[BC] QUESTION FOR THE "MIND" MASSES

[Rich Wood]

------ At 07:28 PM 12/6/2005, Dave Schreyer wrote: -------

>How do you explain the necessity of IBOC for an AM talk radio station? Isn't
>digital radio better served for those stations who play music?

How often do you listen to talk radio? Agency commercials are usually 
stereo. Jingles are usually stereo. Bumper and theme music is 
generally stereo. Creative FM talk stations that have guests often 
slightly pan the host and guest off center. The biggest problem is 
talk hosts fighting for the far right channel. Talk stations often 
run sports. Watch a ball game on TV in stereo. Turn it to mono and 
see what a dramatic difference in excitement there is. For a creative 
person there are many reasons for stereo Talk stations. I can't 
recall seeing a relatively recent Talk installation that isn't 
stereo. They may be running the system in mono but it's capable of 
stereo with minor reprogramming. The infrastructure is there. 
Remember, stereo (or binaural) is the natural order of things. When 
they order children, every parent takes the two ears option.

WOR, New York, is one of the Talk stations that still has guests. 
Stereo is perfect for them. In many cases there may be two guests. 
Positioning them at different points in a soundstage makes a show 
more interesting and easier to follow without having to reintroduce 
each guest every time they speak.

>What a wonderfully DUMB idea to have high tech with AM talk radio! 
>Since when does
>talk radio on AM need the fancy high tech quality of IBOC?

I find it hard to consider something that craps all over its 
neighbors to be high tech. The saddest part of all this is that 
there's a far more dramatic improvement in AM IBUZ than there is in 
FM. FM's improvement is subtle and requires dropping decades old 
habits of loudness. Once a General Manager tunes across the dial and 
finds his competition is louder every engineer here knows the first 
directive will be to make it louder. Except for the few Classical 
stations left, gentle processing is an oxymoron.

>Who cares about why...its ludicrous!

Why? What's ludicrous is the damage IBUZ does to AM. What's ludicrous 
is that AM stations are launching into it knowing how destructive it is.

Rich


Rich Wood
Rich Wood Multimedia
Phone: 413-303-9084
FAX: 413-480-0010