Friday, September 19, 2008

F.C.C., Sirius, & X.M.

First a comment:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Interesting XM-Sirius Article":

Interesting, that shares have dropped. I've been exposed to Sirius through sales when I was at a local heavy-duty truck dealership and sold quite a few units...never had any exposure to XM. However, with Dish Network, we have Sirius music, as well as Dish's regular music channels- a waste of space, in my opinion, since they play the same stuff. Nonetheless, Howard Stern, nor Oprah Winfrey, would NOT be the reason for me to buy into either service, nor invest my hard-earned dollars in either of their payrolls.

I have also been of the mind that, if it's in the airspace, we should be able to receive it. But, according to law, we cannot freely unscramble or otherwise decrypt a signal, so, other than satellite TV, I have not subscribed to anything digitized ...and all the time I'm on the road, I scan on AM radio or operate Ham radio. Bud, Mobile, AL
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When I was a kid, I bought the line from the FCC that the airwaves belonged to the public. As I got into radio, I bought the line, that stations were granted license to broadcast in the public interest. Stations owned their equipment but did not "own" the license. There stations had a very minimal filing fee.

Today the FCC has discovered there is big money in the public airwaves. I guess we the public no longer own the airwaves. The FCC auctions off frequencies, charges for satellite spectrum and the latest money grab is the changing from analog to digital as mandated by the FCC. Commercial TV rolled over and invested billions in updating equipment. The FCC has already auctioned off the low channel analog frequencies for BILLIONS of dollars. There is no question HD is better. I bought into the hype. Why not let the market drive the evolution to HD. If it is so good the public will buy into it.

Thank God the FCC never mandidated AM stereo. Despite the FCC hopes that AM radio would go away, last time I checked AM stations in several major markets were close to the top in the rating heap. Will HD radio suceed?

I just bought a new car radio that plays SD cards, USB cards, has an ipod input jack, mp3 CD and regular CD, and it has AM & FM. The AM is rather poor.
It's been years since car radios that had a decent AM chip. Remember how good the old AM only car radios sounded.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

HD Radio suffers from dropouts, poor coverge, interference, bland programming, and almost zero consumer interest - the FCC probalby doesn't have the authority to mandate HD Radio into Satrad receivers:

http://hdradiofarce.blogspt.com

Anonymous said...

"It's been years since car radios that had a decent AM chip. Remember how good the old AM only car radios sounded."

Yes, I remember...in fact, if you have an older vehicle, there is someone who does resoration on those older classic radios! See here: http://www.bobsradio.com/

Bob will go completely through the radio, replacing old capacitors and out-of-tolerance resistors and other parts, plus all the essential things to make it like new again. The newer, later parts have higher ratings and tighter tolerances for better performance. He can even convert an AM radio to AM/FM without altering the appearance of the radio.

Also, there is a gospel station here in Mobile that is still operating AM stereo. Needless to say, I think the industry, in all their "infinite intelligence", tried to sanction the harder-to-use C-QUAM rather than the better Kahn AM stereo system. Bud, Mobile, AL