Boston Globe Item on WERS LMA Proposal

[Dan Strassberg]

In fact, as I understand it, the only reason that analog SCA channels are
not audible to the general public is wording in the FCC regulations that
essentially makes it illegal for anyone to sell to the US general public
radios that can reproduce those channels. There is no technical reason that
mass-market analog FM receivers cannot reproduce SCA channels. The reason
for the regulation was to protect the interests of companies that
distributed background music on SCA channels. If receivers that could
reproduce those channels were widely available, the background music
services would not have been able to charge for their product and thus could
not have made any money from the SCA services. Interesting that technically,
FM stations have been able for more than 30 years to broadcast mutiple
(analog) audio streams. When HD Radio came along, some bright person must
have said, "Wait a minute... This turkey ain't gonna fly--but if we can
market it as enabling many new program sources, it'll seem to the public
like... like... satellite radio... that's it, satellite radio without the
monthly subscription fees." And so it must have been that HD subchannels
were born. Known as turning a sow's ear into, umm, a sow's ear.

--
Dan Strassberg, dan.strassberg@att.net
eFax 707-215-6367

----- Original Message -----
From: "R Trovato" <xtrovato@yahoo.com>
To: "John Francini" <francini@mac.com>; <bri@bostonradio.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2006 2:15 AM
Subject: Re: Boston Globe Item on WERS LMA Proposal


>
> > >Because in a literal reading....."WCRB will indeed
> > >continue to play  classical music." (albeit on one of
> > >their HD channels.)
> >
> > No, but even at the time that was written I'm sure the _implied_
> > meaning was for it to play classical music on the *primary signal*.
>
> Well, it was implied, because they never imagined there would be another
way
> to program Classical music on WCRB.
>
> Now there IS a way to program Classical on WCRB that the public can pick
up
> and enjoy!
>
> > WCRB has run a business of playing other formats (including
> > background music) on their SCA channel for quite some number of
> > years, well back into the 1970s.
> > I would think that if this takeover had happened back then, the idea
> > of putting the classical music on the SCA channel would be as much of
> > a non-starter as putting it on a digital (but not necessarily HD)
> > channel is [to me] today.
>
> Yes, however the WCRB Sound Systems SCA channel was never mean for direct
> public consumption.
>
> The HD Multicasts are designed for exactly that.
>