup on our "cheap talk" story

Buc Fitch recalls how a young Al Michaels handled the situation

After two and a half years, NAB's leaders decide Gordon Smith should be here for the long haul

The Hilton is no longer a Hilton

Radio engineers continue to experiment with modulation-dependent carrier level in hopes of saving money on AM transmitter power bills.

Cris Alexander, director of engineering at Crawford Broadcasting and a Radio World contributor, provides an update in his latest engineering newsletter. Since deploying MDCL on three high-power AM stations, he reports, “we have been seeing some very tangible savings, both in power consumed and cost.”

“It wasn’t until early February that we got our first look at the savings realized from MDCL operation from the [Nautel] XL60 at WXJC in Birmingham,” he wrote. “Astoundingly, we saw almost a 40% savings for the month of January over the same period last year. That is almost double the savings that we have seen on our two NX50 MDCL stations, and I really don’t see how MDCL alone can account for it.”

He initially suspected that weather had played a part, but after looking at temperature records he discounts that. “We’re going to have to watch this one over a longer...