ABC/Citadel halting nighttime IBOC for now

[Jim Hall]

I recently went out and bought an HD radio (the Sony XDR-S3HD). HD on the AM
dial frankly is not worth the effort, imho. Yes, WBZ sounds better, but not
to the point that I would listen to a station because it was in HD. I think
the real future is on the FM dial. One thing that bothers me about at least
2 of the 3 table top HD radios being sold in stores is that there is no
built-in ferrite rod AM antenna. The Sony came with a spool of wire to serve
as the AM antenna. About 25 miles north of Boston, the included folded
dipole antenna is fine on FM, but on AM the longwire is a pain to deal with
in a condo.

-----Original Message-----
From: boston-radio-interest-bounces@tsornin.BostonRadio.org
[mailto:boston-radio-interest-bounces@tsornin.BostonRadio.org] On Behalf Of
Bob Nelson
Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2007 1:56 PM
To: BostonRadio Mailing List
Subject: ABC/Citadel halting nighttime IBOC for now

After complaints, ABC/Citadel has sent a memo to its stations asking them to
stop broadcasting
I-Block, er, IBOC at night while the problems are being
studied...interference issues are
the factor (example, between WABC and WJR...)

This is actually welcome news for many DX-ers including yours truly who
depends on stations
like WEPN in NY to carry major league baseball playoffs (non-Red Sox). I
listen at work at night
and it would be very tough if I-Block came into play (no word if WBZ plans
to drop it,
or if they're even doing it at night? though I did manage to pick up the
1050...). Last night, for example, I just barely managed
to pick up Boston's ESPN stations (890/1400) for that wild card playoff game
(other
outlets, like WEPN in NY, had other programming). But I usually can't pick
them up
(at one point I was getting WLS on 890 instead) and have to try elsewhere.

Anyway, an interesting development...