[BC] 4th and long, IBOC on the 45 yard line

[WFIFeng@aol.com]

In a message dated 07/27/2005 4:37:58 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
barry at oldradio.com writes:

> >If I had a lousy performing 1kw AM and had the chance for a 10kW FM in an
>  >expanded band, I'd jump at the chance.
>  
>           But if you had 5000 listeners, and there were
>           only 3 radios on the new band, what would
>           you do?

Simulcast as long as possible, and promote the dickens out of it on the air. 
Perhaps do some kind of deal with a manufacturer to get discounts on volume 
purchases, and start selling those radios to listeners at a very small markup, 
just to get them out there. On-air giveaways would factor into it, as well. 
Tie-ins to large retailers could work, too.

Expanding the FM band downward seems to be the absolute best win-win scenario 
of all. Eventually, vacate the AM band of all but the bigger stations, so 
that the original AM band would become a wide-area service for news, information, 
and emergency/weather bulletins, etc. The biggest winners in such a scenario 
would be the Daytimers, since we would have genuine 24/7 service. Next would 
be the "graveyard" channels, since they would now have true local service areas 
that would not "shrink" every night due to intense co-channel crud like they 
have, now. The Mom-and-Pop operations could benefit, too, by either moving to 
the new band, or by the reduction of interference on the old AM band.

They could also designate a number of frequencies exclusively to LPFM 
stations. What a win-win scenario this would be for so many.

It makes too much sense, tho, so what are the chances of seeing something 
like this happen? Probably only slightly better than zero. We can dream, though.

Willie...