Deriving the Real IBOC Equation
(Read
Skip Pizzi's Response)
 Masked
Engineer Guy Wire Recovers from a Cold DAB Shower
By Guy Wire
My colleague Skip Pizzi spends a lot of time gazing
at the crystal ball of new technologies.
In his March 1 article in Radio World titled "FMX
+ RBDS = IBOC," Skip is challenging and articulate.
For many in this industry, his analysis is disturbing.
He may have succeeded in dousing the IBOC rollout later this year
with a cold shower. But I think that this time, Skip's crystal ball
might have a few cracks.
Fuzzy Math
Can the fate of IBOC appropriately be extrapolated
from failed "add-on" technologies like FMX and RBDS? These and virtually
all proposed improvements since FM stereo have been nuances or targeted
to niche users.
Include any of the others like FM Quad, AM stereo
and AMAX. Neither the EIA/CEMA nor NAB, Detroit or the FCC really
got behind any of them. Little coordinated effort was employed to
get the major players on board to perfect the product, get it ready
for market and roll it out to the public with an effective national
advertising campaign.
The FCC never established mandated rules changes
to compel adoption of these technologies as it did when the FM band
had to be added to all radios and UHF channels had to be included
in all TV sets.
Ibiquity is keenly aware of those kinds of crucial
mistakes and is poised to prevent them from happening with IBOC.
These same major players have been significantly invested in IBOC
development and implementation for years.
IBOC is not a trivial add-on. It integrates a significant
reduction in the annoying interference factors that separate radio
from CDs in the overall listening experience. And it adds significant
opportunities for digital data delivery never available with older
technologies. It's a different situation.
Really Skip, your equation is nothing more than fuzzy
math.
History Lessons
Pizzi is convinced that the radio industry ignored
the lessons of history and force-fed IBOC as a digital solution
primarily to protect the ownership status quo. He says IBOC was
a blocking policy from the beginning, without the benefit of "open
standards development" that should have embraced new technologies,
new bands and new players.
This might be the result of how too many years at
NPR causes one to think more as a purist in an ideal world while
ignoring how constraints already in place are integrated into a
successful business model operating in a regulated free economy
of the real world.
Look back to about 1989 at the beginnings of the
digital radio revolution. An open standards development process
did in fact drive digital conversion for a number of years. We had
many proposals and studies done by the NAB along with consultants
and entrepreneurs on how a digital radio system could be implemented
in U.S. broadcasting.
Various new frequency band options were reviewed,
including unused UHF TV channels, S Band and of course L Band. The
new digital modulation schemes and bit-rate compression algorithms
were considered carefully and tested by many interested parties.
I can recall Pizzi himself moderating a convention
panel in the early 1990s that consisted of at least six digital
systems proponents. Digital radio was anybody's ballgame. They all
took their best shot. But Eureka had a head start on us in Europe
and quickly became the favorite.
The NAB was so convinced Eureka was the best solution,
it tried to set up a for-profit Eureka licensing arm of itself and
sell it to its own members. Not until it was clear that the Pentagon-driven
federal government would not part with L Band or any other new frequencies
in the United States to allow the Eureka system to gain support
did the NAB back down.
We were all waiting and wondering back then if the
NAB and FCC would be able to arm-wrestle the military out of new
spectrum for digital broadcasting. But the memories of Operation
Desert Storm were fresh. Our military held the ace cards and needed
its spectrum to be able to deliver those future Patriot missiles
with pinpoint accuracy.
Open Standards Struggle
After it was clear we'd be stuck with only the existing
AM and FM bands for implementing digital, many of the larger group
owners represented by the Radio Operators Caucus organized to support
the development of an IBOC solution that would work. Project Acorn
became USADR and eventually Ibiquity was born in part from that.
All incumbent broadcasters did not insist on IBOC
from the beginning, as Skip would lead us to believe. The ones who
were listening to their engineers mostly agreed that more bandwidth,
only available in a new band, would be needed to properly deploy
the advantages of digital broadcasting.
Even though it may not have lasted as long as we
might have preferred, a de facto open standards process did
launch us into digital and was functioning to some extent right
up to the formation of Ibiquity only two years ago.
The question is, Skip, how long should we have waited
for the military to change its mind about giving up a chunk of L
Band or for technology advances to offer and perfect some other
workable and marketable solution for the adoption of digital broadcasting
in the United States? Perfect hindsight has revealed Eureka to be
not the best solution here or anywhere else, at least so far.
Remember, even after it became clear IBOC would be
the best overall solution for adding digital radio service in this
country, USADR continued to joust with two competitors in the form
of Lucent and Digital Radio Express. Each had a different design
for the modulation scheme and different choice of compression algorithm.
Compromise and negotiation resolved those differences as would happen
in any open standards proceeding.
Consensus was alive and well in this phase of the
process, Skip, and determined which elements of each proponent's
system would be part of the eventual proposal under the combined
Ibiquity partnership.
Faith in America
Certainly the members of the operators’ caucus
were interested in protecting their interests. They did what any
property or business owner in the proud traditions of this country
would do when a proposed new regulation threatened to dilute the
value of their investments and their ability to survive and prosper.
They ultimately had faith in American electronic ingenuity and its
ability to design a system that would allow digital to coexist with
analog in an IBOC solution.
The lessons of history guiding that effort were the
previous successes of integrating color into existing black and
white TVs and stereo into existing monophonic FM radios and TV sets.
Backward compatibility allowing older receivers to still work with
those inventions has served us well for many years.
Skip argues that, for digital radio to succeed, it
must bring quantitative improvements to the public, i.e. more services.
Qualitative improvements like higher fidelity and significant interference
reduction won't be enough.
The data capacity of IBOC FM will be increased dramatically
over its analog uncle. Many of the new products, services and business
models that will take advantage of that in the future haven't even
been invented. And don't overlook the advantage that IBOC receivers
will be "smart," adapting to any coding changes from the transmitted
end. Improvements will be implemented seamlessly, similar to how
the new Windows Xp connected to the Internet updates itself automatically.
But let's step back and appreciate what radio has
been doing well since KDKA started broadcasting in 1920: delivering
immediate information and entertainment to a listening public that
is usually doing something else at the moment. Radio is about being
able to listen to whatever you want, whatever you're doing, anywhere,
anytime and with minimal effort at the flick of a switch. And it's
free.
This is the strength of what radio always has been
and probably always will be. You don't need a screen to watch or
lots of interactive features, user-definable options, or buttons
to fumble with. I'm overloaded with those on my cell phone already,
thank you. Why must we insist that the new digital radios need glitzy
new "wow" options before the public will buy them?
The few real technical complaints we hear from radio
listeners are based on interference problems. The IBOC improvements
take that issue on. The vast majority of other complaints are almost
always about programming content. Too many commercials, not enough
variety, why is that idiot on the air and so forth.
Nobody is clamoring (or even asking nicely) for some
new feature that radio was never expected nor intended to provide.
RBDS has taught us something about that. Radio has a simple elegance
all it's own and doesn't need clothes that don't fit.
Charging for More Choices
Certainly satellite radio is providing more programming
choices than will ever fit on local radio dials and will serve those
who are willing to pay for them. If you happen to live where something
you want is not available, you'll have to pay for it to be delivered.
Satellite probably will become the best vehicle to
provide more choices to those who live in sparsely populated areas
where traditional choices are limited and local economies will not
support adding more.
But for larger population centers, we already have
almost 50 unique radio programming formats identified by the NAB,
most of which are available somewhere on the AM or FM dial in those
larger markets. Allow me to ask you, Skip: Which ones are we missing
and how many more do we need? OK, I admit, we may have missed a
few. The satellite services and LPFM should be able to provide whatever
your imagination conjures up.
A successful broadcast radio station generally needs
significant listener head-count and reasonably broad appeal to sustain
its business model. Those that narrowcast with niche or boutique
offerings to a tiny audience almost never survive very long unless
they don't depend on audience or advertising/underwriting support
for their existence.
Creating more stations to provide more narrowcasted
formats for small audiences is not the quantitative enhancement
that digital radio should be bringing to the public, IMHO.
Wow Radios on the Way
While the improvements that IBOC radio brings are
mostly qualitative, making it available in most new cars fairly
early in the implementation cycle that Ibiquity has mapped out should
assure its survival and success.
The "wow" radio that will be in demand soon will
be the multimode digital car radio that offers integrated AM/FM/IBOC
and satellite channels, CD/DVD, along with useful digital data services
and display goodies.
As chip-set prices come down, cheaper IBOC tuners
and desktop models for the home and office, as well as portable
boom boxes and walkmans will be offered. They will sell based on
the mere fact that they offer the new advanced digital reception,
which listeners eventually will identify as better performing with
higher quality from their car radio experience. It will be no different
than with any other piece of consumer electronics equipment.
Witness what's happening with DVD vs. VCR sales.
As more titles come out on DVD and more stations broadcast in IBOC,
the old gives way to the new. After IBOC rolls out, the Circuit
City salesman only has to tell the prospective radio buyer that
digital is newer and better, while analog is older and suffers from
more interference. Analog in any electronic form really should be
a dinosaur by then.
I will be the first to agree that the seven-second
IBOC latency delay will perhaps at first introduce a confusing and
disappointing complication for some listeners, especially sports
fans.
But for the vast majority of the radio-consuming
public, real-time audio is not necessary to be able to use and enjoy
the content. The fact that the analog signal will be acquired instantly
when changing channels satisfies the radio user's historical expectations,
and few will notice the seamless transition into digital a few seconds
later.
The "digital delay penalty" will not be unique to
radio. DTV faces the same challenge. The public will get used to
it. They're more adaptive and flexible than most give them credit
for.
Drying Off Baby
As Skip points out, the FCC will be the final arbiter
that ultimately will spell success or failure for IBOC.
But this is not AM Stereo Act 2. If the commission
mandates that all stations deploy it by some future date, the public
will be best served and not subjected to the confusion that doomed
AM stereo.
If it does not mandate IBOC conversion, the situation
might be a little bit more like FM stereo. Yes, it took a while
for stations to install stereo encoders and for radios with little
red stereo lights to appear; but even with its flaws, FM stereo
became a de facto standard. This time around, more advanced
technology and a smarter industry should pave the way for more rapid
conversion and fewer negative side effects.
It's a bit too late to throw the baby out with the
bath water, Skip. Let's just dry him off from your cold shower and
keep moving ahead.
Guy Wire is the pseudonym for a major-market radio
engineer.
|
