As a virtual one-man army to save radio broadcasting as we know it, Christopher Maxwell has been keeping tabs on IBOC digital radio at digitaldisaster.org and the disaster it could spell for small broadcasters and FM radio. In short, the digital radio plan that the big broadcasters are pushing on the FCC has lower fidelity than good stereo FM and causes interference between stations. The most evil thing about IBOC digital radio is that it’s not really about radio broadcasting. What the major broadcasters are really licking their lips over is the extra channels they’ll be able to squeeze into the signal to provide pay services like wireless Internet, paging and other digital services. That’s right — radio giants like Clear Channel plan to use free broadcast radio licenses as an excuse to offer big-money wireless digital services at a big profit. So how much attention do you think they’ll pay to their public service as broadcasters when all the bucks coming in are from the extra digital services? My guess: about 1/10 as much attention as they pay now to computer-jukebox top 40 stations with computerized DJs who live thousands of miles away.
The deadline to file comments with the FCC on this digital radio plan expired on Feb. 19. Now is the period when you can file reply comments to the comments that have been filed. Here’s instructions (from digitaldisaster.org):
digitaldisaster.org
You can read any of the comments by visiting THIS
FCC ECFS SEARCH LINK and typing “99-325” in the “proceedings”
box, then press the “Retrieve Document List” button.2)Write up your thoughts, save them in a text, Rich Text Format, Word or WordPerfect file. 3)Then visit this THIS
FCC ECFS COMMENT SUBMISSION LINK and fill out the form, then attach
your comments.
Previously:
Digital Radio vs. Democracy, 2/12/02
Leave a Reply