Paul Thurst – Page 127 – Engineering Radio

Things that make you go Hmmmm? Part IV

The case of the blown fuse, or rather the blown up fuse:

Blown 10 amp fuse on Harris SX5 PA board

F32 is blown into small bits and had to be vacuumed out of the bottom of the transmitter. The reason why is the pair of MOSFETs connected to that circuit were shorted. Of course, the reason for the shorting of MOSFETs needed to be investigated. What I found was on the underside of the PA board where the brass stand-off attacked the toroid combiner board, the nuts attaching the stand-off to the combiner board were loose and there was a big arc mark.

I tightened everything up and replaced the MOSFETS, marking them with a pen in case they short again, in which case the drive section needs to be closely examined.

More news talk migrates to the FM band

Once a bastion of the AM dial, News and or News/Talk format radio stations seem to be springing up on the FM band more and more often. The original premise for creating talk radio on the AM band was the lower bandwidth and reduced (or perception of reduced) fidelity when compared to the FM band lent itself to non-music programming. The reality is that receiver manufacturers never carried through on the NRSC-2 technical improvements, and AM receivers reproduced thin, low-quality audio. I digress, the story goes, the FM band was great for music and the AM band did well with information and talk.

Of course, there were always a few exceptions to those general rules, but for the most part, that pattern held true until about 2009 or 10. That is when AM station’s programming began to be simulcast again (everything old is new again) on FM stations and HD-2 subchannels. It would be interesting to examine why this is so and what it means to the radio business as a whole.

The general trend in the music industry has also been down. This is important because record labels and the radio business used to go hand in hand. Record labels had the job of separating the wheat from the chaff. Those groups or artists that had the talent would be given recording contracts and airplay. With exposure, they would become more known, sell more recordings, record more songs, etc until they peaked and began to decline. Radio stations prospered under this arrangement because they took on none of the risks while getting huge vast quantities of program material to playback, and charging advertising fees for spaces within that programming.

So far so good.

Then, two things happened:

The communications act of 1996
The Internet

The communications act of 1996 forever changed the way the radio business was run in this country. No longer were there several thousand individual stations, the most influential of which resided in markets #1 and #2. Instead, there were conglomerations of stations run out of Atlanta, Fort Worth, and a dozen or so other medium-sized cities. No longer were stations competing head to head and trying to be the best and serve their respective audiences; rather, station A was positioned against station B to erode some of its audience so that station C could get better national buys from big ad agencies. No longer would possible controversial artists like the Indigo Girls get airplay on some groups. Songs were sanitized against possible FCC indecency sanctions, morning shows became bland and safe, and radio on the whole became a lot less edgy as big corporate attorneys put the clamps on anything that would invite unwanted exposure.

The last great musical genre was the Grunge/Seattle Sound of the early 1990s. Those bands somehow mixed heavy metal, obscure mumbled lyrics, flannel shirts, and ripped jeans into something that the dissatisfied Gen Xers could understand and appreciate. By 1996, this had morphed into “Modern Rock,” and carried on for several years after that, to fade out in the early 00’s. Since that time, there have been no great musical innovations, at least on the creative side, other than the ubiquitous Apple computer and Pro Sound Tools software.

The internet greatly changed the way recording labels did business, mainly by eating into their bottom line. This had the effect of circling the wagons and throwing up a protective barrier against almost all innovations. The net result was fewer and fewer talented artists being able to record, which pushed those people into smaller, sometimes home-based recording studios. While those studios can put out good or sometimes even excellent material, often the recordings lack the professional touches that a highly trained recording engineer can add. Add to this the mass input of the internet and no longer are bands or artists pre-screened. Some may point to that as a good development with more variety available for the average person. Perhaps, but the average person does not have time to go through and find good music to download from the iTunes store. Thus, a break developed in the method of getting good, talented artists needed exposure. Youtube has become one of the places to find new music, but it is still a chore to wade through all the selections.

Thus, when FM HD-2 channels came into being, there was little new programming to be put into play. HD radio was left to broadcast existing material with reduced coverage and quality than that of analog FM. That trend continues today where now analog FM channels are being used to broadcast the news/talk programming that used to reign on AM.

What will happen next? If Tim Westergren has any say, the internet (namely Pandora) will take over and terrestrial radio will cease to exist. Current trends point solidly in that direction, although I think Tim is a little ahead of himself in his prediction.

News/Talk on the FM dial point not to an attempt to shift the wheezing, white, (C)onservative/(R)epublican programming to a younger demographic, who will, if I am any judge of history, remain unimpressed. No, rather, they are running out of other source material, simulcasting syndicated talk radio is cheap, lean, and a good way to make money without having to pay actual salaries.

Keys, combos and contractors

The contracting company I work for takes care of 40-50 radio stations at any given time spanning from NYC and southern Connecticut up to the Canadian border. Stations or groups sign contracts and some go by the wayside on a fairly regular basis. All of this makes for the “Giant Box of Keys,” to be carried around in the work truck or whatever vehicle one is driving while on call.

The problem with the Giant Box of Keys is it never seems to be up to date. New stations or groups join and didn’t get added. Other stations fire employees and feel compelled to change the locks after doing so. Therefore, I have found the Giant Box of Keys to be a hit-or-miss proposition. In my former life as Director of Engineering for Pamal Broadcasting and Dame Media before that, I sought to simplify things as much as possible.

Master self set combination lock — Master self-set combination lock

I found that replacing all keyed padlocks with self-set combo locks made life much easier. All of the tower fences, transmitter site fences, and road gates now had the same combination and could be changed to another combination easily if needed. That eliminated digging through drawers looking for tower fence keys and or long walks back to the transmitter building because I forgot the key or the key didn’t work. Taking that a step further, I began to replace the door locks with these:

Unfortunately, those door locks are a good deal more expensive than the padlocks, somewhere between $300-400 per copy. I only got a few done before the end came. An alternative to this is a key lock box:

Of course, these are not foolproof either. Occasionally, some previous users will forget to put the key back in the box. I have also had one such box frozen under a lump of ice and once somebody swiped the whole box off of the wall with the aid of a sledgehammer or something.

There are some places where this approach will not work, such as high-security sites or leased sites where the landlord dictates the lock policy.

Still, whenever possible, using combo locks saves time and money in the long run. Rather than using precious engineering hours to make and distribute copies of keys, we can be more focused on doing real engineering work.

Local Radio, WDEV style

I found this article in Boston.com an interesting read:

Vermont’s unsung Hurricane Hero

Just as the flood waters were rising and people in Vermont were struggling to escape their homes with merely the clothing on their backs:

…when I checked the CBS Evening News moments later, I watched in astonishment as the head of the National Hurricane Center, with a sweep of his hand toward Vermont, declared that the danger had passed. The storm was over, and overblown. The national media, focused on New York City, missed where Irene hit hardest. Vermont simply didn’t exist.

This is why radio, locally owned, locally run radio is vitally important. In the midst of the disaster, WDEV opened its phone lines to the listeners and received information about flooded roads, people needing to be rescued, evacuation centers, and a whole host of other things that kept the people informed and the potential death toll low. All of this while the power was out, the cable system disabled, the internet unavailable and battery-powered radios were people’s only information source.

I have driven by the WDEV AM site in Waterbury, VT several times. It sits back on a hillside off of US Route 2/I-89 with three, what look like Miliken self-supporting towers. It signed on in 1931 and has been owned by the Squier family since 1935. An FM signal was added in 1989. Stations like this are one of the reasons I still work in this business.