Captain Hook and his Pirate Radio Buddies

“What are you doing there…with all that electronic gear on your boat?”

“Ayyyyy, Matey.  I’m runnin’ a pirate radio station.”

“Really!”

 

“You bet your lime barrel.  We are transmittin’ on 103.9 FM.  Look above the topsail.  You’ll see two bays of antenna peekin’ atcha.  We’re transmittin’ away.  Go back to your car, landlubber and tune us in.”

 

“Well, I’m afraid I can’t do that.  Seems you’re using the wrong verb tense.”

 

“What’s that ya’ say, Matey?”

 

“Wrong tense.  You’re not transmitting.  You were transmitting.  You’re shut down.  Now.  I’m from the enforcement bureau of the FCC and you were operating a pirate station.  Now you’re not.  See – look over there.  One of our staff just literally pulled the plug on 103.9 FM.”

 

“Go ahead.  Try.  I’ll be back on in a day.”

 

“Maybe, but that’ll make the fine that much bigger.  Hey!  Your parrot just ate my badge.”

 

I envision a conversation something like that.  Well, actually, nothing like that.  There are a few pirate stations on boats but those usually try to stay in international waters.  Most of them are on land – and around us.  [As an aside, if you have a chance to see Pirate Radio, do it.  Fun film.]

 

Some are relatively benign.  Those are the ones that operate on vacant channels, not really interfering with licensed stations but siphoning listeners from them.  Then there are the dirty birds, willfully and/or maliciously interfering with licensed signals or transmitting profane or indecent language and music at all hours.

 

It’s the FCC Rules and Regulations, a subset of the Code of Federal Regulations that permits stations to broadcast on allocated frequencies for which they are licensed.  Unless you’re operating under what’s called “Part 15” at extremely low power, you can’t flick the ON switch on a transmitter without a license.

 

For some time, the commission has been relatively, well, for want of a better term, “relaxed” in their enforcement of anti-piracy.  Part of that is the political clime but it’s more a function of reduced budgets and small field staffs. 

 

That said, it doesn’t mean they’re asleep at the switch.  This page shows the number of enforcement actions by state since 2003.  It’s not really clear what that means.  The action could be a “ticket” (violation), Notice of Apparent Liability (NAL otherwise spelled f-i-n-e), property seizure or even stronger action.  So, they’re out there.  Not tuning and listening like they used to (anyone remember the Allegan, Michigan monitoring station?) but certainly, if they get a call or two, they’ll do some level of investigating.

 

Well, a couple of folks complained awhile back¹and a couple of weeks ago, the commission announced a fine of $144,344 against an alleged pirate in North Miami, FL.  You can read the release here but, bottom-lining, these guys had been around the pirating block more than once.  So how many warnings before the camel’s back breaks? 

 

The question from a lot of people is, “What’s the big deal?”  After all, everyone should be allowed to voice his/her own opinions, play his/her music over the airwaves.  A great argument in the 1950’s but, today, specious at best. “80/90,” which vastly increased the number of FM stations across the country gave more and arguably varied voices.  Low Power FM (LPFM) added yet another level of stations, most of which really are operating in, as the Commission says, the Public Interest, Convenience and Necessity.

 

Also consider that, as you would guess, pirates don’t employ EAS equipment so if the nukes come, you won’t get the warning.

 

Despite all of this, the pirates are there.  Maybe it’s the thrill of evading the law.  Doubtful it’s monetary – while there are pirates out there selling advertising time on their ersatz station, it really can’t be much.²

 

However, if the commission is charged with protecting the airwaves for the public and that protection is extended to willful and harmful interference and impact on legal station listenership and revenue, then it’s time to enforce the law.  We could change the law but if you want to see anarchy in action, just change that one.  Since there’s no longer a rule that you must have a construction permit before buying a transmitter³, they’ll be on every corner.  Heck, they’re almost there now.

 

Federal Communications Commissioner Michael O’Rielly had a great summary in a 2015 FCC blog.  Basically, he said pirate radio is not innocuous, It’s not innocent and it’s not even multicultural.  It’s a violation of law.

 

There may be some angry emails coming my way but, seriously, the rules/laws are there.   If you want to do your Part 15 partying, go ahead.  But beyond that 100 milliwatts, turn it off.  Oh, and, please – disconnect that lousy mini-FM transmitter you’re using to feed your smartphone audio to your car radio.  I hear you at every intersection.

 

¹The complaints actually started in 2012 but the activity began years before!

²I checked Ad Age.  They don’t track pirate radio revenue

³Just go to ebay.com and search for FM transmitter.  And while you’re perusing, keep in mind that a high percentage of these do not comply with US emissions rules so not only are they causing interference on their tuned frequency but at numerous other frequencies, too.  Then call to mind the frequency assignments just above the FM band:  air traffic control.  Just sayin’.

FCC and Cable Set Top Boxes. Big Deal?

My exposure to cable began in college.  Yes, cable was around then.

 

When I moved off campus, we figured out that a Yagi or LP antenna pointed at the [what was then twinlead] cable trunk could get a decent signal. 

Cable was wide open – any subscriber (or Yagi owner) could watch all the channels on the line.  About that time, on the tech side, they switched to coaxial cable, forcing us to cough up our $1.25 a month and, on the program side, the FCC flew in the face of cable’s original raison d'être – providing over-the-air television to homes outside the reception area of any existing station.  This change in philosophy – more like a 180 degree flip – said that, at that point, cable operators were no longer barred from originating programming, they were encouraged (shortly to be required) to do so.

Up to that point, cable was, in fact, an extension of broadcast television stations’ coverage areas.  But as the townies said where I first experienced it, “Not na-more.”  Local operations began originating programming.  Most of it was shows like “Furls and Twirls,” a half-hour weekly feature of the local girls’ pompon group, a painful-to-watch single camera production – and I mean single “edit-in-the” camera production where the titles were inserted by panning to signs held by one of the kids and swish pans got you from one angle to another. 

Down the road, though, Time-Life would try Home Box Office (1972) in Allentown – well, actually Wilkes-Barre, – PA.  Telstar had been up for 10 years but even with the succeeding communications satellites, prices for transponders were beyond reach of all but the biggest companies.  That meant HBO was local. 

Down the road a little farther came the satellite-delivered channels and by 1983, when a battalion of cable rules forced all sorts of changes, these channels were solidly entrenched and looking for local cable systems to carry them. 

All the while, those cable systems were looking for programming that would attract more subscribers…and some system of making sure only subscribers could avail themselves of cable’s products and services. 

Programming was growing.  Bill Rasmussen and Getty had launched ESPN so, if you were, at the time, interested in the local high school swimming championships from Bristol, CT, well, you had reason to subscribe.  Then again, if you liked old movies and reruns, WTBS out of Atlanta run by that Turner guy was perfect. 

 

As the programming grew, so did the price.  Along with that came the impulse to, well, “share” a cable connection where someone paid for it and, after Larry left, they immediately installed splitters and amps feeding neighbors and, in a couple of cases, more distant friends.

 

The cable folks took steps to protect their investment.  They didn’t/don’t want siphoning of their services.  They have to protect the copyright of their content providers. So they created encryption which protected the distributed signals.  They also created tiers of service – packages that particular demos of consumers might pay for.  You can imagine the discussion: 

 

“OK, here’s one we can sell.  Let’s link all the ESPNs, OLN, NFL, NBA and the other sports networks in a tier.”

 

“Sure.  But add in Baby Channel and OWN.”

 

“Why.”

 

“Why?  If you have to ask why, you’re fired.  Harrumph.  If we do that, we can generate more per-subscriber billing.  Good for us even with a fraction of it going back to the content provider.”

 

And that conversation basically brings us to today.  Sure, Michael Powell is in there with a la carte proposals.  And “must-carry” and associated retransmission rules have taken punches from all sides, but, as far as access, cable has evolved the way the cable industry pushed it.

 

About the only “innovation” that could allow for more consumer control of the set top is the commission’s ruling in August of 2011 which ordered cable companies to adapt to CableCARD encryption.  This would allow receiver manufacturers to produce products that – through an inserted CableCARD – could display all of the content provided by a cable company without an additional set top box. 

 

We’re free!  We’re free!  Well, not so fast.  The cable company still controls the CableCARD and your access to their system.  Oh, and receiver manufacturers haven’t adopted CableCARD universally.

 

So, cable users are, by and large, captive to their systems, including the set top boxes which decode and display the selected channels.  Even the DVR’s are integrated for the most part with add-ons like TIVO still depending on the cable subscription to operate and using the CableCARD decoding in order to operate.

 

It’s a bit ironic that a former cable guy, Tom Wheeler  is moving forward with the separation of cable and the set top box.  The intent this go-‘round, put forth on February 18, is not to give the consumer free run of a cable company’s product.  Instead, it is simply to break the stranglehold that the cable systems have on set top boxes and, hopefully, reduce set top box costs to consumers.

 

It’s a good thing, if not an easy one.  Not too many years ago, the cable topology was different.  All of the channels the system supplied appeared at your end of the cable.  The cable box was then programmed to allow reception of the package you paid for.  (Remember when you changed the channel and it was there?  When you changed it?  Not 5 seconds later?) ¹  They were addressable by the cable company and the package could be changed by them.  New systems are constructed so that only the channels you are watching are sent down the line to you.  What a bandwidth savings!  They’re encrypted, of course but you get them.  Nonetheless, it requires some really fancy integration to allow outside products to be employed as the go-between in the cable/receiver chain.

 

It’s back to basics – ensuring that you pay for what you get and that copyrights are protected.  It’s just a little harder to do.  In reality, though, the chip, once developed is only a few cents.  That, and the competition among suppliers, should bring consumer costs for set top boxes way down.

 

Well, then, why would the cable guys want to stop that?  First, take a look at your cable bill.  Are you paying a monthly fee for DVR’s or other set top boxes?  There’s reason number one.  But number two is the big one.  Third-party set top boxes can integrate cable content with Internet and other locally-originated programming.  To cable, this is pulling on that snag in a Banlon® shirt…possibly unraveling the whole sleeve.

 

Here’s how:  The box puts cable product on the same plane as a Hulu, Sony, and other independent and “over-the-top” (OTT) content providers.  If manufacturers make access to any given channel, say Netflix, Amazon, USA Network and CBS equally easy, the wheels start turning in the heads of the cable content providers.  “Why?  Why am I providing content to cable companies?  I can deliver direct to home.”  If I’m CBS, I don’t need affiliates feeding cable systems.  If I’m PBS, I can self-fund.  Seriously, do the math on 5¢ per view of Sesame Street country-wide.

 

Schedules go out the window.  Mozart in the Jungle launched when it’s released and gets watched whenever.  It may be pay-per-view, an all-you-can-eat subscription or sponsored but you make the decision.  I’ll go with my line one more time – no one cares what kind of car brings the pizza.  They care about the pizza.  And people are pretty good at finding the best pizza.  (Ray’s Famous Pizza, 7th Avenue, NYC and Pizano’s Pizza, West Division St., Chicago.   LA?  Sorry. I don’t do sushi pizza.)

 

For cable the ruling’s a nightmare.  Being forced to help enable your competition.  Sorta like CBS and the NFL network.  How do they keep control?  Price cuts?  No- or low-charge set top boxes?  A la carte?

 

For the consumer, once we figure out the boxes, we can have a lot of choices, and the price will probably come down, or at least not rise so quickly.

 

Hey, for promotion departments, it’s a godsend.  Those who figure out how to grow tune-in will rise to the top and there’ll be a lot bigger promotion departments for content providers getting the word out.

 

A quick word about one other group who stands to lose:  Advertisers.  There should be a lot fewer ad units available inside programming.  Maybe that’s wishful thinking but millennials specifically and Internet users in general don’t like the intrusions of standard in-program advertising.  They will certainly not abide by a pay business model that also supports the current level of broadcast/cable of non-program material (16+ minutes per hour). 

 

So look for this:  Advertisers (or agencies) develop their own programming distribution systems.  Note to large packaged goods guy:  We told you to do this in 1985.  You didn’t listen.  Now it’s going to cost you by a factor of 100.  Some other guys were a little smarter and stuck their toes in.  You may have to go big time – free “channels” – with advertising.

 

The available third-party boxes haven’t sold well.  But that’s because they really haven’t been promoted heavily and the cable systems have made their installation unnecessarily complicated.  Combine those reasons with the level of Internet-provided content and it’s understandable that third-party boxes haven’t taken off.  But hang in.  This ruling may help.  Internet-distributed content is on the rise.  And I’m sure there’s at least one entrepreneur out there willing to design a box that meets consumer expectations.  With that and the cooperation of cable operators in attacking their own industry, this might just take off.  Did you read that last sentence?

 

 ¹ To be fair, this is a combination of the request/fulfill and the digitization process

AM Revitalization

This one's a little tech and a lot of history...

It was the late 50’s.  Yes that would be the nineteen-50’s.  Living about a mile away from a set of radio towers, I ran a four- or five-foot length of wire to one end of a crystal diode, came out of the diode with a .01 to ground and into our Webcor® tape recorder. 

 

This rig gave me some of the best recording off-the-air that I’ve ever had.  The station happened to be “beautiful music” – yes, on AM – and I think my parents liked it more than I did.  Ah, Sinatra, Clooney, Chris Conner.  Perfection, except for the occasional dropout; you could tell when the transmitter op was reading base or common point currents.  

Alan Freed
(courtesy R&R Hall of Fame)

 About that time, Alan Freed at WJW (and later, WINS), Murray “The K” Kaufmann at WINS, along with Cousin Brucie, Dick Biondi, Charlie Tuna, Robert Morgan, Larry Lujack and Wolfman Jack were driving those blowtorches up to peak power outputs of over 300 kilowatts¹ as Elvis, Buddy Holly, Fats Domino, The Beatles and many, many more made their impact on America.  

 

Somehow, we all began to believe that louder was better.  And I participated first hand, as part of more than one rock group, in the great speaker proliferation of the ‘60’s.  If you went on a gig without at least 4 columns and double sets of speakers (one or two heads, didn’t matter) for each of Leo Fender’s Showman and Bassman and, later, Ampeg’s SVT amps in use, you were amateurs.  Nobody had enough amp power for all those speakers so they were overdriven.  



Robert W. Morgan
(courtesy R&R Hall of Fame)

Of course the flattopping blew a lot of voicecoils but speakers were cheap.  And, besides, it was quantity, not quality.

 Aside:  Kudos to Ampeg who did, in fact, print warnings about hearing damage. Like any of us paid attention to that.  

 

Well, overdriving amps became the norm.  First, for loudness but as we became accustomed to the sound, we liked it.  Witness the stomp boxes specifically designed to create distortion.  Usually a preamp, a couple of diodes across the line and a simple amp to overdrive the input of the power amp.  Who knew a 12AX7 could draw grid current.

I know, I know…AM revitalization…

 

Leo Fender's "Showman" Amp
(Fender Catalog, 1960)

The music was getting louder.  And so were radio stations.  “Better” compressors, limiters that flat-topped without too much overshoot, and positive modulation peaks up to 125 percent² started the loudness war, I think to see which station could drive the voice coil of a Delco® speaker up out of the dash and through the windshield of that ‘56 Chevy.  Oh, and don’t forget the reverb.  There were stations with Hammond organ reverbs functioning in the signal chain full time.

 

One tech I know commented that if the jock ever stopped talking, he would have been sucked into the microphone and pushed out the antenna by the signal processing.

 

So the loudness war continued.  And, as it did, three additional things happened:

 

·        The Japanese 7 transistor radio debuted.  (some used 8 but the 8^th was really used as the envelope detector, as such, a two-terminal diode, but the FTC didn’t police the “8” claim)

·        More AM stations came on line as a result of rules changes and better directional array design

·        FM Stereo was launched

The portable radios and additional stations worked negatively in tandem.  More stations plus the high levels of modulation, often trying to exceed 100 percent negative and creating lots of splatter, meant it was harder to avoid interference.  Because of that and the inexpensive design of the radios, the IF’s in those little 9v battery eaters were very narrow.  That meant poor high frequency response.  Of course, the 1½ inch speaker had great bass response, maybe down to around 300 Hz.

 

Len.  I mean it.  AM Revitalization!

 

OK.  Next came singles – 45’s – pressed in stereo.  Now there’s a marketing difference for a radio station.  Well, an FM station. 

 

Since ’61, FM had had stereo capability courtesy of Zenith and GE.  The early transmissions were more novelty than music.  A ping pong match with the ball going across the listening panorama or an orchestra but with each instrument mixed hard left or right and no center information.  But music made its way onto FM and kiddies followed.  I think it was a lot like UHF television.  Nobody would buy a converter to tune UHF but after the all-channel act, it was the kids who found it first.

 

And such was the case with FM.  Easy listening on the 50+ side and rock & roll for 12 to 34.  And the listenership ratio of AM to FM began to tilt to FM.  AM looked for new formats.  All news, “oldies” (though not that old at the time), and a bit of news talk.  When the Fairness Doctrine went away in 1987³, it was off to the races for AM talk radio.  It was perfect.  AM listenership skewed older and the content – human voice – matched the low response medium.

 

Along the way, people grumbled about AM’s frequency response.  While most stations were transmitting flat well beyond 10kHz⁴, the receivers, totally out of control of the FCC, got worse.  With television growing, radio listening became more car-centric.  And most auto manufacturers didn’t care about AM.  Nor did the aftermarket folks.  

 

For car listening, AM fit well.  Low bandwidth actually allowed it to cut through the road [and screaming kid] noise better.  So did the heavy compression and limiting.  Note, though, that FM programmers weren’t far behind in signal processing.  

 

But there were other demons lurking out there.  Power line noise was growing.  At lower, AM frequencies, its strength was/is much greater than up in the FM band.  Besides, FM is nearly immune to impulse noise.

 

It doesn’t stop there.  FM portable transistor radios became available.  The FM band happens to have a quarter wave equal to about 2½ feet.  That made a telescoping antenna or an earphone cable a pretty effective antenna compared to the directional AM loopstick.

 

And, of course, along came AM stereo.  Well, sort of.  The commission approved the Magnavox system – one that was almost universally derided as being the worst of the systems proposed.  After years of in and outfighting, the commission threw up its arms and essentially turned it over to the marketplace, washing their hands.  Motorola’s C-QUAM and Harris’ system became de facto standards while Leonard Kahn’s ISB concept fell by the wayside.  Doesn’t matter. 

 

The point is that AM stereo was stalled.  C-QUAM broke into the lead when GM et. al. put the Motorola system in their automobiles.  It caused Harris to cave and embrace C-QUAM and the rest to carp about how bad C-QUAM was.    But it took from then to ’93 – a full 13 years – for the FCC to anoint C-QUAM as the standard.  “Juuuuuuuust a bit outside.” – Bob Uecker, Major League.

 

And, once again, with tribute to Billy May, “But wait, there’s more.”  In trying to eliminate splatter and compensate for the poor frequency response, the National Radio Systems Committee proposed two very important changes:
 

·         Preemphasis – boosting the high frequencies on transmission

·         Brick wall filtering to limit frequency response to 10kHz

To some extent, preemphasis has worked.  But really, when you have IF circuits that barely pass 3kHz, you can boost your signal at 8 or 9kHz as much as you want, they're not getting through to the speakers.  So you wind up with a lot of wasted modulation.  Some chains recognized that and purposely limited their audio to as low as 5kHz, opting for more modulation in the range that receivers actually reproduced.  

 

And the filtering was interesting.  In the mid-90’s digital filtering was iffy at best.  Analog filtering was multi-section and with it came phase shifts, envelope distortion and any number of other anomalies.  Much of that has been eliminated now but the early NRSC boxes were scary.

 

So, have we screwed up the medium enough?  Well, if I’m asking the question, you know the answer.  We added IBOC – in-band-on-channel – digital transmission.  Yes. In band.  As in right on top of the analog signal.  Granted, the method is ingenious.  Flopping the phase of the carriers above and below the analog carrier “nearly” cancels the digital trash that a typical envelope detector sees.  Cool.  

 

Not so fast.  Go up a channel.  Take 710 WOR.  That lower sideband digital information extends into 700 – that’s WLW – territory but a receiver tuned to 700 gets only the lower sideband digital carriers of 710.  Nothing to cancel them out.  More hash than a Van de Graaff generator in winter.

 

Not to be outdone in the noise department, the government – yeah, those guys responsible for policing power line noise – added new regulations regarding illumination, outlawing first 100 watt incandescent lamps and progressing downward in power.  They’re supposed to be replaced by compact fluorescent or LED lamps.  In almost all of the commercial units, the power supplies use some form of switching.  You can tell the switching frequency by tuning up the AM band and counting the “buzzes.”  Regardless of the number, the interference to AM reception is horrendous.  

 

They’re supposed to comply with Part 15 of the rules but I don’t think any do.  In fact, it’s apparent that most computers and electrical appliances don’t.  But the rule is, by and large, ignored unless someone really forces the issue with the commission.  Even then, they have gone after small equipment manufacturers while power companies operate without oversight.

 

And most recently, we added the option of MDCL, Modulation Dependent Carrier Level which will save stations money on their power bills.  Fortunately, this scheme does not significantly degrade the detected audio signal.

 

So (finally I get to the point) we amble along to today, well, about a year ago.  FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai voiced concern for AM’s viability.  Commissioner Mignon Clyburn joins him.  Together they push for a look at revitalizing AM.  And, in October of last year (2013) the commission issues a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking aimed at revitalization.  

 

It asked pointed questions and put forth basic ideas, calling for comments about improving the plight of AM.  Concerns include the clear channels (does any station need that level of contour protection anymore) to the local daytimers (should they all get FM translators to improve their lot and allow them nighttime service)  IBOC.  Should it stay?  Does programming matter?  

 

An interesting side note to all if this is that younger demos seem intent on quantity versus quality in their music.  Ask them about their iPod or phone and they’ll tell you they have X thousand songs.  Investigate further and you’ll find that the bit rates are abysmal from a quality standpoint.  Apparently those compression artifacts are as musical to them as the distortion we all grew to love 50 years ago.  If that’s the case, maybe they’ll gravitate back to an  AM station playing their preferred music.

 

Comments closed about 10 days ago and the floor is open for rebuttal.  You can comment but only to the extent that it concerns already-filed comments.  Sort of like cross examination.  If it didn’t come up in direct, you can’t introduce it now.

 

After all of this, where will it shake out?  On one side, there is the “back to the past” group, returning AM to full analog.  The other side says wipe it all out and go 100 percent digital.  That second POV is pretty powerful when you consider the bit rates possible if one didn’t have to protect the analog signal.  It would just about put the sound on equal footing with FM. 

However, the downside is large:  it makes hundreds of millions of radios obsolete.  Further, AM can be demodulated by just about any nonlinear device – even a piece of rusty fence.  Remember that simple diode I talked about a bit ago?  In a major catastrophe, that could mean the difference between life and death for any number of people.

 

If you want to check it out or even file a response, start here:

 http://www.fcc.gov/document/commission-adopts-nprm-revitalize-am-broadcast-radio-service 

or do a search for FCC 13-139 .

 

It’s fun riding this one out – just to see where it’s going.

¹To be accurate, Wolfman for a while actually transmitted out of Cuidad Acuna, Mexico with a power of 250 kilowatts.  That’s 1 megawatt PEP. (100% modulation)

²After the FCC put a limit on positive modulation.  The action was brought about by a certain Louisville, KY station [OK, WAKY] ordering a Gates transmitter capable of 160 percent – or more – positive modulation.

³My opinion, the Fairness Doctrine wasn’t really fair.  Remember, it wasn’t about equal time; it was about time for opposing views.  Too often, a station would take a position, do an editorial and then immediately go out and find the most stupid, inarticulate individual to interview for the opposing view, further cementing their POV.  Go ahead.  Say it didn’t happen.

⁴Check 73.47 of the Rules, 1972 edition.

Everyone! Stay CALM! I'm in charge here. - Alexander Haig

The CALM Act. 

 

I really didn’t think I’d see a lot about it but it seems the CALM act is everywhere. Yes, today’s the deadline for implementation and, no doubt, tomorrow the Notices of Apparent Liability will start flying.

 

I’ll be up-front with you:  I’ve written about this before and about the futility of passing laws about anything that starts with “psycho”, in this case, psychoacoustics, especially when trying to rely on machines to control the outcome.  Might as well outlaw a disease; in a similar vein, it doesn’t matter since physics behaves as it does and doesn’t pay much attention to congress.

 

More on that later.  I want to discuss this little thing called compliance.  You see, not only must stations comply with the rules, they must document their compliance.  A number of operations maintain programming for 90 days after airing.  Others, as much as 2 years.

 

The 90 days is the minimum retention period and during that time, the station must be able to provide any segment of the broadcast day to an inspector or government representative should they request it.

 

That means that if a viewer challenges a telecast – maybe he/she heard a commercial that was too loud – the commission can come back and say, “Give us 5 minutes on either side of the commercial and the commercial, itself.  Oh, and send the log of the dialnorm on the audio.”  Huh?  Yep.  You have to be able to step up and provide the data/metadata that supports your claim that you were legal at the time.

 

Stations are keeping the logs for longer and longer periods because of the possibility of complaint.  But wait, there’s more.  It’s not just CALM compliance.  It’s everything else.  Closed captioning?  You don’t want to be challenged.  Political ads?  Same thing.  Contests and all else, too.  You really want to be able to pull up the goods, send ‘em off to the commission with a note like, “See?!”

 

That’s a “fur piece” as Bob Shreve used to say on the SchoenlingAll-Night Theater, from the old audio or VHS loggers.  It requires much more.  And, son of a gun, there are a couple of devices out there that’ll do it and more.

 

Last nite, a bunch of us got the inside scoop from Ken Dillard at Digital Nirvana, Inc.  Now I don’t know how they decided on that name – maybe it means somebody with all 1’s on their bank account number.  That aside, these guys make the Monitor IQ box.  Yes, there are others out there.   This box is particularly intriguing.  It can do it all.  And more.  Ken explained how it integrates with sales, programming, legal, and engineering.  First, you can watch all the stations in the market.  Then, as it archives, you can pull up any segment and look at it – content, captioning, CALM, and (in metered markets) ratings.  

 

You have to think about watching a sportscast running against other stations in the market and easily spotting what keeps folks around and what drives them away…overnight.  This is not a cheap box, but given all the new rules and the fines that can be incurred, it’s cheap insurance.

 

And now for my favorite topic:  the audio, itself.  Let’s all pick dialnorm -24.  Cool.  Our processors are going to take everything to -24.  That’s cool, too, but, first do they really know what’s going on around them?  When Martha and John are whispering sweet nothings on the porch swing, should the processing really take the following commercial down to that level?  As it brings it up, it creates a different mood.  Is that OK with the advertiser?  How does it change the spot?  And what happens to the louder one after it?  Oh, and did I pay for a particular level of modulation when I bought the commercial time?

 

Let’s go farther.  What if (as I’ve written about before) the mix has an overabundance of highs or lows?  What are you going to do?  The system says dialog is the benchmark.  Well,  just the simplest look at an oscilloscope while listening to dialog tells you that there isn’t a 1:1 relationship between the actual power in a piece of audio and the apparent loudness.  But that’s exactly what we’re asking a processor to look for and act upon.

 

So, when that 5.1 mix comes barreling through and totally masks the dialog, what’s going to give?  Well, as they say in the retirement home, “Depends.”

 

And that means that every mix is different and it’ll be the psychoacoustic elements that will cue the viewer as to whether the sound is balanced from scene to scene.  Once again, you can process it like crazy but until you can teach the machine to listen like a human, it’s going to get it wrong a good part of the time.  Check the link below.  Read it closely.  If you don’t see any problems, you didn’t read it closely!

 

And when you realize that most of the ATSC parameters for CALM and dialnorm are based on those developed in Europe (including France, the folks that gave us SECAM), you also know that it means stations will be compliant – and still sound bad.  How do I know?  Take a trip to London, Frankfurt or Rome.  Listen.   Case closed.

 

But, compliance is the goal so, congratulations to all the techs who have been slaving over the past months to get their stations to that point.  We’ll be listening...on receivers...all of which will vary and will interpret audio and its metadata differently, thereby creating a [vastly] different listening experience for each receiver owner.

 

ATSC’s CALM and DIALNORM

TV's Back to the Future II

Well, the sequel is never as good as the original.  But, I wrote about Back to the Future before.  There's lots of news.

 

The FCC’s TV auction plan is in place.  If you’re not familiar with it and you’re A) a broadcaster, B) an advertiser, C) an agency person or, D) a viewer who likes HD television, you might want to get familiar with it.

 

Here’s the executive summary:   

·    Over-the-air television takes a lot of the radio frequency spectrum

·    The FCC wants more spectrum allotted to personal communications services like wireless Internet/broadband.  They want to be able to auction off spectrum to increase revenue to the government

·    The FCC has proposed allowing telecasters to combine their services onto a single channel, freeing up spectrum.  For this, each telecaster would receive a payment
 

Hey!  That’s pretty neat.  Let’s get channels 7 & 9 & 13* to combine inside one channel, say, “7”.  They’d keep their own identities, branding and other associated equity – even their number – but they’d all be contained in the channel that was formerly allocated solely to the owners of “7”.

 

That means that the frequencies that “9” and “13” occupied are now vacated and can be reassigned for PCS – through auction.  And, per the commission, the broadcasters so “sacrificing” their spectrum, will be rewarded financially.

 

Still cool?  Do you see everyone as a winner?  As the old army joke goes, “Not so fast, Mullany.”

 

When you put two or three stations inside a single channel, something has to give.  That give is on signal quality.  Without going into detail, it means that HD evaporates.  Under the current – and currently discussed – systems, there’s no not enough room inside 6mHz to cram multiple HD channels.  In fact, you won’t see two 720i signals inside the 6mHz channel without some significant adjustment to coding.

 

Fine, Len.  What does that have to do with me?

 

I guess first, the issue is that over-the-air 1080i and 720p – and maybe 720i may disappear from stations which choose to band together in a single channel.  With 8VSB, we already stuff 10 pounds of, uh, stuff in a 5 pound bag.  So there’s not much room for the higher quality signals.

 

Now that may be ameliorated by the fact that broadcasters could still supply the higher-definition signal to cable system headends, telcos, and to DTH satellite uplinks.  So subscribers to these services could still see HD.  But for the 20 or so percent who view over-the-air, well, thanks for playing.  Your HD set will do its best to upconvert 480.

There is (are) a slew of issues:

 

Is there a conflict of interest on the part of broadcasters which own or are owned by cable systems?  Does Comcast care if over-the-air viewers get 480i?  Heck, that should drive more viewers to cable for the quality.

 

Does anyone really care about over-the-air?  Maybe broadcast television becomes like AM – lower quality, poorer resolution and looking for a niche that draws viewers.

 

Does broadcast turn to the PCS guys to distribute their product on portable devices?  If so, who needs hi-def on a small screen?  But then, as devices grow in size, there’s that need for higher resolution – which 480 won’t be able to deliver.

 

And what about the future.  If you’re new to this issue, you’re probably new to 4K, too, which is Ultra HD.  The concept – which was viewable at 2012 NAB – provides for a standard that is 3840x2160 in resolution, or about 5 times (linear or over 20 times total) the resolution of 480 and twice that of 1080.  Like I said, there’s already 10 pounds of stuff in the bag, so unless the compression scheme includes instructions like, “Imagine a lake with a boat on it…” there’s no way we’ll ever see 4K over the air.  You can read more here.

 

There are plenty more – you can think through them.   They all spin a pretty sad story for a medium.  But do we really need over-the-air distribution?  Is it OK to forsake the 20 percent who view via OTA so that more people can get broadband?

 

Just follow the money.

·    The PCS and cellular lobbies are far stronger than broadcast

·    The NAB is living somewhere in the 1930’s.  I hear they’re considering an award to Vladimir Zworykin

·    Cable and broadcast integration and cross ownership means the broadcasters have less to lose.  In fact, if they take the bait, there may be lots of money for them

·    The demos of those 20 percent, well, pretty low importance
 

In its announcement, the FCC says that it, “…expects a healthy and vibrant broadcasting industry to thrive after the auction…”  which is a lot like telling a patient that, “you’ll be much better without that lousy heart and those kidneys.”

 

They held a workshop – Broadcaster LEARN.  You can check out the video on the NPRM for the auction here.

 

In the meantime, keep in mind that the average viewer has no idea this is happening. No thought that part of the value of HD is being rendered obsolete almost immediately after the FCC – and congress – mandated its implementation in the first place.  And they won’t figure it out until the resolution drops like a rock and they’re told by their local station that they need to subscribe to cable, telco, satellite, some paid service in order to get those lines of resolution.

 

*Note that currently, those channel numbers are carry-overs from analog days.  Your channel “7” may have been on the actual channel 7 (174-180mHz) but moved to another 6mHz block yet through channel virtualization, everyone