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‘This Really Doesn’t Pass the Smell Test’

You can voice your opinion on our website; these readers did

I love getting feedback from you about stories in Radio World. In addition to letters to the editor, one channel that’s growing increasingly popular is the Comment function found below article at radioworld.com.

Here’s a sampling of recent reader posts:

Regarding a Workbench item about using old WE111C repeat coils:
“I discovered these great transformers years ago. Usually left behind by telco when used for broadcast audio over phone lines. I used one for a 200-yard audio run at a remote broadcast. I currently use one to isolate my Moseley 1600 remote controller from the phone line on a mountaintop. A couple MOVs on the transformer input and output has saved me a lot of problems.”

To a news story, “Court Sides With FCC in Ownership Form Dispute”:
“So this is what’s important to the FCC nowadays … ensuring it has [Social Security numbers] for all commercial station owners so it can keep better track of race and gender, under pain of enforcement action and potential loss of license. Oh yes, that and grabbing UHF spectrum from broadcasters and maybe even the U.S. military to auction off to … whom?”

About a Leslie Report item commenting on an iBiquity official saying HD Radio had reached “critical mass” in the aftermarket auto sector:
“Aftermarket junk comes and goes. Closets are full of the stuff. To even think it’s a benchmark to judge a product is ludicrous — but iBiquity and RW will do it anyway.”

“BMW and Jag are the only two manufacturers to include HD Radio as standard equipment. The remaining suspects have made HD an option as an add-on. So how many new car buyers are demanding their HD? Not many. I have more fans on Facebook.”

In response to a Leslie Report item on a BIA study documenting the uptake and subsequent plateau of the HD Radio rollout:
“IBiquity pegs the number of HD radios sold as 2.5 million, since 2002. How many iPhones/smartphones have been sold in just months? Millions, not to mention iPads. … Even though you’re a part of the ra-ra HD crowd, this technology is a complete failure.”

“A good 40 percent of those stations with HD are public radio stations, who’ve been subsidized tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to install them. Public airwaves controlled by a monopoly interest, subsidized in large part by public dollars — this really doesn’t pass the smell test.”

About a news analysis by T. Carter Ross, “Signs of Traction for Global Digital Radio”:
“If there exists a better audio broadcasting system than analog FM, I haven’t seen/heard it yet.”

“Digital radio is good, just not the way it has been implemented here. ‘HD’ is proprietary and therefore must not succeed. DRM would be nice to have here, especially on a new band such as 76 to 88 MHz.”

To a news item about the fall Radio Show:
“If no free exhibit pass ability, expect an engineering attendance dud.”

Responding to a Ford official interviewed in RW:
“I completely agree with [Julius] Marchwicki’s point that in-car Internet radio is not the ‘death’ of terrestrial radio. In fact just the opposite — in-car Internet radio can only contribute to the growing success of local radio broadcasters.”

Responding to a commentary by Candace Clements of Free Press on “Why We Need a New Public Media”:
“I believe Ms. Clement and her co-authors’ proposed remedy of more government intervention, regulation and taxation is the wrong tactic to promote more intense local and investigative journalism. There are numerous assertions in the full article that are offered as fact but, upon closer examination, appear to be more opinion or, at the least, misleading. … If traditional news outlets can’t supply the product their audience seeks, let them fail. We live in America where innovation will provide a private sector solution to fill the void.”

About a news item, “NAB Calls for ‘Modest’ Ownership Reform”:
“Consolidation has produced clusters of robo-stations, staffed by computers, owned and operated by clueless bean-counters, many of them very short of money, who wouldn’t know creativity if it bit them. So now the NAB wants more of that. The only thing that will save radio is if it gets back in the hands of local, creative, caring people. More consolidation will just hasten radio’s death spiral.”

To a Leslie Report item about boomboxes:
“What a blast from the past — and might explain my middle-age hearing loss!”

Post on any story using the Comment field at the bottom of your screen. Or send your letters to the editor at [email protected].

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