Conceived as a competitor to Apple’s market-dominating iPod line, the Zune added an HD Radio receiver in 2009, making it one of only two portable HD radios available.  The other comes from the Best Buy Insignia house brand, which has a touch-screen making it look like an MP3 player, even though it’s only a radio.

It appears that Microsoft will retain the Zune brand which includes a music store platform accessible on the XBox games system and Windows smartphones. But none of those devices includes HD Radio reception.

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...where local radio is becoming ever less-local:

London’s best-known radio station has already made its promise for 2011—to outgrow the Big Smoke, and to end 37 years of being solely associated with London... From January, stations from Glasgow to Southampton will relay most of Capital’s shows.

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Tributes to Tigers announcer Ernie Harwell, by Detroit News columnist Lynn Henning, and blogger “T-Mo.”

Elsewhere:

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From April, 2008:

Sales manager’s nightmare!

Intempo’s Rebel radio records all your favourite FM stations and cuts out all the DJ drivel and adverts.

The $250 Abbee Commercial-Free Music System... from Michigan start-up Myine Electronics, consists of two main components: a tabletop base stereo speaker system with a built-in FM tuner and a portable player called Music Lock, which plugs into the base.  The twist: Abbee can automatically record songs from whichever FM station you're tuned to — but it manages to do so without the ads and idle chitchat.

The Abbee base has storage for about 100 songs. But you can transfer and store about 500 songs on the Music Lock portable.  The transfer from base to portable is automatic when the Music Lock is plugged in.  Upon playback, you can skip, pause, fast-forward and rewind.

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Ever been tasked with turning out a glowing report about something that, when you looked into it, just didn’t quite manage to pique your enthusiasm?  I suspect that’s what happened to Katherine Boehret during her survey of three HD radios, as reported in today’s Wall Street Journal.

Boehret spent a week testing the sets- one a straight table radio, one which included an iPod dock, and a portable. She also talked to the technology’s developer, iBiquity Digital, and her piece includes the usual iBiquity talking points- that HD means improved sound quality, and that there’s no extra cost (beyond hardware) for HD reception. She clearly describes how HD radio works, but also makes the common mistake of calling it “high definition;” the “HD” - supposedly - has no special meaning.

In short, she likes the sound (and some of the additional programming), is intrigued by the tag-songs-for-purchase capability of the docking set, but is less than enamoured with some of the technical wrinkles:

Washington, D.C., where I live, supposedly offers 41 HD Radio channels, but I couldn’t find as many as that...

Tuning in each HD station takes longer, like the way changing channels on a digital TV takes an extra second.  But in my tests, this process took five seconds or more per change of channel...  While a radio was tuning in... an “HD” logo flashed on each radio's display.  This logo turned solid when the station was found and finally started playing...  This kind of delay is enough to try anyone’s patience.

Each of the radios I tested offered an HD Seek feature—a way of skimming through all stations to find and play those that could be heard in HD.  But HD Seek didn’t stop on multicast channels; to get to those on each radio, I had to press buttons to tune up or down while already listening to to a main HD radio channel.  Some HD Radio models have HD Seek tuning functions that find HD1 stations as well as HD2 and HD3 channels.

Overall, I didn’t hear enough incredibly great content or sound quality to want to run out and replace my old radios.

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“Smokin’ US-30 Dragstrip . . . where the great ones ride!”  Simple words on a screen don’t do justice to the tag line of that (in)famous commercial.  If you listened to WLS or Super CFL as I did in the ‘60s and ‘70s, you’ll never forget the turbo-charged voice of Jan Gabriel who, with the help of some technical wizardry, made that commercial blast its way out of your transistor radio.

Jan Gabriel died this past Sunday [January 10th] at the age of 69...

For five decades he worked as a disc jockey, TV personality and executive of an ad agency.  But he’s best known for his in-your-face US-30 Dragstrip commercials, a concept he conceived himself....

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Ladies and gentlemen, Michael Jackson died Thursday.

And radio died right along with him.

Most radio stations just kept John Tesh rolling, Ryan Seacrest babbling and voice tracking mindlessly ploughing through the playlist.

By comparison Elvis died way before consolidation and within ten minutes most stations were broadcasting on-air tributes, news accounts and playing wall-to-wall Elvis.  (Not so easy when your local program is coming from national headquarters.)^[1]

People not only remembered where they were when The King died, but which station they were listening to.

Not yesterday.

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On May 2, 1934, WLW-AM became “The Big One.”

President Franklin D. Roosevelt pressed a telegraph key in the White House, firing up WLW-AM’s one-of-a-kind 500,000-watt transmitter, the most powerful in the country.

“The Nation’s Station,” they called it.

From the new 831-foot diamond-shaped tower on Tylersville Road in Mason, Crosley Broadcasting beamed programs coast to coast – and beyond.  It’s the only time the government granted 10 times normal maximum power to a radio station.
...
The half-million-watt transmitter – built for $500,000 under the Mason tower – was truly the big one: 54-feet wide, 13-feet tall and 7-feet deep.

It needed 22 glass radio tubes, each 5-feet high.  They were cooled by 700 gallons of distilled water per minute circulating from a nearby pond.  Each tube cost $1,624. - Cincinnati Enquirer^[1]

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Ka-Runch!

One of News Channel 7’s main broadcast towers has collapsed due to ice and high winds, hitting the main back-up tower as it fell. Both towers are on the ground ...

The road up to Hogback is still being cleared of snow and ice. Crews have made very good progress but still have another mile of road left to scrape.

The analog ch 7 antenna is in Landrum and the crew is getting ready to haul it up the mountain around 4pm. It will most likely take the rest of today just to get it up the hill. We are speculating that they should have the antenna and transmission line up by this weekend but all of this depends on when the truck gets up the mountain.

Another crew is trying to get up to Hogback to install a temporary TSL (transmitter to studio) dish which will get phones and data connections back up and operational.

« Snapped off! What a mess! »

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1 Well, they put the main backup tower within the fall radius of the main. Duh.  I wonder who will be responsible for that.  Probably someone who retired 10 years ago.

Posted by: mts1 at 03/06/09 02:32:44 (e83FB)

2 It's a mountaintop.site. I'd assume that decision was based on topographic and financial factors (terrain, land acquisition cost).

From that shadow in the sat view, it looks like it was a self-supported.



Win some, lose some.

Posted by: Old Grouch at 03/06/09 19:25:49 (qO7rf)

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