[BC] My prediction for the future

[Phil Alexander]

On 9 Jul 2005 at 10:19, WFIFeng at aol.com wrote:

> clive at citiria.com writes:
> 
> > AM of course will cease to exist as its bandwidth won't compete.
> 
> Why do I have a feeling that this may not exactly come to pass?... granted, 
> many of the small-coverage "satellator" AM's will go the way of the Dodo, but 
> there may well still be a place for the more powerful "Clears" (which will 
> again become clears) as a means of quickly disseminating information to the masses 
> in the event of a "digital meltdown". There may also still be a place for 
> those few smaller stations that continue to provide relevant & local programming 
> to their communities.

AM will cease to exist by government regulation when 
there are enough digital capable receivers in the 
hands of listeners, or at least that is the plan 
that was announced at the beginning of the digital 
radio initiative at the FCC.

Technology changes. Look at cars where (until the EPA 
got involved) there was little government regulation 
involved in their development. The same might be said 
for home appliances and even houses themselves. We are
an innovative society and the pace of innovation can
be measured by the size of our population. More people,
more innovation. Technology has now reached a degree
of complexity that the average person simply is not
prepared to comprehend. Today, it's all "magic" as
Arthur C. Clarke described it in his well known quote.

Radio has been in a time warp for over 50 years on 
the MW band and over 40 years on the VHF band. The 
silicon revolution changed other electronics radically,
and the emergence of personal computers multiplied the 
effects of that change.

While I lament the passing of the diode detector in
its pure simplicity, analog technology is simply
obsolete by modern standards. Consider the phone 
system. Consider the electronics in the car you drive.
Like it or not, we live in a digital world, and
electronics equipment manufacturers are tooled to
build digital devices. Analog is nice, warm, fuzzy
and obsolete for all practical purposes. I don't
particularly like that because I grew up in an analog
world, but that's life. Be prepared for changes,
because nothing stays the same. Change is the only
constant in human endeavor.

What can we do with digital radio? We don't know. We
do know we can do as much with it as with analog, but
the extent to which we can innovate and grow the
technology is not yet clear. That puzzle is for the
next couple of generations. IBOC is only a step on
the way. Once it is fully deployed, its day is nearly
over.

One thing that is clear is the geographic size of the
USA, and the way population is scattered. There is
genuine need for something more than line of sight
broadcasting in many areas. From the standpoint of
national security, mass communications are essential.

MW transmission should not be allowed to die for this
reason alone. There are markets where AM now competes
successfully with FM. There will be markets where MW
will compete with VHF, and if the platform is digital,
they will compete on a more level playing field.

The next step after consolidation in business is 
spin-offs. In broadcasting, either the market itself,
or the government will, at some point, act to encourage
optimum use of spectrum, and that will bring with it
programming more attuned to the listeners. Because it
has become a less expensive medium, MW (formerly AM)
can become a more experimental medium for exploring
and innovating on the program side.

Don't underestimate the force of the market. There is
a reason that GE is where it is today and GM is where
it is when their fortunes were nearly the opposite
30 years ago. The reason is leadership, and it will
find radio so my crystal ball is optimistic.


Phil Alexander, CSRE, AMD
Broadcast Engineering Services and Technology 
(a Div. of Advanced Parts Corporation) 
Ph. (317) 335-2065   FAX (317) 335-9037





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