[telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars

Post by danny burstein
Background: Electric cars, thanks to their motors
and circuitry, cause lots of radio frequency interference.
If done cheaply, this badly crashes any attempt to
listen to an AM radio. Hence many car manufacturers
are choosing the skinflint option of simply not including
AM radios in their vehicles.

As should be their right. AM radios in motor vehicles have always been
subject to interference from a variety of sources, including spark
plugs in converntional engines, electric windshield motors, and the
display panels used to replace old-fashioned speedometers, and oil
pressure and temperature gauges.

It's not the fault of AM radios: AM was simply the first method which
was discovred for sending voices and music over the airwaves, and for
that reason, it became the de facto standard for broadcasting - and
the source of the immense fortunes gathered by manufacturers such as
RCA, plus the immense power which broadcasters accumulated by
portraying their friends in a good light and their enemies in a bad
one.

The point is that those whom profit from existing methods of
distributing a nation's propaganda always fight tooth and nail to hang
on to their privileged positions and profit model when new
technologies such as FM threaten them, and our leaders have always let
them get away with it. Elected officials at all levels of government
had learned hard lessons from the early days of radio broadcasting:
how racists like "Father Coughlin" could draw audiences numbered in
the millions, and how Franklin Roosevelt was able to use "Fireside
Chats" to help restore public confidence in the banking system and
advance a liberal agenda during the Great Depression. Never mind the
messages they sent out: what politicians count is votes, and the
broadcasters have never allowed them to forget it. That's one of the
reasons why Geostationary satellites(1), first proposed in 1929,
weren't available to carry TV reports until well into the 1970's.

Post by danny burstein
There's been plenty of kickback, and now Congress
[Axios]
Scoop: Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars
A bipartisan group of lawmakers wants to make it illegal for carmakers to
eliminate AM radio from their cars, arguing public safety is at risk, Axios
is first to report.
======
rest: https://www.axios.com/2023/05/17/am-radio-congress-cars

The Congress doesn't give a tinker's damn about "public safety:"
they've had souper-seecrit hidey-holes prepared for themselves and
their PR teams and families for decades, so in their viewpoint, the
public can be damned, in all senses of the word.

What the politicians fear is having their profligate lifestyles
revealed to the voters, and that's why every radio and TV station is
able to obtain oh-so-sincere statements about any issue of public
concern, with multiple versions to choose from, according to the
station's programming model and intended audience. All paid for by our
tax money, of course.

In return, the Congress goes to extraordinary lengths to delay any
technical change which threatens the existing technologies: cable TV
operators much, for example, pay royalties to local over-the-air TV
stations in order to carry their programming, and are forbidden to
carry network shows or stories which duplicate those of the local
stations, even if such broadcasts are already distributed for free over
the internet.

The congress is demanding that electric car manufacturers prop-up a
century-old technology that is useful only to transmit staged debates,
shock jocks, Father Coughlin copycats, and all the other propaganda
that the politicians need to keep themselves in power.

Bill Horne

1. The idea of satellites in geostationary orbit was first proposed by
Herman Potočnik in his 1929 book, publissed in Berlin, Das Problem der
Befahrung des Weltraums - der Raketen-Motor. Arthus C. Clarke, who
is usually credited with the idea, cited this work as a reference
in his 1945 paper.
<https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=2140>

--
(Please remove QRM from my email address for direct replies)

Marco Moock

2023-05-19 06:41:57 UTC

There is just one problem: Most modern cars don't have a possibility to
exchange the radio.

Post by Bill Horne
It's not the fault of AM radios: AM was simply the first method which
was discovred for sending voices and music over the airwaves, and for
that reason, it became the de facto standard for broadcasting - and
the source of the immense fortunes gathered by manufacturers such as
RCA, plus the immense power which broadcasters accumulated by
portraying their friends in a good light and their enemies in a bad
one.

AM modulation is easy and the band and receivers are there. It would be
possible to use FM modulation on mediumwave and shortwave, but new
transmitters and receivers are needed. So it stays with AM.

Post by Bill Horne
The point is that those whom profit from existing methods of
distributing a nation's propaganda always fight tooth and nail to hang
on to their privileged positions and profit model when new
technologies such as FM threaten them, and our leaders have always let
them get away with it. Elected officials at all levels of government
how racists like "Father Coughlin" could draw audiences numbered in
the millions, and how Franklin Roosevelt was able to use "Fireside
Chats" to help restore public confidence in the banking system and
advance a liberal agenda during the Great Depression. Never mind the
messages they sent out: what politicians count is votes, and the
broadcasters have never allowed them to forget it. That's one of the
reasons why Geostationary satellites(1), first proposed in 1929,
weren't available to carry TV reports until well into the 1970's.

America has freedom of speech. I prefer this solution instead of
government-controlled speech like in Germany where only some bad words
(calling somebody stupid) about a person might result in a fine.

I know that there are people like Hal Turner who have far right and
extremist opinions, but I don't feel disturbed by them. Such stations
can be heard on the shortwave station WBCQ.

I like medium and short wave because they offer the possibility to
listen to transmissions from other countries - without censorship or
spying. I think we should keep them instead of switching all remaining
transmitters off and relying on FM VHF and DAB(+), which offers only
local stations.

Bill Horne

2023-05-19 22:22:57 UTC

Post by Marco Moock

There is just one problem: Most modern cars don't have a possibility to
exchange the radio.

I think Mr. Burstein was writing about *new* vehicles, so I don't
feel that's a concern.

Post by Marco Moock

AM modulation is easy and the band and receivers are there. It would be
possible to use FM modulation on mediumwave and shortwave, but new
transmitters and receivers are needed. So it stays with AM.

You're right about AM being easy: as I wrote before, it was the first
method of modulating a radio wave that was discovered, and it has the
largest base of "installed" receivers for that reason.

But, the reason that politicians are screeming at electric car makers
is simply that large broadcast chains are screeming at *them* - in the
face of competition from higher-fidelity FM broadcasts and the
concert-hall fidelity offered by satellite systems, AM stations, at
least in the United States, have largely swithched to a "talk radio"
format. On AM bands today, we mostly hear Basso Profondo announcers
who pitch reactionary political views during the all-important "Drive
Time" hours when listeners are alone in their cars and willing to hear
comforting lies and propaganda.

Post by Marco Moock

Be careful what you wish for: our courts have decided that "Freedom of
Speech" requires us to suffer the abuse of every self-appointed Socrates
or mentally ill stranger whom occupies his day by destroying other
riders' quiet enjoyment of a subway ride or a railway seat.
Inevitably, the performer’s skills are mostly limited to demanding
money from the other riders, with the threat of further croaking or
braggadocio to follow if they're not paid to move on to the next car
and the next group of victims. You might have heard news reports about
a recent death of a developmentally-delayed adult who was talking
trash to an audience that had heard - and suffered - enough.

Post by Marco Moock
I know that there are people like Hal Turner who have far right and
extremist opinions, but I don't feel disturbed by them. Such stations
can be heard on the shortwave station WBCQ.

I have a old friend who works at WBCQ: a fellow Amateur Radio Operator
whom has forgotten more about practical AM transmitter design and
repair than I will ever know.

He reminded me once of a solution to my complaint about a foul-mouthed
fool I heard on another station: "Spin the dial!"

Post by Marco Moock
I like medium and short wave because they offer the possibility to
listen to transmissions from other countries - without censorship or
spying. I think we should keep them instead of switching all remaining
transmitters off and relying on FM VHF and DAB(+), which offers only
local stations.

That's a double-edged sword: I once stumbled upon a shortware
broadcast by a well-spoken man whom was commenting on the day's news,
when Donald Trump had said that "Cuba is just an island in the middle
of the Atlantic." The announcer laughed at the story, and said that
someone should give Donald a map - and then announced that I was
listening to Radio Havana. It hurt a little, knowing that the rest of
the world could hear the shortcomings of our political leaders, but it
hurt a lot more to think of how Donald got to that position.

Suffice to say, I also like shortwave a lot more than medium wave: you
hear a better class of people, and better reasoning and more
well-thought-out opinions. Plus, if something irks me, I get to spin
the dial.

Bill Horne

--
(Please remove QRM from my email address for direct replies)

Michael Trew

2023-05-20 03:44:27 UTC

As Marco said, in many new cars, you can't install an after-market
radio. One part of me wants to agree with you, that it's the
manufacturer's right to not include an AM radio... but setting that
precedent will be the death of broadcast AM. Most people only listen to
broadcast radio in their cars, and it seems that manufactures want to
shut the dial down. I listen to AM radio on a daily basis.

I'm aware that most of AM radio has become talk-radio. I don't care for
Mr. Limbaugh, or his programming, but he sure did save the AM band.
Now, I still listen to a number of music stations on the AM dial,
including many oldies and polkas on Sundays. I still tune into News
radio 1020 KDKA in Pittsburgh (first commercial radio station).

Post by Bill Horne
The Congress doesn't give a tinker's damn about "public safety:"

Perhaps they are talking about in the case of a flood, fire, or
wide-spread power outage, where some might only be able to receive
broadcast radio in battery-power units? I've been on plenty of highways
with signs "Tune into 1680 (or whatever) AM radio for an important
safety message from DOT".

Bill Horne

2023-05-20 13:52:14 UTC

As Marco said, in many new cars, you can’t install an after-market radio.
One part of me wants to agree with you, that it’s the manufacturer’s right
to not include an AM radio... but setting that precedent will be the death
of broadcast AM. Most people only listen to broadcast radio in their cars,
and it seems that manufactures want to shut the dial down. I listen to AM
radio on a daily basis.

Car makers don’t want to shut down AM, or any other type of signal:
they know that car buyers usually expect a new car to have a radio
that receives both AM and FM stations, and many new cars come equipped
with satellite receivers and free trials of a satellite-based servics.

The question is whether Congress can demand that automakers include
the AM band in their cars’ radios, even if it costs them a lot more to
do so: to make AM reception possible in an RF-noise filled environment
like an electric vehicle, the automakers would have to shield their
motors, their control systems, their computers, and their charging
systems to lower the noise level to something that AM listeners will
accept. That costs money, in an industry where saving $10 on each
vehicle coming off the assembly line can make an engineer’s career.

We've been through this debate before, although in another context:
when FM broadcasts were becoming popular, many motorists were offered
discounts on “FM Converter” units which could be mounted under the
dashboard, The converters were built with an antenna connector where
the car owner could plug in the same antenna cable that had been in
use by the AM radio, and they came with a short extension that
connected the AM radio to the converter, so that the motorist could
swith between AM and FM bands quickly.

The company that owned the patent on the special type of connector
used in automobiles sued to stop the converters from being sold, but I
don't know how the case was resolved. No matter; either the radio
manufacturers got some extra income, or the courts decided that having
access to more signals - and, therefore, more opinions - was too
important to let the patent stand.

That's where this current debate is focused: the Congress is claiming
that car buyers will suffer by not being able to listen to Rush
Limbaugh or Donald Trump or DIane Feinstein or Marjorie Taylor Greene
or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez telling them what to think. Car buyers who
think for themselves, and decide that the added cost of having AM
radios available in electric vehicles isn't worth it, are being denied
a place at the table.

I'm aware that most of AM radio has become talk-radio. I don't care for Mr.
Limbaugh, or his programming, but he sure did save the AM band. Now, I still
listen to a number of music stations on the AM dial, including many oldies
and polkas on Sundays. I still tune into News radio 1020 KDKA in Pittsburgh
(first commercial radio station).

Post by Bill Horne
The Congress doesn't give a tinker's damn about "public safety:"

Perhaps they are talking about in the case of a flood, fire, or wide-spread
power outage, where some might only be able to receive broadcast radio in
battery-power units? I've been on plenty of highways with signs "Tune into
1680 (or whatever) AM radio for an important safety message from DOT".

No competent public-safety officer ever relies on battery-powered
radios. The dismal results which followed the introduction of small,
battery-powered AM radios have been known for decades: such sets
inevitably wound up on closet shelves when their owners realized that,
in the first place, the devices were bulky and heavy and inconvenient,
and in the second, that other people didn't like being forced to
listen to someone else’s choice of music or news. It wasn’t until the
introduction of battery-powered "Boom Boxes," with their cheap
chrome-plated "minimum parts count" designs and badly distorted sound,
that the public was, once again, able to choose portable vs. AC- or
Car-powered receivers. The public chose to shun the children whom were
sporting the Boom Boxes on their shoulders, and the fad died down as
soon as the Boom Box owners decided that their money was better spent
on things other than batteries.

Battery technology has advanced tremendously in the past few decades,
due to Cellular Phones: probably the only battery-powered devices
which owners feel have justified their bulk and expense in the long
term. The companies which make the phones have been leveraging their
product's ubiquity since they were first widely adopted, adding
cameras, larger amounts of memory, and now even Internet-supplied
information services which bypass the broadcast networks and thus,
those networks’ hold on the body politic’s sources of information.

AM Radio is a known quantity in Washington, D.C.: our public servants
have been serving us plate after plate of rancid tripe for all our
lives, using the broadcast stations which depend on Congressional
approval for their very existence. This proposed law isn't about AM or
FM: it concerns who gets to use the information paths and who
doesn’t. There's an election coming.

Bill Horne

--
(Please remove QRM from my email address for direct replies)

Garrett Wollman

2023-05-20 16:51:48 UTC

Post by Bill Horne
AM Radio is a known quantity in Washington, D.C.

The #1 billing commercial radio station in the entire country is
Hubbard Broadcasting's all-news WTOP (103.5 Washington, D.C.), which
moved from clear-channel 1500 AM to 103.5 FM in 2006 because the
coverage of the "DMV" (D.C., Maryland, Virginia) market was superior
and number of listeners left on AM was plummeting. Yes, the old WTOP
had a fantastic signal in New England at night, but advertisers
weren't buying WTOP to reach Boston, and it wasn't a great signal in
the fast-growing suburban areas in western Maryland and northern
Virginia.[1] (The old WTOP became WFED, "Federal News Radio", because
they could still get some advertising revenue from lobbyists and the
military-industrial complex even if almost nobody was listening.)

The right-wing talk in the Washington area is on Cumulus Media's
WMAL-FM (105.9), having moved there in 2011 for similar reasons from
AM 630.

(I believe the D.C. station with the largest audience share is actually
American University's WAMU-FM (88.5), an NPR member station, but
Nielsen does not include "noncommercial" stations in published
ratings. Public radio stations can buy a separate ratings product
that includes them under a non-disclosure agreement.)

-GAWollman

[1] For historical reasons, the 1500 stations across the country are
stacked up with "figure eight" directional patterns pointing north and
south; WFED's transmitter is located in Maryland northeast of the
District, which made sense in the 1930s but because its pattern has a
broad null to the west, protecting KSTP in St. Paul, it misses most of
the population growth that has occurred in the market since 1945.

--
Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can,
***@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future. This is
Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together."
my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)

Garrett Wollman

2023-05-20 16:18:53 UTC

Post by Michael Trew
As Marco said, in many new cars, you can't install an after-market
radio. One part of me wants to agree with you, that it's the
manufacturer's right to not include an AM radio... but setting that
precedent will be the death of broadcast AM.

It's already dead. FM and satellite are not far behind. With 4G and
5G wireless there is simply no reason for anyone to still use
broadcast radio: you can get all the same programming and much, much
more, streamed to your mobile device which you control using CarPlay
or Android Auto through the dashboard touch-screen.

And guess what? Your phone gets the same emergency alerts as the radio
stations do. That excuse simply doesn't hold water any more.

-GAWollman

John Levine

2023-05-21 20:45:00 UTC

Post by Garrett Wollman
And guess what? Your phone gets the same emergency alerts as the radio
stations do. That excuse simply doesn't hold water any more.

I'm guessing you don't spend a lot of time driving around out in the boondocks.

As soon as you get off main roads in a hilly area, cell signals are
hit and miss. Here in not particularly rural upstate NY I can show you
places on state highways where there's no cell signal at all. I expect
western Mass is the same way.

Fred Atkinson

2023-05-23 05:31:07 UTC

Post by Garrett Wollman
And guess what? Your phone gets the same emergency alerts as the radio
stations do. That excuse simply doesn't hold water any more.

I'm guessing you don't spend a lot of time driving around out in the boondocks.
As soon as you get off main roads in a hilly area, cell signals are
hit and miss. Here in not particularly rural upstate NY I can show
you places on state highways where there's no cell signal at all. I
expect western Mass is the same way.

The problem is that if our Internet goes down, we won't get those alerts.

The entire AM band is not going down all at once.

Bill Horne

2023-05-23 14:25:46 UTC

Post by Fred Atkinson

Post by Garrett Wollman
And guess what? Your phone gets the same emergency alerts as the radio
stations do. That excuse simply doesn't hold water any more.

I'm guessing you don't spend a lot of time driving around out in the boondocks.
As soon as you get off main roads in a hilly area, cell signals are
hit and miss. Here in not particularly rural upstate NY I can show
you places on state highways where there's no cell signal at all. I
expect western Mass is the same way.

The problem is that if our Internet goes down, we won't get those alerts.
The entire AM band is not going down all at once.

The entire AM band is not going down at all: in 1971(1), the Emergency
Alert System was accidentally triggered when a U.S. Government
employee ran a paper tape to send a teletype message which should have
been a routine weekly test, but turned out to be an emergency alert.

The tape which was used was right next to the one which was supposed
to be sent; the employee picked up the wrong tape. The Pentagon
expected there to be widespread panic, immediate mass stampedes toward
"Fallout Shelters," and that all but "Conelrad" AM stations would
cease operation.

None of it happened. The few people whom heard the alert shrugged
their shoulders, kissed their loved ones goodbye, and settled down in
their living rooms to await their deaths - or decided that it was a
mistake, and went about their business. By and large, no one showed up
at any "Fallout Shelter:" in the first place, very few citizens knew
where they were or what they were intended to be used for, and in the
second, they were almost all aware of the impossibility of surviving a
nuclear war, and just decided that they'd be dead in a few minutes and
should enjoy the time they had left.

As for the "Conelrad" system, it didn't work. Radio station managers
demanded that their employees stay on the air and keep running the
oh-so-profitable ads for soap that they'd been running before the
alert was sent out. The whole episode was quickly dismissed and
explained away by the new and improved generation of blow-dried
airheads that has taken over from the real reporters of the World War
II era, and the populace was reassured that nothing was wrong and they
could go back to buying soap and being obedient.

It was a repeat of the "Duck and Cover" drills my generation of
youngsters was forced to undergo during our grade-school years, until
a few exceptional young students (including Joan Baez) told their
teachers that they didn't want to play the government's game and
didn't want to pretend that ducking or covering would make any
difference.

In other words, the whole edifice of the "Civil Defense" network and
its alerting system crashed of its own weight, in the face of bluntly
stated evidene from oh-so-onery free thinkers that it was all
psychological warfare, following a military map left over from the
days when "right thinking" Americans were expected to do what they
were told without question.

The current version of the emergency alert system has been redesigned
to carry warnings of tornado, floods, missing children, and (of
course) immenent nuclear destruction. That was a clever move, since it
both provided some actual benefits to a jaded public, and convinced
that same public to actually pay attention to the alerts in the first
place. Until, that is, 2018: in Hawaii, a government employee
accidentally tripped a warning of an impending missile attack, and
caused yet another generation of blow-dried airheads to swing into
action and snap to attention and explain it all away again.

Bill Horne, who believes in Ghod and Senator Dodd and keeping old Castro down

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Emergency_Message
Copyright © 2023 E. William Horne. All Rights Reserved.

Garrett Wollman

2023-05-23 20:07:28 UTC

Post by Fred Atkinson
The problem is that if our Internet goes down, we won't get those alerts.

You're not getting those alerts over "your Internet".

"CMAS messages, although displayed similarly to SMS text messages, are
always free and are routed through a separate service which will give
them priority over voice and regular text messages in congested
areas."
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Emergency_Alerts>

-GAWollman

Fred Atkinson

2023-05-24 22:30:51 UTC

Post by Fred Atkinson
The problem is that if our Internet goes down, we won't get those alerts.

You're not getting those alerts over "your Internet".
"CMAS messages, although displayed similarly to SMS text messages,
are always free and are routed through a separate service which will
give them priority over voice and regular text messages in congested
areas."

You are splitting hairs here in a semantics issue.

Suppose the cellular infrastructure is down due to an attack on our
nation.

Think you are gojng to get those alerts then?

Whereas with AM or FM you have a far better chance of getting that
information.

-Fred

Garrett Wollman

2023-05-25 21:25:14 UTC

Post by Fred Atkinson
You are splitting hairs here in a semantics issue.
Suppose the cellular infrastructure is down due to an attack on our
nation.
Think you are gojng to get those alerts then?

Such an attack would also take out the broadcast infrastructure, which
is a lot more physically concentrated and easier to disrupt.

-GAWollman

Fred Atkinson

2023-05-26 20:31:32 UTC

Post by Fred Atkinson
You are splitting hairs here in a semantics issue.
Suppose the cellular infrastructure is down due to an attack on our
nation.
Think you are going to get those alerts then?

Such an attack would also take out the broadcast infrastructure,
which is a lot more physically concentrated and easier to disrupt.

Maybe, or maybe not.

No doubt some of the stations would [go] down.

But maybe not all of them.

They are not entirely dependent upon network programming.

Have you ever heard the term 'Single point of failure'?

I would say that both the Internet and the Cellular network are
exactly that.

Broadcast stations, not as much!

Garrett Wollman

2023-05-27 21:17:25 UTC

Post by Fred Atkinson

Post by Fred Atkinson
You are splitting hairs here in a semantics issue.
Suppose the cellular infrastructure is down due to an attack on our
nation.
Think you are going to get those alerts then?

Such an attack would also take out the broadcast infrastructure,
which is a lot more physically concentrated and easier to disrupt.

Maybe, or maybe not.
No doubt some of the stations would [go] down.
But maybe not all of them.
They are not entirely dependent upon network programming.

You might be surprised how many radio stations, after conditioned
analog lines and ISDN ceased to be available for new installs from
ILECs, came to depend on the Internet for their studio-transmitter
links, especially now when it's audio-over-IP all the way from the
mixing console to the transmitter.

Many radio transmitter sites have just a commodity Internet connection
that feeds their remote control and the transmitter: no Internet =
station off the air. More profitable stations, especially those that
haven't moved around a lot, may have an analog microwave path for
backup, or even an optical wide-area network, but this costs a lot
more money and is hard for many engineering managers to justify to
barely-profitable companies constantly seeking to cut costs.

The "primary entry point" stations, of which there are currently 77,
have received substantial capital investment from FEMA to support the
survivability of their transmitter sites. These stations monitor a
FEMA radio system for presidential emergency messages, but most people
do not listen to them, and would depend on other stations receiving
and relaying emergency alerts. Each of these stations has an
emergency studio that would allow station personnel to go on the air
-- if they could get to the transmitter site -- as well as a diesel
generator with a multi-day fuel supply.

-GAWollman

Bill Horne

2023-05-28 22:28:25 UTC

Post by Fred Atkinson

Post by Fred Atkinson
You are splitting hairs here in a semantics issue.
Suppose the cellular infrastructure is down due to an attack on our
nation.
Think you are going to get those alerts then?

Such an attack would also take out the broadcast infrastructure,
which is a lot more physically concentrated and easier to disrupt.

Maybe, or maybe not.
No doubt some of the stations would [go] down.
But maybe not all of them.
They are not entirely dependent upon network programming.

At the time I retired, Verizon had substituted specialized T-Carrier
channel units for the conditioned lines: the T-Carrier links didn't
require any equalization, and since most local pairs aren't loaded,
there was usually no need to equalize the local pairs beyond seting
some computer-generated options in the channel units.

As for ISDN, I'm surprised that it would ever be used for "STL"
circuits in the first place: ISDN was a dialup service, and even if
the radio station owner was willing to bear the expense of the
Nailed-up "data" connections, they would be risking disconnects caused
by all of the usual problems that can interrupt both digital and
analog connections: T-Carrier failure, etc.

Were you thinking of IDSL connections?

Post by Garrett Wollman
Many radio transmitter sites have just a commodity Internet connection
that feeds their remote control and the transmitter: no Internet =
station off the air. More profitable stations, especially those that
haven't moved around a lot, may have an analog microwave path for
backup, or even an optical wide-area network, but this costs a lot
more money and is hard for many engineering managers to justify to
barely-profitable companies constantly seeking to cut costs.

It's been a while since my "First Phone" was renewed as a "General
Radiotelephone" license, but what I recall from my days as a radio
tech was that even clear-channel stations avoided mircowave like the
plague. The siting effort was incrediby expensive, with complementary
towers at each end of the path, with the risks of any off-kilter
microwave oven killing the link, and with a never-ending need to pay
someone to predict what buidings would be built in the middle of the
Fresnel Zone.

Of course, we all know the on-again, off-again love triangle that has
fiber-optic cable, Ditch Witch machines, and competent fiber splice
technicians at the vertices. I've never met a chief Engineer who
trusted fiber any more than microwave - but it's been a while, so
perhaps the reliability has improved.

Post by Garrett Wollman
The "primary entry point" stations, of which there are currently 77,
have received substantial capital investment from FEMA to support the
survivability of their transmitter sites. These stations monitor a
FEMA radio system for presidential emergency messages, but most people
do not listen to them, and would depend on other stations receiving
and relaying emergency alerts. Each of these stations has an
emergency studio that would allow station personnel to go on the air
-- if they could get to the transmitter site -- as well as a diesel
generator with a multi-day fuel supply.

There's a funny thing about information: those whom receive it first
usually think of their own interests before those of others. As
happened in 1971, I think most stations would ignore alerts that would
impact their bottom line, and that if there was a serious problem,
their employees would spend their time telling their families to beat
the traffic jams on their way to anywhere else.

I'm sorry to be so blunt, but this is how I see it. If FEMA coughed up
money to improve "survivability," of transmitter sites, it was a
taxpayer-funded gift to the station owners for use in purchases of
political good will from the broadcash industry.

AM radios and their "Alert" capability are just another chapter in the
long story of psychological warfare that our government has been using
as long as radio has existed. Be afraid, and pay your taxes: the tall
white guy knows best, and he'll protect you.

Bill Horne

Fred Goldstein

2023-05-30 15:24:40 UTC

Post by Garrett Wollman
...
You might be surprised how many radio stations, after conditioned
analog lines and ISDN ceased to be available for new installs from
ILECs, came to depend on the Internet for their studio-transmitter
links, especially now when it's audio-over-IP all the way from the
mixing console to the transmitter.

At the time I retired, Verizon had substituted specialized T-Carrier
channel units for the conditioned lines: the T-Carrier links didn't
require any equalization, and since most local pairs aren't loaded,
there was usually no need to equalize the local pairs beyond seting
some computer-generated options in the channel units.
As for ISDN, I'm surprised that it would ever be used for "STL"
circuits in the first place: ISDN was a dialup service, and even if
the radio station owner was willing to bear the expense of the
Nailed-up "data" connections, they would be risking disconnects caused
by all of the usual problems that can interrupt both digital and
analog connections: T-Carrier failure, etc.
Were you thinking of IDSL connections?

Radio stations used ISDN for events, like school sports and
appeareances at shopping malls. STLs were either microwave or fixed
circuits.

Nowadays stations do use the Internet for STLs, though it may be
accompanied by a microwave channel. One major-market FM station I have
worked with is a good example. They have an analog (900 MHz) STL from
a high rooftop near the studio to the main transmitter tower on a big
hill some miles away. But that's now just a backup. GatesAir has a
clever new system where stations can fill in coverage gaps within
their licensed contours via booster transmitters. A booster is an
additional lower-power transmitter on the same frequency (vs. a
translator, which needs its own channel). Obviously a booster can't
listen to the main transmitter and retransmit it (on frequency) the
way a translator can, but it can use its own STL. The trick is that
the STLs to both the main transmitter and boosters are digital and
they all have GPS sync. So they all buffer the broadcast for enough
milliseconds to make sure that they're all in perfect alignment with
GPS timing. The booster antennas are directional, pointing away from
the main transmitter, so the signals from both transmitters arrive in
sync and don't interfere. For the main STL, it's unlicensed 5 GHz
microwave. That can go quite a few miles between decent size dishes,
and it's cheap; the dishes not only give gain but help null out all
the Wi-Fi noise below the path. The boosters use cable modems for
their STLs. If something fails, it falls back to the analog STL on
just the main transmitter.

Post by Garrett Wollman
Many radio transmitter sites have just a commodity Internet
connection that feeds their remote control and the transmitter: no
Internet = station off the air. More profitable stations,
especially those that haven't moved around a lot, may have an
analog microwave path for backup, or even an optical wide-area
network, but this costs a lot more money and is hard for many
engineering managers to justify to barely-profitable companies
constantly seeking to cut costs.

Not true. Aural analog STLs are on 900 MHz, which doesn't get rain fade,
and have been there pretty much forever. Microwave in general, though,
is pretty easy to make reliable, based on current digital technology,
and the radios have gotten quite cheap. Buildings do get put up in the
path if you're in an urban core, but you can usually get time to work
around them (engineer a new path) before they're done. TV STLs are
usually microwave on 7 or 13 GHz. Back in the olden days, stations had
to buy their STLs from Ma Bell, who used microwave.

Post by Bill Horne
Of course, we all know the on-again, off-again love triangle that has
fiber-optic cable, Ditch Witch machines, and competent fiber splice
technicians at the vertices. I've never met a chief Engineer who
trusted fiber any more than microwave - but it's been a while, so
perhaps the reliability has improved.

Backhoe fade continues to be a problem. You can't foolproof things --
we keep getting greater fools.

--
Fred R. Goldstein k1io fred "at" interisle.net
Interisle Consulting Group
+1 617 795 2701

Bill Horne

2023-05-30 17:13:58 UTC

Post by Fred Goldstein
Radio stations used ISDN for events, like school sports and
appeareances at shopping malls. STLs were either microwave or fixed
circuits.
Nowadays stations do use the Internet for STLs, though it may be
accompanied by a microwave channel.

I guess I /am/ getting old: I don’t seem to be writing cogently of
late.

I won't labor the point: my objection to Uncle Sam’s determination to
have every-single-car capable of listening to AM radio stations is,
IMNSHO, just psychological warfare, intended to keep voters
"connected" to a Father-Knows-Best era when only tall white men were
allowed to lead or make important decisions.

Of course, those who own AM stations want everyone to be able to
listen to their programs: that’s a given. The fact that they want
those whom buy electric vehicles to pay extra to make that possible is
just a time-honored business trick: getting your customers to
capitalize your growth, the same way that Internet users paid for
the "WiFi Calling" capability that every Cellular provider uses to
maximize profits while minimizing the need to buy, build, and maintain
cell sites.

I'm guessing that the automakers will take the easy way out, and (as
has been suggestd already) include AM receivers in their vehicles,
without the shielding which would be required to make them work. It's
the same result without making Uncle Sam angry or embarrassed enough
to strike back: AM Broadcast will eventually (pardon the pun) fade
away.

Bill Horne

Patton Turner

2023-05-31 02:06:13 UTC

Three of the links to the Primary Entry Point (PEP) transmitters
(originally ~33 mostly AM stations) were independent from the
internet. There was a dedicated phone line (TDM at the time), a
satellite (which I believe is now IPAWS and/or IPAWS over EMNet- it's
hard to keep that straight), and a XM satellite radio added later
which serves as a parallel distribution chain. One assumes the phone
lines were migrated to MPLS, not internet.

At the PEPs these national level alerts are injected into the
transmitter audio input- there is no requirement for a remote studio
or studio transmitter link (STL) to remain. In fact the original PEPs
had a small console at the transmitter so they could originate
programming if the studio failed. Most PEP transmitters doubled as
fallout shelters. The "fill in PEPs" added post Y2K did not have the
fallout shelters, but I think they retained the consoles. They bult
out CONUS coverage during daytime, and added Guam, American Samoa,
CNMI, and Caribbean coverage.

Some states have the ability to reach their state primaries over
satellite or over fixed microwave, or via dedicated VSAT terminals
(granted these might not be the direct transmission of the national
audio stream). NPR also carries the national level alerts over their
satellite squawk channel, so that represents yet another source of
injection (and over time, so stated migrated their local primaries to
NPR stations since they were two steps closer in the audio chain as
long as their satellite was up.

Non PEPs are certainly vulnerable to a STL failure, and the radio
stations are almost guaranteed to install their ENDECs in the control
room to allow management of required weekly/monthly tests, but the
dead air if a station looses it's STL completely is likely to cause
users to tune in another station.

When Alabama implemented EAS, we had an extremely robust instate
distribution chain, with the EMA being able to inject message into the
two state primaries independent of the PSTN, and over two statewide
broadcast satellite networks (I suspect two so they could carry both
Alabama and Auburn football at the same time), and most stations
monitored their local primary, both satellite networks and NWR. But
no state primary could actually receive a PEP message 24 hours a day,
so it had to be received by a public television station in Mobile (far
SW corner of the state) and sent up a fairly robust microwave system
across the state. This was latter fixed and Alabama got one of the
first "new" PEPs in Birmingham (WJOX-AM).

You may hear (correctly) that stations get their EAS alerts from the
internet- this is the preferred path when it is available to preserve
audio quality and get the complete Common Alerting Protocol (CAP)
message. This doesn't mean this is part of the resilient
distribution. For the lest decade, all stations, at least without a
waver, must have a IPAWS compliant encoder/decoder with a internet
connection, but this doesn't remove their requirement for 2
connections to 2 other sources.

As to the radio stations not passing on the message, it's automatic.
A EAN or NIC message opens a live audio path from the president (EAN)
or FEMA (NIC) to every participating EAS station. There are problems
in the distribution chain, but those PEPs are directly interrupted by
FEMA.

Wow, I was just going to point out that STLs don't matter for the 77
PEPs.

Pat

--
These are my personal opinions.

**********************************************************************
* Moderator's Note
*
* I had to revise the threading info of this post. I chose to place it
* in the threading after another post which discussed technical
* aspects of the alerting structure. If I got it wrong, that's on me.
*
* Bill Horne
**********************************************************************

Bill Horne

2023-05-23 12:39:30 UTC

Post by Garrett Wollman
And guess what? Your phone gets the same emergency alerts as the radio
stations do. That excuse simply doesn't hold water any more.

I'm guessing you don't spend a lot of time driving around out in the boondocks.
As soon as you get off main roads in a hilly area, cell signals are
hit and miss. Here in not particularly rural upstate NY I can show you
places on state highways where there's no cell signal at all. I expect
western Mass is the same way.

s/in a hilly area/south of the Mason-Dixon Line/
s/not particulasrly rural upsate NY/the hills of western North Carolina/
s/expect/know/

Bill "We're not at the end of the world, but we can hear the waterfall" Horne

Fred Goldstein

2023-05-23 15:30:11 UTC

Post by Garrett Wollman
And guess what? Your phone gets the same emergency alerts as the radio
stations do. That excuse simply doesn't hold water any more.

I'm guessing you don't spend a lot of time driving around out in the boondocks.
As soon as you get off main roads in a hilly area, cell signals are
hit and miss. Here in not particularly rural upstate NY I can show you
places on state highways where there's no cell signal at all. I expect
western Mass is the same way.

Western Mass. definitely is that way. Mobile phone coverage is spotty.
Hilly terrain gets in the way. The same applies elsewhere in the
Appalachian region, probably even up north into Canada.

Besides that, the experience of a car radio is different from a mobile
phone, and safer. I can turn on the radio and hear continuous
programming, and change the station with a button. Mobile Devices use
touch screens, which are inherently dangerous when driving. And the
canned programming you usually get on a mobile device leaves you out of
touch with news alerts anything short of a very serious emergency.

--
Fred R. Goldstein k1io fred "at" interisle.net
Interisle Consulting Group
+1 617 795 2701

Michael Trew

2023-05-30 19:57:03 UTC

It's already dead. FM and satellite are not far behind. With 4G and
5G wireless there is simply no reason for anyone to still use
broadcast radio: you can get all the same programming and much, much
more, streamed to your mobile device which you control using CarPlay
or Android Auto through the dashboard touch-screen.
And guess what? Your phone gets the same emergency alerts as the radio
stations do. That excuse simply doesn't hold water any more.

Satellite radio is built into every new car with subscriptions. I know
quite a number of people who use it (anecdotal, I know). Car
manufacturers must have something going with the satellite radio people
-- kind of like Microsoft of yore and Internet Explorer. Further, it's
easy to disable emergency alerts on the mobile phones; it's right there
in the settings. Flip phones tend to not have the emergency alerts.
The same can't be said for broadcast radio.

Either way, I'll take your point that it's moot to argue AM radio being
vital to emergency broadcast, in general. I'm probably the oldest 28
year old on the planet, but I enjoy my broadcast radio, and I
particularly enjoy pulling in distant clear-channel stations at night.
You'll regularly find me tuning into 650 AM WSM from Nashville on my 10
PM commute home in Western PA/Eastern Ohio. I'd like to see amplitude
modulation and broadcast radio, in general, to live on.

Bill Horne

2023-05-31 13:07:56 UTC

I'm probably the oldest 28 year old on the planet, but I enjoy my
broadcast radio, and I particularly enjoy pulling in distant
clear-channel stations at night. You'll regularly find me tuning
into 650 AM WSM from Nashville on my 10 PM commute home in Western
PA/Eastern Ohio. I'd like to see amplitude modulation and broadcast
radio, in general, to live on.

In 1978 and 1979, I worked at radio stations in Santa Barbara,
California, while I attended college there. The first station I worked
at had purchased a Volkswagon "Thing" automobile from a soldier who
brought it home from Germany. It had an AM radio that tuned the
European broadcast band, around 200 KHz, and every week, I would drive
it up to the top of the Los Padres forest to check the station's
transmitter.

I could here Deutsche Welle all the way up and all the way back down,
all during the ride, on about 200 KHz, which is the low end of the
band where aircraft marker beacons operate in the U.S. IIRC, I could
even hear the marker beacon at the Santa Barbara airport.

I was the happiest 26 year old in the world. I even learned a few
words of German!

Bill

Marco Moock

2023-05-31 14:54:51 UTC