Calling a "Forum" Customer Service

Somewhere, a marketing guy with a little [enough to be dangerous] IT knowledge or a smart IT guy [with zero customer service experience] came up with a terrific idea:  "Let's create a forum for our product.  It's a win-win (hate that reference).  We let users solve their own problems.  We cut down on the calls to our service department, and we get great product feedback."

 

Really?  Really!?  That's what you want?

 

It must be.  Because a lot of companies have embraced the forum as their sole customer service option.  If you want a list, just search for "companies+len+won't+do+business+with" and you'll find a number of them.

 

I recently was called to consult to such a company.  After they said that they were firm in retaining that method of communication, I passed.

"Do you guys ever read the forum?" I asked.

"Sure.  Uh, our webmaster does."

"And what does he tell you?"

Boldly, "We get a weekly report!"

"What does that tell you?"

 

"...how many people joined the forum that week, how many returned and how many posts."

 

"What about content?"

 

With reserve, the reply was, "Uh, Jim, what else?"

 

Jim replies, "Well, when Tim [webmaster] reviews it, if he sees something interesting, he sends it to me."

 

"And you're the marketing guy?" I ask.

 

"Yep."

 

"So, what do you see that's interesting?"

 

Now, proud, Jim speaks loudly.  "Are you kidding?  It's a wealth of information.  The feedback (there's that magic word they love to quote) tells me if we're saying the right things in our ads and to our distributors."

 

"Nice.  What about problems - say two or three people who can't get a solution to a problem so they go bonkers on your product online?"

 

Here's a great retort:  "Our manuals have so much detail...everything's addressed.  And we make them available online."

 

I wanted to say, "Are you nuts?" but managed to utter, "I don't understand.  If everything's answered in the manuals, why maintain the forums?"

 

This just keeps getting better...

 

"Because people are stupid."

 

That was where I knew I needed to distance myself from this group of cetrioli. (Shadrools for you folks in Jersey.)

 

But I stuck around because it was getting to be fun.  "What about extra-site exposure?"

 

"Huh?"

 

"Negatives about your company or a product on other sites.  Ratings on Amazon and other sites?  Ratings on sales sites like Home Depot, Lowe's, Penney's, whatever.  How about complaints.com?"  I rattled off a couple more.  Do you know what's there?  I mean, my experience tells me that those ratings are much more important than anything you say on your site or in a thirty."

 

Silence.

 

"How would you value a 2-star rating on an Amazon sales page versus a negative post on your forum?"

 

A little more silence.  My mind shot to My Cousin Vinny and the line, "I'm done with this guy."  It took many years but I've learned to keep those thoughts to myself.  It's still fun to think it.

 

Full disclosure:  Scope+Focus, Inc. operates Emperor's Valet, a group that does an in-depth research for negatives on a company.  Everything from the mainstream ratings mentioned above to nasties as would appear in someone's blog or facebook post.  It's not a tough thing, luckily I have a guy - everyone needs a guy - who wrote a really neat search algorithm.

 

That said, I was going to do a search and get back to them with it as a freebie but sometimes you just think hell with it, let 'em languish.

 

Now if you guys in Jacksonville are reading this, well, now you know why we didn't hit it off. 

And for the rest, please!  I'm doing my usual Rodney Dangerfield begging.  If you're relying on a forum to take care of your customer service, don't move.  You're standing on a land mine.  Well, maybe you should move.  It's gonna go off either way.

If You Want Visitors, You Have to Prep for Them

Seriously.  If you had a restaurant with a faulty front door that made it hard for diners to enter, would you not have it fixed immediately?  Or if the phone went out and you couldn’t book reservations or take carry out orders?  You wouldn't be standing on the desk of your telephone service provider?

 

And yet, multiple points in your site can have the same deleterious effect on the bottom line.  I once again repeat my cry, “Don’t take the word of your web marketing or IT person.  Check out your site in depth.  Place orders.  Contact the 'contacts.'"  Even look at the products or models that are featured.  You may be surprised.

Here’s what I see on a pretty regular basis: 

·     404 errors.  When someone gets a “Page not found.” it stops them in their tracks.  “Negative brand contact,” we would call it back in the 1400’s.  Today that often is enough to send the visitor off to another site

·         Forms that don’t work

o   “Cute” departures from name, address, etc. that force people out of the expected for no apparent reason

o   Forms that delete on linking…someone fills out a form and clicks “next” and you tell them they forgot to X and send them back to a now-empty page that they spent time completing

o   Asking for unnecessary information.  I will take it this far:   if you ask for a zip code before you ask for city, A) you’ve departed from the norm (see bullet 1, above) and B) if you have their zip, you know their city – it applies to a lot of those boxes

·    Scripts:  Seems everyone takes high speed Internet for granted.  Page weight apparently went the way of the buggy whip.  So designers dump all sorts of scripts – java and other – onto a page.  Most users, especially mobile ones, don’t have browsers set to map videos, images or scripts.  So the page takes forever and continually hops around the screen.  Amateurish and annoying.  Too often I get the dialog box that says, “A long-running script is preventing page from loading.”  Are you kidding?  Why don’t you post someone at the front door who holds up their hand preventing shoppers from entering.  Same result. 

·     Login confirmations:  You have someone log in.  They don’t remember that they’ve been to your site before.  They try to register and are told that that user name or email address is already registered.  You send them to a “forgot whatever” page.  Then, you make them re-enter the information they already entered.  (Not smart) and then you tell them an email has been sent to that address, and it doesn’t get sent.   (Happened to me yesterday.  Tried 3 times.  Never got an email.  Probably not going back.

·    Contacts:  If you’re taking the cheesy way out, that is, your database folks convinced you that “Contacts” is a great place to grow your database, change that thinking.  Sure, you’ll grow your database, but don’t make that the goal.  Make helping the customer the goal.  Don’t:

o   Force them into categories (silos for you MBA folks) with dropdowns on topic

o   Make them give you their life history.  If you’re selling the product they want, you’ll get that down the line

o   Offer only a form.  Give them an email opportunity

o   Tell them you usually respond within 24 hours and then take 3 days or, worse, not respond

o   I’ll reiterate – dump the form information if they have to return to it because they didn’t do things in the order you want 

Not worth your time to load Xenu or a similar link tracker and check out the site?  Would it be worth $50,000?  If that’s what you’re paying someone to tell you it’s right when it isn’t, it could be what it’s costing you – not to mention the lost revenue.  So do it.  Get an independent review or, better yet, do it yourself.  Check out the site on different browsers, a desktop, laptop, a couple of tablets and a lot of different phones.  If you see something you don’t like, remind yourself that thousands, maybe millions, of folks would use these very devices to visit you.

 

If your site is your business, it’s not micromanaging to check it out – to see how you as a customer experience it.  If you don’t like it, fix it.  No, you don't want to find out any of this, right?  Open an ostrich farm.

[Addendum:  after posting I received a great email from a friend.  Here's a suggestion to try, if you're ready to see the responses...add a dialog box at checkout that asks, simply, "What could have done to make your shopping (ordering, whatever you do) easier?"  Dare you do to it, and to read the responses.]

 

Let me change the title.  If you want visitors, you have to do some of their work for them.  Don’t want to hear that either?  Lock the door.

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.

Telemarketing and a Little Lesson in SEO

"Hi.  My name's Margo.  I'm calling for Google to help put your business on Google's home page..."  So goes the prerecorded pitch from a telemarketer.

 

What's wrong with this?  Where to start!

 

First:  the prerecorded intro - that first makes me wait for it to click in then tells me, on its terms, what it's up to. But it gets worse (or if you're up for laughs, better.)  Read on.

 

Second:  If you decide you're interested or just nosing around, you press the digit as instructed and you're rolled to music on hold.  That's right, there's still not a live person.  You have to hold until they're ready for you.  Friends, that's just insulting.  Please ask yourself how you feel about someone being so bold as to send a prerecorded rather than live message and then asks you to press a number for more and then, puts you on hold to wait for them.

 

Here's a recommendation.  When it's a search engine-related telemarketer, wait it out.  Have some fun.  My last one went something like this:

 

(Wait, wait, wait wait then...)

 

"Hello, My name is Margo and thanks for letting me help put your business at the top of Google."

 

"You're going to help me?  Great.  What does that mean?"

 

"When people search for you, you'll come up first."

 

"Well, of course, if they're searching for ME, why wouldn't I come up first?"

 

(Deriding laughter then...)  No, your business.  When they search for your business they see your name first."

 

"Ohhhhh.  So how would you do that?"

 

"We have ways of ensuring that when someone searches for you, you are represented on Google's first page.  And let me add, Bing and Yahoo, too."

 

Now's where the real fun starts.  "Well do you optimize for certain search words?"

 

Then she says, "What do you mean?"

 

And I reply, "Keywords.  Do you plan on using certain keywords?"

 

"Oh.  Yes."

 

"Do I get to give them to you?"

 

Pause.  "Uh, Yes, of course.  And we'll help you choose them"

 

"Cool.  Well, uh, for your company - what words would be for your company?"

 

"Let's talk about your company.  First the company name.  And then maybe words related to what

you do."

 

"Oh.  Like you do search engine optimization.  OK.  Hang on.  Let me punch that in." 

 

Then enter it into a Google search box.  Surprise.  Nada.

 

Back on the phone, "Hmmmm.  When I do that, I don't see your name.  Not on page one or page two.  Nope.  Not even page 3.  Hang on.  Let me use my search engine assistant..."

 

CLICK

 

So, with a chuckle, I reward myself with a snack for at least keeping them from harrassing a few people while I tied them up.

 

Fact is, with search engine optimization, if you can't do a search on your company name and come up with a first-page rendering, something is severely wrong.  I mean, really.  You may have been blacklisted or otherwise penalized for some real or imagined infringement of Google [or Bing or whatever] rules.  So really, you don't need any help getting that on the first search page.  And any company that can't put themselves above page 4 on Google - I'd say page one, but there are so many SEO's and somewhere along the line, they'll trade places - needs to be ignored.

 

I will say that we do it as a service in site design, but we also have an SEO specialist that we bring on when it gets down to the short strokes.

 

Quick hints:

 

Search engine crawlers don't know what's in a graphic.  Mention your company name, what you do, a great sale, the crawler doesn't give a hoot about it.  Imagine the crawler knocking at the door of your site and asking, "Who are you?"  You want to answer them with pictures but they don't speak graphic.

 

So, sure, use graphics.  Make your site as beautiful as you want.  But make sure that the same information is in HTML, too.  And use the ALT tags.  Construct a good balance of what you do and how you do it and what you're selling on the home page.  Wanna use a splash page?  Knock yourself out.  You can revel it its simple beauty...and you'll have plenty of time for that because that splash page may well reduce the number of visitors by lowering your search ranking.

 

But if beauty is your sole goal, go for it.

 

Download and use a keyword analyzer.  You can look at your page(s) and see what words pop.  You'd be surprised how many times you stand back and look at it and realize that a lot of the words don't relate to what you do.  "Waste, waste, waste!" - General Bradford Steele, three "e's , not all in a row, M*A*S*H.  You wind up higher in ranking with people not actually looking for your services and lower with those who do.

 

Inbound links are still key.  But be careful.  That's another one many telemarketing SEO offerings stress.  But they set you up with a number of links that are unrelated like a link to your hat shop site from a tree-trimming service in Omaha.  That can help in the short term.  Then you get crawled a couple of times, the engine's database has been updated and, rats, down you go.

 

BTW, there are numerous programs for checking your ranking based on keyword searches.  Xenu is one.  You enter the words a prospect might use to search and it'll tell you what page you rank on with whatever search engine you request.  Do that before you engage any outside party for SEO help.

 

And a piece of general advice:  Eschew the telemarketing SEOs.  If you're tempted, ask them who they really are.  They'll probably tell you they're affiliated with Google or Bing.  But ask them what name is in the corner of their paycheck.  About that time, they hang up and move on to their next victim.  Celebrate.

Make Way for 4K

Ahhhh.  Fresh on the tail of the wildly successful* 3DTV push, 4K makes its way out of the laboratory and into the stores.

 

Ultra HD, which currently defines itself as "4K" for its approximately 4000 lines of resolution, is on the move.  The meaning?  Four times the resolution.  Wait.  1080 is 2K (its horizontal resolution being 1920 - about 2000 - lines)  So 2 to 4 should be double the resolution.  But, remember the resolution is doubled vertically, too. There's that nasty square law.

 

That's OK.  It's a good thing.  Increasing in one dimension only usually leads to a strange looking picture.  Doubling resolution in both dimensions evens it all out.  If you've seen it, you know it can be a really handsome picture.  Lots of folks thought 1080 was "reach out and  touch" but 4K really outdoes it.  In addition, the increased resolution keeps the picture from breaking up as you approach the screen.  Spend a few minutes viewing and you're sold.

 

OK.  Everyone excited?  Great.  Now, think about what's waiting in the weeds.

 

Delivery - 4K is a bandwidth monster.  Even using the latest compression algorithms, 15mbps is about as low as you can go. For true 4K quality, twice that is recommended. That, of course puts ATSC over-the-air television out of the picture (pun intended), unless the heavier compression is used.  But if you look at 4K for broadcast - at least at the tests run by KBS (Korean Broadcasting Service) it's more like 2-and-a-half-K. 

 

Cable - Comcast is already gearing up and they're projecting 15-to-20 mbps.  Cool. 

 

Granted, there will be some losses in the transmission.  Many systems save bandwidth by reducing the color depth so content may continue to look cartoony.  And that kind of puts us back to the turn of the century - where one stream can tie up the entire connection.  So unless you're fiber to the home, uhhhhh, turn off the X-box while you're watching Netflix in the bedroom.

 

For DVD, BluRay can accommodate 4K - sort of.  Certainly, the increased size of storage means that a full feature length motion picture won't fit on a BluRay disc in 4K, but necessity is the mother here.  And it will take additional processing software to decode and export the signal.

 

Also of interest, the CES guys claim that HDMI 1.4 will be able to handle 4K with no  alterations.  All you have to do is provide the 4K set.

 

Origination - Wait, didn't everyone just upgrade from SD to HD? Well, get ready to do it again. Sure, you can continue in HD and upconvert but how well do you like upconverted SD programs?  OK - that's an exaggeration.  Current day processing does a much better job of upconverting. 

 

Production - All sorts of concerns arise.  First, the cost of new gear. Red, Blackmagic, et. al., are out there just waiting to be purchased.  Note that you have to rethink a few things.  4K prides itself in being 24P.  The "P" is great but a funny thing happens psychologically - when you have a higher definition picture, artifacts are more pronounced.  Said another way, NTSC was so bad it hid a lot.  

 

Things like fast pans on the basketball court can actually have more apparent problems. The 24 fps frame rate doesn't help. Yes, 50/60Hz rates are available but, man, are those things cranking digits.  The bandwidth goes sky high. Asking 12 megapixels to perform at that rate is rude but I haven't seen a sensor catch fire yet.

 

In some cases, you may need additional lighting power - depends on the camera but if you cram more pixels onto a sensor of a given size, the actual light falling on a given sensor is less.  Soooo...wider lens opening.  But that's not so bad.  You may want a shallower depth of field but things that are sharp are very sharp.

 

Mattes will be fun.  Can't wait to see the first attempt at matching an SD background to 4K talent.

 

One great advantage is that if you're shooting in 4K and delivering in a lesser format, you can crop the frame.  If you're going to 1080, it's almost like having a 2-to-1 zoom in your editing box.  (Many years ago, a good friend once approached the reasoning behind shooting in 35mm versus 16 - or 70mm versus 35.  In his words, "Once I have it, I can go anywhere with it.  And I can pan, tilt, zoom..."  The same applies here)

 

Storage - Bulk up!  In fact, when you're buying storage gear, think ahead.  8K is just around the corner.  Quadruple the requirements again.  But looking at an 84" picture and thinking you really are part of the scene is really, I mean really impressive.  And talk about being able to crop and/or pan-tilt...

 

As a consumer, if I were buying a receiver today, I'd go 4K.  I might even look at 3D.  Dismal sales and performance so far, but some 4K3D looks a little better.  But I'd definitely go 4K.  Even with minimal content.  Reminds me of a line from an old sitcom, "I just bought a fax machine.  I can't wait for someone else to buy one so I can send one."

*Sarcasm, Sheldon.

You Think Bandwidth Is Expensive NOW!?

Get ready to open your wallet.  There’s going to be a huge growth in data traffic and it’s going to force all the ISP’s, networks and data transporters to charge more.  Why?  Because it’s going to take so much bandwidth that Julius Genachowski – yes, I know he’s out but he's the bandwidth-for-everyone champion – will be (as they say in Kentucky) batting his eyes like a bullfrog in a hailstorm. 

 

And another “why?”  

 

Because people always find a “way around.”  Another term:  “unintended consequences.”

 

When met with a challenge, creative folks always find a way around.  This time the challenge is unwanted monitoring of messages and other communication.  And the way around? Well, from what I’m reading, it’s scary.   

 

Here’s the thinking – and I’m seeing it on blogs and posts all over the place…people encouraging others to send the systems into overload.  They want folks to send so many messages that those seeking to monitor them can’t possibly track them all – even with programs from Algorithm City they’ll be frustratingly unable to look at it all.  But in order to overload the system, it’ll overload the system.  Hello, master of doublespeak.  Do you know what you just wrote?  

 

Yeah.  That overload will definitely frustrate the lurkers but it’ll also cost all of us.  First off in slowed communication as existing networks bog down and then in higher costs as networks have to add bandwidth to accommodate the additional traffic.  And they’re talkin’ about not 10 times but 10 THOUSAND times – or possibly a hundred thousand or a million or more times.  

 

Then, add to that the prospect that legitimate emails and attachments will be buried inside longer messages, “Nah, nah-nah-na-na-nah – try to find the real message,” which may increase the size of existing messages by a factor of X, where X=”a lot bigger number than you think.”  For that, how big does the pipe have to be?  

 

If you think that Netflix® video is slow now, just wait.  

 

What’s the real fix?  Take away the lurkers.  Let the medium run without the fear that someone’s monitoring it all.  Set rules that are very plain – and enforced – that limit lurking and monitoring.  So, regardless of which side of the lurker ops you stand, security or intrusion, be ready to spend some extra dough until the monitors return to sanity.

Now Ya’ Gotta Build It…Low Power FM (LPFM)

The filing window is closed; the commission has begun its review of Low Power FM (LPFM) applications. In short - or maybe not so short - order, construction permits will be granted. The first ones will probably be the "singletons" as some are referring to them...applications which satisfy all of the separation requirements and have no mutually exclusive applications.

 

Then comes the fun part: building the station. This is where smart thinking – and planning – can save some real money.  (Yes,  my group does these but regardless of who you work with, we can’t find a single reason for spending more than you have to in order to wind up with a functional studio/transmission system.)

 

Because of the nature of the LPFM service, cost is a major concern, but so is reliability and durability. After all, it has to stay on the air and many operators may have little or no experience handling radio gear. Here are some points to keep in mind:

 

When thinking through equipment, first plan your programming! If you're doing 24x7 live talk, you could get away with a couple of mics, a mixer, headphones, processor, transmitter and antenna. You could, but even with such a simple format you'll want to be able to pre-produce program intros and closings, station ID's, PSA's and information about donors and support. That will mean a separate production area with its own inputs like mics, music playback (CD, .mp3 players, a quality computer) and possibly a phone input/system to prerecord calls. And, in any case, you'll need to be EAS compliant. That means at least an EAS/CAP decoder.

 

About that phone, if you want to take live calls on air, you'll need a telephone interface – probably a hybrid, but not necessarily – for the air studio. Along those lines, you will probably want to protect yourself against fines with a program delay unit that allows you to terminate callers or other persons before their comments reach the transmitter should their words go outside the bounds of acceptability for the time of day.

 

Of course, it gets more complicated as you add programming types. A local concert will require remote equipment - mics, stands, mixer, headphones and a recorder. Want to do it live? Well, that means a way to get that concert back to the studio. What about live, in-studio music? That's a challenging format since it usually calls for a larger studio, multiple microphones, and a more sophisticated mixing console.

 

You may choose to automate part of the day. It may be voice-tracking by your own talent or by an outside feed. Programming may come from a digital line or satellite. It will need to be downlinked/downloaded and fed out over the air.

 

Each format has its own challenges - and costs. And that means working hard and working smart to keep those costs down. It means doing the research to find that a $200 XYZ box will do just as good a job as a $1500 unit. Quality is quality and LPFM shouldn't be shortchanged. But spending more than you need to is a waste.

 

Then you need to consider the transmission gear. The audio processor (yes, you'll need one to ensure compliance with FCC rules), the transmitter, studio-transmitter link and remote control (if the transmitter is separated from the studio), transmission line, tower and antenna. And don't forget to consider lightning and static discharge protection. Protection doesn't have to be costly and it's hard to dedicate funds to equipment that doesn't affect/improve the sound of your station. Of course, if spending the money on lightning elimination keeps the station on the air undamaged through lightning assaults, it actually does affect the sound.

 

Finally, add in security...to prevent theft and vandalism and to make sure the airwaves aren't accessed by unauthorized individuals.

 

Here, in a nutshell is a checklist for getting your station built:

• Iron out your programming plans
• Work through the equipment you'll need for each format
• Do a layout of studio, production room, meeting room, storage (Yes storage. You'll need more than you imagine)
• Plan your transmitter location and determine how the audio will be transmitted from the studio to the transmitter
• Summarize all of the equipment needed
• Seek a reputable service to specify equipment to meet your needs and satisfy your construction permit and provide you the most flexibility possible within your budget

LPFM is providing valuable services across the country. When you receive your CP you'll be on the road to becoming a part of it.