Hubbard’s WWFD (820-AM) “The Gamut” in Washington, DC has turned off its analog signal and is now all digital. The station has turned to a partnership with HD Radio to broadcast in digital (the format is a music station playing “A to Z and everything in between”). PD and station engineer Dave Kolesar says AM needs to start trending in this direction. “We’re excited to be doing this extremely innovative project that has tremendous potential to make AM much more viable to distribute all formats.”
A press release from the station states that, “Over the past few decades, issues like poor sensitivity and technical upkeep, quality of receivers, and narrow audio bandwidth have contributed to the steady decrease in AM radio listenership. On July 6, The Gamut received an Experimental Authorization from the FCC to broadcast their AM station exclusively in digital.”
The Gamut will still be accessible to listeners in Frederick, Maryland without an HD Radio. They can find the station on regular analog FM at 94.3 FM.
It’s this AM radio using the Ibiquity Scam? How are the broadcasting rendering all their broadcasting rights to this EVIL Technology? No one cares about their stupid Digital Scam!! There are virtually no receivers for their garbage!! If you are a radio station, Ibiquity owns all the rights of your transmitter technology, and they can even sequestrate your files and logs because they own all the trademarks, so you are technically an slave on their mercy!!
On the other hand, with Analog transmitters, you are free of all those bureaucratic technical traps and burdens!!
The Digital Technology of Ibiquity or what ever their damn name may be, its a big bust!! But, They corrupted the tupid idiots from the FCC eons ago, so They have all the green lights from this and other FCC administrations to keep pushing for a technology which is a clear long term trap for the freedom of the American People!!
The only good thing that you may do with a digital Transmitter, it is to simulcast different streams simultaneously, but with the Limitations of AM radio bandwidth , that feature sound awful!!!
So, I can clearly call the AM HD (Which has nothing to do with High Quality Digital), its a big huge bust and scam for broadcasters!!
I love the experimenting going on here. (Wikipedia also seems to have a lot of historical as well as contemporary details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWFD.) As for listeners, do they expect to have any? Seriously? No is a good answer. Experiments are like that.
For what it’s worth, I use three HD radios: one in a Los Angeles car (a Scion, now discontinued) , one in a New York apartment (a Teac, very good when the temperature is 75° and up, also discontinued) and one I carry with me when I travel (a SPARC: awful UI, great sound for the size, good AM & FM+HD tuners). In my experience with these, HD works on AM only where the signal is very strong. WWFD is 4.3kw nondirectional by day, and 430 watts directional at night, on some of the least conductive ground in the country. It’ll be interesting to see how it goes, especially since WWFD also streams on the Net: https://live.gamut.fm/listen/ . (Doesn’t work for me, but then I block tracking spyware, so maybe that’s it.)