Dates Set for Comments on the Relationship Between Low Power FM Stations, FM Translators, and Full Power FM Upgrades
Federal Register publication of the Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Low Power FM (LPFM) stations and their relationship to FM translators and upgrades of full-power FM stations occurred today. This sets the comment dates in that proceeding - with comments due April 7, and replies on April 21. This proceeding looks at technical issues of whether LPFM stations (which were originally authorized as secondary stations, subject to being knocked off the air if they caused interference to full-power stations (including new stations or increases in the facilities of existing stations), should be protected against interference from such new FM facilities. Also, the proceeding looks at whether LPFM should get a preference over FM translators, perhaps even being able to bump existing FM translators off the air to make way for new LPFM stations. We wrote more about this proceeding, here. FM station and FM translator licensees should be sure to file comments with the FCC on how this proceeding could affect their operations.
So, it is ok that HD/IBOC jams on both FM and AM:
"Editorial: AM IBOC in Distress?"
"Citadel Director of Corporate Engineering Martin Stabbert embodied questions about the efficacy of full-time AM HD when he ordered all his AMs that had already converted to cease transmitting HD at night, using language that must have given Ibiquity officials heartburn. Separately and for different immediate reasons, Cox, in a "let's wait and see" move, has tried HD on most of its AM stations but is taking it off the air day and night, once tested at each facility."
http://www.rwonline.com/pages/s.0044/t.9917.html
"AM Broadcasters Back Away from HD Deployment"
"This is a major setback for the adoption of HD Radio, especially on the AM dial, and Citadel is the first large broadcast conglomerate to back away from full deployment of the HD broadcast technology. Although the company's gone out of its way not to characterize its move an indictment of iBiquity's proprietary digital broadcast standard, the problems with AM HD broadcast interference are well-known and -documented."
http://diymedia.net/archive/1007.htm#101307
"HD Interference: Not Just For AM Anymore"
"Radio World Engineering Extra dropped a bomb this month with a very provocative cover story: 'What Are We Doing to Ourselves, Exactly?' Written by Doug Vernier, the man who authored the technical specifications for an ongoing Corporation for Public Broadcasting-sponsored HD Radio interference analysis, the report is the first of its kind to document interference between FM-HD stations around the country. Using anecdotal reportage, some sophisticated contour-mapping, and presumably 'early data' from the CPB study, Vernier's article conclusively proves how stations running in hybrid HD/analog mode can (and do) interfere somewhat significantly with not only themselves, but their neighbors on the FM dial."
http://diymedia.net/archive/1207.htm#122307
iBiquity and the FCC are a farce.
It really amazes me the passion that some folks feel about HD radio. But that is interference that, in some sense, broadcasters agreed to accept in order to get the purported benefits that the IBOC digital radio platform provides. LPFM is different, and actually poses issues for HD radio deployment as well as for existing analog radio