At its October 10 meeting, the Commission’s decision to approve a standard for digital radio drew the headlines. But there were three items on the meeting’s agenda, one of which was the Enforcement Bureau’s release of its yearly Progress Report.
We’ve condensed the microradio-related enforcement news from the presentation and assembled a special report on what was revealed. My favorite highlight involves the Bureau’s number-fudging on enforcement actions finally catching up with it: the report claims fewer “pirate radio” enforcement actions than previous agency statements suggest. The discrepancy is not gigantic, but large enough to be noteworthy. Continue reading “Behind the Numbers @ the FCC Enforcement Bureau”
Category: Digital Radio
FCC Admits Ignorance on Digital Radio, Adopts Standard Anyway
It took only 14 minutes today for the Federal Communications Commission to dramatically decide the future of radio broadcasting.
The FCC adopted a Report and Order authorizing the rollout of digital radio. The vote allows radio stations to immediately install In-Band On-Channel (IBOC)-based transmission equipment and, upon notifying the FCC, begin broadcasting using the new transmission standard.
Stations will initially run a hybrid analog/digital signal, so as to not make everybody’s analog receivers immediately obsolete. At some undetermined time in the future the FCC will require radio broadcasting to go completely digital – the hope is when that time comes the public will have forked out the hundreds of dollars each for the new “HD Radios” they’ll need. Continue reading “FCC Admits Ignorance on Digital Radio, Adopts Standard Anyway”
FCC Adopts IBOC-DAB
Note: All audio is in 48kbps/44KHz mono MP3 format.
Speakers are listed in the order they appeared.
W. Kenneth Ferree – Chief, FCC Media Bureau (1:54, 673K)
Short and to the point, Ferree set up the charade by brandishing a logbook of some of the first radio licenses the FCC ever issued.
Notable quotes: Continue reading “FCC Adopts IBOC-DAB”
Bring the Noise
The implementation of digital radio is on the agenda for the FCC’s meeting this Thursday (Oct. 10). According to the summary, “The Commission will consider a First Report and Order concerning digital operation by terrestrial radio broadcasters.”
What this means is that the FCC will lay out the ground rules for the rollout of in-band on-channel (IBOC) digital audio broadcasting. It has been noted by multiple sources (both from within the radio industry and without) that IBOC is a technological nightmare with the potential to cause massive interference between stations on both the FM and AM dials. Its sound quality may also be worse than conventional analog signals. Continue reading “Bring the Noise”
Michael Powell Wants Regulatory Slaughter, New Microradio Documentary in the Works, Interesting Uses for LPFM
The FCC’s Spectrum Policy Task Force has just wrapped up a series of four “workshops” on how best the agency can divvy up our electromagnetic spectrum.
In remarks at the closing workshop (held Aug. 9), FCC Chairman Michael Powell outlined four goals he wants to see the FCC work toward when it comes to managing spectrum. Goal #2 is the one that almost made me lose my lunch: Continue reading “Michael Powell Wants Regulatory Slaughter, New Microradio Documentary in the Works, Interesting Uses for LPFM”
A/V Archive Unleashed, Launch Imminent, Random Notes
I hereby present to you the Audio Library, which contains more than four gigabytes of material. In addition to 40+ hours of shortwave pirate clips (many new to the ‘net), featured MP3s and all things Mbanna, there’s some worthy video for you to check out as well.
Examples include “Free Radio: A Video Documentary” and “Evil Empire,” an oldie but still goodie, especially with the pending NAB radio convention in Seattle (just a month and a half away) and Clear Channel’s recent higher-than-usual public visibility.
Remember: this stuff just represents what was previously encoded, plus a backlog of stuff I hadn’t gotten to putting online yet. And we haven’t even gotten to media collage! Based on this, it’s feeling about time to officially “launch” DIYmedia, which means getting back into the real swing of things, with regular updates and the like. Look for that to happen within a week or so, once we get a few more essentials online. Continue reading “A/V Archive Unleashed, Launch Imminent, Random Notes”
Mbanna Material Resurrected, Good Riddance Randy Michaels?, IBOC Surprise
A busy week. The Human Rights Information Network is back in action – all of Mbanna’s previous material is back online, and there’s 13 new episodes of the Human Rights Patrol, a new album of music from Ebony Kantako, and the start of a new archive of raw audio from the Human Rights Radio tape library. Mbanna now has more than a gigabyte of audio online, with plenty more sure to come.
There’s also new entries to the Enforcement Action Database – primarily a slew of NALs to operators in Florida, and one to the owner of a licensed station in Kansas who operated a pirate station on the same frequency out of a local nightclub. How smart is that?
We’ll be putting up the rest of our audio library and more features over the course of the next week. Soon, we’ll be back in business for real. Continue reading “Mbanna Material Resurrected, Good Riddance Randy Michaels?, IBOC Surprise”