NAB HAS COME AND GONE…
Once again, we've
beaten the odds and survived that annual bacchanalia of broadcast equipment and
salespeople: the NAB exposition. Every
year, the show gets bigger, and every year I wonder how that can be. It's a time of sore feet and backs, and of
watching some very smart people attempt that elusive alchemy: of transforming
the products they have into what the customer thinks he wants, at least for as
long as it takes to get the purchase orders signed.
* * *
If last year was the
year of IBOC transmitters, this was the year of waiting for those receivers to
turn up at your corner store. The throng
still seems very confident that will happen "in just a few months." Sorry, but this refrain sounds an awful lot
like what we heard when everyone was installing AM stereo, and later, Eureka
DAB. And, in both those cases, the
receivers never really did show up. Oh
well, maybe third time's the charm??
* * *
The IBOC transmitter
race in the
* * *
MERGERS (AND
ACQUISITIONS??). The first day of the show, Nautel and
Continental Electronics announced that they have agreed to trade and market
each other's transmitters, after quickly stamping their own name on the
front. They'll each service and support
the transmitters, too. There was even a
Nautel FM transmitter, stamped "Continental," on the floor at the
Continental booth. Some wags have been
wondering if this is the first step toward one of these big fish eventually
swallowing the other; opinion seems to be evenly split at this point over who
would be more likely to swallow whom…
will that be a Nautelental or a Continautel? Sounds catchy either way!
* * *
I've had only a few
minutes to peruse the Proceedings, but my eye stopped at an interesting paper
that further discusses the problem of effective audio level control for
television, especially digital television: as you may have noticed,
a topic near and dear to my heart. It
touches some of the same material we've been chattering about here, but with
some interesting statistics and further data.
* * *
And finally, I got a
quick note from the very distinguished John S. (Jack) Belrose, Radioscientist
Emeritus Researcher of the Communications Research Centre,
The 100th
anniversary of Fessenden's invention of broadcasting is coming up this December
… where will YOU be on Christmas Eve??