Comment at FCC Hearing on Media Ownership in Seattle 11-30-06
The FCC gave permanent approval HD Radio (or In-Band On-Channel or IBOC) radio Thursday. Essentially a power grab by large broadcasting chains, it allows stations to broadcast digital programming on redundant, adjacent channels, thus crowding the FM and AM bands with noise that can only be decoded into audio by expensive, new radios.
The new digital IBOC signals won't travel as far, and will cut into the signal range of analog stations on adjacent frequencies, thus decreasing your chances of tuning in low powered broadcasters such as college, community, and other grassroots stations. Those small stations will not be able to afford this expensive conversion. Big corporate broadcasters and NPR will be able to put alternate programming streams on their digital side carriers, thus doubling or tripling the number of stations in a market owned by each big operator.
There are digital radio methods that do not cause interference: FMextra sounds better, caused no interference, and travels farther. The Eureka system operates on a totally seperate band, thus creating no interference to the legacy analog FM signals on the airwaves that we own. Somehow, the NAB & NPR have no interest in these systems.
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