Radio Survivor

I spent the better part of this afternoon listening to my new HD Radio receiver, the Sony XDRF1 HD, tuning through the Chicago FM dial. There are 33 FM stations broadcasting HD in Chicago according to iBiquity, which owns the technology. I was able to tune in the HD signal for 19 of them. After several hours of listening I remain rather unimpressed by HD Radio.

Primary HD Channels

First off I will address the question of sound quality and fidelity. iBiquity claims “drastically improved sound quality” for HD Radio over its analog counterpart. I do not agree with this claim. Tuning between the analog and primary HD channel for each station I could perceive slight differences in sound quality between them. The biggest difference is the loss of background noise and hiss in the HD channel. Now, this is a very subtle difference, primarily perceptible during quiet music passages (which are rare on commercial FM) and voice breaks. This leads to the perception that there’s a bit more dynamic range on the HD channel, but it requires fairly high listening volume to clearly detect.

While I welcome the lower noise floor of HD, I otherwise don’t perceive any other significant increase in fidelity. On nearly every station I listened to the primary HD channel sounded nearly identical to the analog FM. Much of commercial FM is overcompressed, and I found that if a station’s analog signal was so overprocessed, so was the primary HD channel.

Sometimes I would lose the HD signal–since it’s broadcast at a much lower power level than the analog signal–and I never noticed just by listening. I had to look at the tuner’s display to know for sure. The shift between the HD and analog signals is pretty smooth sounding on the Sony tuner. I can tell when it happens, but it’s quite unobtrusive. If I’m not paying close attention to the radio it can happen without me noticing.

All of the 19 HD FM stations I received are stations that come in reasonably well in analog in my apartment in the Rogers Park neighborhood on the far north side of Chicago. The Sony XDRF1 turns out to have very good analog FM performance, bringing in the analog FM signals of these stations better than any other radio in my house except my Tivoli Model One, which is another room. Of the 10 stations where I couldn’t tune in an HD signal, 8 of them don’t come in clearly in my house in analog, either. For two stations my tuner did not indicate there was an HD signal present. More details listening notes by station are at the end of this post.

Secondary HD Channels

The other big advantage touted for HD Radio are the additional subchannels a station can have. Each HD station I listened to broadcast one or two additional channels. By and large the second HD channel had decent sound quality, but that nevertheless never matched the quality of the primary analog or HD channel. This should be expected because there is only so much digital bandwidth for each station to exploit, and the FCC requires that the primary HD channel–which must have the same programming as the analog signal–have the biggest share of the bandwidth.

The second HD channels typically sound like a good webcast station. That is, they sound like medium-quality MP3s with bitrates of 128 kbps or lower. I hear more compression and less dynamic range than the analog side, and some rolling off at the high end. Right now I’m listening to WXRT’s commercial-free HD channel 2 called “Channel X” and it’s pleasant to listen to, no more fatiguing than most web stations.
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As a proud thirty-eight year-old member of Generation X, I have become just a little disturbed by a trend I’ve noticed in the last few years. One might call this trend the “indie-rockification” of public radio. As my fellow grunge-survivors and I, raised on the so-called “first wave” of alternative rock and derided by boomers as slackers, creep closer to middle age we have become a more valuable target demographic for public stations. And, with commercial radio hemorrhaging jobs as we graduated college, those Gen Xers who went into careers in radio pretty much only had public radio as a viable option. So not only are more Gen Xers listening to public radio, increasingly they’re in charge.

One of the best products of this trend is the program Sound Opinions, produced by Chicago Public Radio and syndicated by American Public Media. Billing itself as the world’s only Rock N Roll talk show, Sound Opinions is hosted by Gen X popular music critic Jim DeRogatis, who writes for the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Chicago Tribune’s rock and roll writer Greg Kot (born in 1957, so just scant older than the typical 1961 cut-off to be considered Gen X… but who’s counting?).

The hour-long program is custom made for the true music geek of the sort who a decade ago used to haunt record stores and college radio stations, but who is now forced to spend more time at the corner coffee shop consuming music blogs on a laptop. Instead of dwelling in rock-star gossip, each program features music news that actually gets into the real issues affecting popular music, such as the RIAA’s anti-piracy lawsuits and the proposed merger of concert giants Live Nation and Ticketmaster (they tend to oppose both).
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A couple of  weeks ago I reported on Chicago Public Radio taking a glancing swipe against LPTV channel 6 stations that are effectively functioning like radio stations, taking advantage of their audio channel’s proximity to 87.7 FM. Now the owner of the Chicago smooth-jazz LPTV “radio” station WLFM-LP is striking back at CPR in both reply comments to the FCC and a press release, which I received via email [.doc file].

In its FCC comments WFLM’s owner, Venture Technologies Group, takes the gloves off, charging that Chicago Public Radio’s “attempt to characterize these LPTV stations as ‘invaders’ of NCE spectrum is ridiculous,” although CPR never specifically names WLFM-LP. VTG goes on to accuse that,

WBEZ appears to be arguing that non-commercial stations should have the right to approve the programming of their commercial neighbors merely because they are adjacent to each other and a listener may hear commercial matter while scrolling through the radio dial looking for a non·commercial station. This is an absurd argument!

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Far outside the view of the general public, the virtual cratediggers of the FCC’s electronic recesses like Matthew and myself are sometimes privy to the little slap-fights that go on between broadcasters. In this case things are getting a little heated over the far left end of the FM dial, with a prominent public radio station calling out LPTV broadcasters exploiting the channel 6 backdoor to the FM dial.

As I’ve been already reported, the FCC recently ended restrictions on the use of FM frequencies adjacent to TV channel 6– 87.9 to 88.5 FM–in markets where former analog channel 6 stations went digital and changed channels.  Now, National Public Radio has petitioned the FCC to open up these frequencies everywhere, even in markets where digital TV stations decided to stay on channel 6 or where there are grandfathered analog low-power TV stations.

NPR’s argument rests on a technical analysis concluding that digital TV signals are far more interference-resistant than analog, and that modern TV tuners are selective enough to make interference from FM negligible for even analog LPTV signals.

Predictably, fellow noncommercial FM broadcasters are lining up in support of NPR’s proposal, while the ABC network and the National Association of Broadcasters have filed comments in opposition, calling into question NPR’s engineering data. There’s a few sparks coming from these opposing comments, but the real fun is buried in comments from Chicago Public Radio.

Without naming names, CPR  pointedly complains,

LPTV stations have begun to invade FM radio, broadcasting audio signals that were licensed for TV broadcast as if they were commercial radio stations on 87. 7 MHz. Not only are these signals inappropriately being broadcast as radio, they are also bleeding 24·hour dance music, with commercial advertising, over into the noncommercial stations that are on the lower NCE FM channels. Like squatters moving into recently-vacated homes, these LPTV stations are, in effect, intentionally broadcasting commercial radio which spills over onto the reserved portion of the FM band, trespassing on the limited territory of their noncommercial neighbors. Before this phenomenon becomes entrenched, the Commission owes the public, as well as public radio stations, a reasoned consideration of this problem.

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Fundraiser season continues at non-profit radio stations all over the country. Princeton’s station WPRB (apparently the oldest FM college radio station in the country, founded in 1940) ends their week-long fundraiser tomorrow. My own station KFJC (turning 50 next week) is pitching for cash until the station reaches its goal. And, Chicago Public Radio station WBEZ is also pimping for dollars.

One of my favorite things to do during fundraiser time is to listen to public radio and make fun of the horrificly long and boring breaks, in which hosts rattle off lists of thank you gifts and sponsors. So, I’m actually pretty impressed that WBEZ realizes the degree to which these breaks have become predictably mundane and has decided to make fun of itself.

The WBEZ blog has a bunch of fundraiser-specific content, including DJ trading cards and a pledge drive bingo. You can follow along at home and yell “BINGO” when an announcer utters words and phrases like “tote,” and “join the WBEZ family.” Those who score BINGO are invited to comment on the blog. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like their listeners actually have a sense of humor about the fundraiser, as the only comments thus far are complaints about the “incessant prattle” and the programming decision to drop “Talk of the Nation.”

Have you heard anything on the radio that makes you want to listen to an on-air fundraiser? What makes you turn the dial?

Recently I was tracking some college radio news when I ran across Greg Blouch’s website, “Radio Sticker of the Day.” Immediately I was taken back to my junior high school years when radio station stickers were a hot commodity. My classmate Ricky Kanazawa would spend most of our English class time focused on a stack of bright yellow and black KOME stickers and an exacto knife, carving up new, inspired, psychedelic creations. I’m not sure if Greg has tapped into this aspect of sticker art; but his website is a testament to the most visible radio station branding that there is.

I dropped Greg a note to find out what fuels his obsession for radio station stickers and learn more about his website, “Radio Sticker of the Day.”

It turns out that his fascination with stickers began in the 1980s, around the same time that my friends and I were plastering KOME, KSJO, and KMEL stickers (with a picture of a camel on them) all over our notebooks, windows, and Pee-Chee folders.

Over the years he’s accumulated around 12,000 stickers and largely credits the Internet for making it easier for him to contact stations. His site only features pictures of stickers that are in his collection. I love that attention to detail! On to the interview:

Jennifer Waits: How did you get started collecting radio stickers and what was your first sticker?

Greg Blouch: When I was 13 years old our family moved from Middleport, New York (in the western part of the state near Niagara Falls/Buffalo) to Celina, Ohio.  I was homesick and wanted to get my hands on something that reminded me of New York.

My favorite radio station had been 107.7 WUWU which was an offbeat, almost freeform, rock station heavy on the new wave music of the time (this was around 1982/1983.)  I wrote to the station and asked for a sticker which I promptly wasted by slapping it on a book cover for school.

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I’m actually amazed at how noncommercial radio has become the site of so much innovation in the medium in the last decade, and how commercial radio is getting left in the dust. On the music side we have Seattle’s indie rock KEXP and New Jersey’s freeform WFMU which both have significant internet listenership along with substantial on demand archives and net-only programming. With traditional public radio you can find archives of nearly every nationally syndicated program, as well as live streams and internet-only shows.

Now public radio has taken a big leap in mobile with the 2.0 release of the Public Radio Player for the iPhone. The previous release of the player provided an easy way to listen to the live stream of public radio stations across the country. While a convenient app, there was little to differentiate it from any number of other apps that let you listen to live radio streams.

The new 2.0 player breaks new ground by integrating on demand listening to hundreds of public radio programs, both national and local. The Public Radio Player is a collaboration between all the major public radio organizations led by the Public Radio Exchange, which is itself an innovative (but not the first) online archive of public radio content from member stations, networks and independent producers.
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