IBOC DAB Benefits Will Be Few
One Observer Says ‘Pay No Attention to That Man Behind
the Curtain’
by Aaron "Bishop" Read
I belong to a few online mailing lists. Recently, a well-meaning
fellow on one radio group asked for opinions on what radio would
be like in five or 10 years, what with digital radio and IBOC looming.
Hoo-boy. I steeled myself for the usual onslaught of e-mail.
If you know me, you know I’m opinionated. ("No, really?"
my cube-neighbor pipes up. I smack him with my Nerf football). Also,
I tend to join lists that attract folks like myself.
Not surprisingly, the posts flooded in. Also not surprisingly,
the majority was pessimistic about the viability of IBOC.
"The audio quality just isn’t there." "The
cost of conversion is too high." "The delay is too great."
The usual suspects, if you will.
But then someone hit the magic answer: "The public won’t
buy the receivers because there’s nothing better about IBOC
for them."
Ahhhh. Give that man a cigar.
Benefits
It’s a question that must be asked before any business venture
is started. Not "why is a customer going to buy this,"
but "why isn’t a customer going to buy this?"
Greg McLemore, founder of Pets.com, are you listening?
So what if IBOC is digital radio, anyway? Didn’t we
learn our lesson from AM stereo? Didn’t Eureka flop in Europe?
Well, it’s a lot of extra bandwidth channels, so you could
offer more services!
Hmmm, wait a minute. What exactly could we offer here?
Well, how about a national system that automatically switches
from station to station to keep the same genre on (i.e., always
keep the top 40 hits goin’ as you cruise from Boston to L.A.)?
That’d be nice.
Hmmm, don’t think so; the system might switch a listener
to a nearby competitor. Okay, scratch that idea.
Well, we could show cool announcements like "Call in and
win!" Yeah, that’s cool. Hmmm, but it’s yet another
thing to take my eyes off the road.
I live in Boston, which is right next door to Cambridge, where
the lovable Click and Clack of NPR’s "Car Talk" have
helped push through a ban on the use of cellphones while driving.
I can see them choking in between their cackles when they hear about
displays on a radio.
Starting to see a pattern here?
Well, Ibiquity, the surviving IBOC proponent, tells us IBOC will
sound better! There we go, a real improvement!
Err ... wait a minute, FM radio already sounds pretty good. And
here’s the real rub: it won’t sound any better in the
car.
The numbers don’t lie: morning and afternoon drive are the
main times people listen to most stations. And they’re in their
cars, a notoriously poor acoustical environment.
So how will they tell the difference? They can’t. Jeez, I
can only listen to my MiniDiscs in my car because they sound so
awful on my home stereo, but fine when I’m on the road.
Speaking of which, haven’t we all noticed how ridiculously
overprocessed most FM stations are these days? I listen to my local
rocker to lose weight. After 20 minutes, I’m so fatigued I
feel like I ran 10 miles.
How can they get away with it? Because most cars are so loud to
begin with that you can’t possibly hear the audio loss from
over-processing. But then why do they do it?
"Well hell, we gotta sound louder than the other guys,"
screams the PD. And God help us, but satellite radio’s coming
down from above like the meteors in "Deep Impact" and
they’re digital, too!
Keep up with the Joneses
Ahhhh, now there’s a reason to go to IBOC – because
your GM / PD / SM / SA / VI (Village Idiot) heard the other guy
is doing it, and if they’re digital, then they must
be better, right?
Yes, I can hear you groaning now, and I feel your pain. I know
more than a few of you engineering readers have installed a knob
that does nothing at master control and pantomined turning the knob
in the presence of the PD because he or she insists your station
doesn’t have enough (pick one) "funk," "punch,"
"jazz," "life," "rock-n-roll," "presence,"
"awakeness" (yes, I have actually heard that one), "buzz,"
"loudness," or "that thing."
Oops, I just gave away our secret, didn’t I? Sorry, guys.
So what does this all boil down to?
I say IBOC is boiling down to something even my dog wouldn’t
eat for most FM stations. Also it is a potential death knell for
Class D, LPFM and small Class A stations that can’t foot the
steep bill for a digital transmitter. Rosy picture, eh?
Sound like I’m overlooking someone? Nope, I haven’t
forgotten AM stations. They’re about the only group I see benefiting
from this. And it could be a nifty benefit. Certainly audio fidelity
would improve.
We could see a nice resurgence of AM radio. Certainly it could
be the lifeline that helps save AM from being hit hard by satellite
radio … as both AM and FM may well end up be.
Ah-hah. We finally found a benefit that outweighs
the detriments for IBOC. Hoo-rah!
I guess only time will tell, eh? Because this is where the curmudgeon
behind the curtain puts away his crystal ball and gets back to pretending
to work.
Aaron Read isn’t an engineer, but he plays one on TV.
He says he spends far too much time at WBRS(FM) in Waltham, Mass.,
and Allston Brighton Free Radio instead of getting some real work
done. Reach him at aread@speakeasy.net.
RW welcomes other points of view.
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