I won’t begin to synthesize all the messages we’ve received in the Falls Church, Va. headquarters of Radio World about AM stations being able to leave their digital transmitters on all night and go 24/7 IBOC.
Thanks for sending them. They’re very helpful as we continue to observe this issue.
This is a big story, but this issue also hasn’t fully played out because not many AMs seem to have taken the plunge yet; I don’t think we’ll truly know how much groundwave or skywave impact there is from IBOC vs. normal AM propagation/atmospheric/man-made noise issues for awhile.
Remember, while the big-market AMs have been ready to go on at night, many medium- to smaller-market owners have waited for regulatory certainty to convert.
We’ve received messages from proponents who say the turn-on at night has been no big deal, and some from broadcasters who are predicting IBOC will be the death of small, independent operators.
As with anything else, the truth lies somewhere in between and we’ll have to see how this goes.
One thing’s for sure: the industry has picked up on Tom Ray’s page 1 quote in a recent issue of RW. Since then we’ve seen all sorts of variations on his “apocalypse” comment, including IBOCalypse. Too funny.
