business – Page 3 – Engineering Radio

A little story about my local newspaper

So, the other day I was in the convenience store near my house. I had not picked up a copy of the local newspaper in quite some time, so I looked around for one. I couldn’t find it anywhere so I asked the checkout clerk, who looked at me rather deadpan and said “They went under about a year ago.”

What? I hadn’t even noticed my own local paper was gone, for a year.

A quick Google search and I found a notice on their website saying that the newspaper was no longer published and a blog entry from a former reporter summing up the end of the newspaper.

Sadly, the Millbrook Round Table was just one of scores of local newspapers forced to close down, because the holding company of many of them, Journal Register Co., defaulted on loans and was de-listed from the New York Stock Exchange. However, despite the sympathy I feel for all of those reporters, editors, photographers, graphic designers, proofreaders, ad salespeople and delivery people, no one can say we didn’t see this coming. The truth is, newspapers have been an antiquated technology, and try as they might, they haven’t been able to find a new business model that would enable them to be profitable in the post-paper world of instant, online publishing.

Sound even vaguely familiar? All of the small local newspapers are bought up by a big consolidator, who then defaults and cuts costs. Caught behind the technology curve, unable to make up the lost ground, local institutions that have been in place for more than a century fold and disappear in the wink of an eye, sometimes completely unnoticed.

Sadly, I will say that the radio business seems to be on the same trajectory.

And so it begins

Citadel is prepping for chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, according to this inside radio article. The gem that I most like is this:

Lenders have until Tuesday to sign the deal, which would cut its $2 billion debt to $760 million. Shareholders would see their ownership stake wiped out.

So let’s see if you kept your Citadel Broadcasting stock (CTDB: trading at $0.041 per share) because you thought it might go above $1.00 per share again, you are screwed. Notice, 60% of the debt is just going away. Amazing! How do they do that? If I decided that I didn’t want to pay my mortgage, would the bank entice me to start paying again by reducing it by 60%? No, they would not. They would simply send me a foreclosure notice and eventually some guy would stand on the county courthouse steps and read my foreclosure warrant out loud to the passers-by. If I am lucky, it will be lunchtime and somebody might actually hear it.

No, what happens when a lender writes down $1.24 billion in debt is it gets passed on to all the other bank customers in higher interest rates, larger fees, etc. After all, the CEO needs to make his margins to earn that end-of-year bonus.

To recap, shareholders are losing everything and we all are going to pay more because Citadel Broadcasting Corporation overpaid for a group of radio stations, then ran them into the ground. Fuck us all.

About community radio

Because of this post, I have received some e-mails asking why I am against community radio. I am not. In fact, I support community radio. I think that community radio done well is a wonderful tool in our democracy, giving a voice to those that are watching the government. It also promotes other locals’ interests, events, music, etc. I would like to see more failing stations bought by community broadcasters and turned into something that is a public trust and responsive to the local population.

What I was trying to get at in the previous post was that overcrowding the FM band with more and more small signals will degrade it. There are no ifs, and, or buts, removing third adjacent protections on the FM band will increase the noise floor. This will lead to more interference on the average FM radio, which will lead to more people getting fed up and tuning out.

Here is why: You cannot change the laws of physics. FM transmitters have output filters that attenuate sideband energy, that is to say, energy transmitted on 1st, 2nd, and 3rd adjacent channels. A 50,000-watt FM station on 100.3 MHz will have sideband energy on 100.1, 99.9, and 99.7 MHz as well as 100.5, 100.7, and 100.9 MHz. Due to the limitations of the components used to construct those filters, they can only be designed with the accuracy of the components used. In other words, most electrical components have a tolerance given in percent, for example, +/- 10%. That means that the value of the component will change, usually because of heating. Therefore, output filters cannot be constructed to limit emissions to only the main channel and say one adjacent channel, they would drift off frequency.

Also, creating a brick wall filter that cuts everything off at the second adjacent channel will cause distortion of the RF signal on the main channel. With analog AM and FM transmitters, it cannot be done. Digital transmissions are another story, but that is not what we are talking about here.

That is an engineer’s point of view.

One other thing about adding hundreds more LP FM signals. There should be something that stipulates most (say >50%) of the programming be locally originated. Recorded for later playback is fine. Having thousands of LP stations broadcasting the same syndicated shows or running voice-tracked automation 24/7 would be a recreation of the AM band as it currently exists. If you want to listen to that, then it already exists, help yourself. I, on the other hand, would like to avoid the AMization of the FM band.

That is all.

Book Review: Fighting for Air

I just finished reading Fighting for Air by Eric Klinenberg. It is a good book and a great description of what has happened to radio since the major consolidations occurred in 1999 and 2000. Depressing. Just damn depressing is what it is.

The book chronicles the evolution of the Prophet System and how that system was used to replace entire radio station air staff. It discusses the various failures that radio has produced as a result of automated programming, the complete lack of originality, public safety issues, and how major media companies have stripped the heart and soul out of radio.

Something that the book points out that I never really considered, every one of these unoriginal canned music stations diminishes all radio by some increment. For those that think the Clear Channels, Cumulus, and Citadels are only harming themselves, think again. People who get fed up with radio and buy an I-pod are excluding all radio stations from then on. That is another degree of audience lost to a competing medium.

Having worked for one of the smaller group owners since 1999, one that rarely if ever appears on anyone’s radar, I can say I have seen some minor shades of what has happened with Clear Channel in the company I work for. I think everyone who works in radio has seen some of this in one form or another no matter who they work for.

Radio has never been the most stable of employers. Even in the early days, people moved in and out of radio stations, sometimes taking a job with the competitor across town and sometimes moving across the country. It was understood that sometimes changes needed to be made, sometimes people had to be let go. It was a part of the landscape. The difference is in the post-consolidation radio environment, people are leaving radio altogether, replaced by a mindless computer programmed from afar.

During my time as a radio engineer, I have installed a few of these computer automation systems. I think the first one was in 1993 on an AM station doing all news. We used it for the overnight hours, replacing some minimum wage board operators. The general manager was shocked and a little bit in awe of how well the system worked.

This trend continued in 1994, when I installed a BE Audiovault system at an AM/FM combo. There again, the system replaced an overnight board operator on the AM station. Later, the FM station did a sort of mini-mation where the overnight news guy checked on it every 45-50 minutes. Those stations are now completely voice-tracked and or satellite syndicated.

Through the 90s, I installed first-generation computer-based automation systems mostly on AM stations. Things like Digilink, DCS, ENCO, etc.

In other markets, an automation system was used to resurrect a couple of FM stations, starting out voice-tracked, then adding live bodies to fill in day parts, usually having the 6 pm to 6 am time slot voice-tracked. Having three-day parts live is better than none I suppose.

The AM stations in my market cluster now are running some awful syndicated satellite news/talk programming. Why are these stations even on the air? They should be sold to someone who will operate them locally, or turn their licenses in.

For whatever role I have played in ruining radio, I am sorry for it.

It is a good book, I recommend anybody that works in the radio business read it.