Can we save AM radio?

Before Facebook, before the internet, before cellphones and TV and even FM radio, there was AM radio. Entire families would gather around elaborate refrigerator-sized receivers and bask in the warm glow of vacuum tubes as news, music, and entertainment poured from the only source of broadcast content in existence — NBC, ABC, and CBS were all on AM before they were on TV. Amplitude modulation operated at the very core of American culture.

But in America we have a bad habit of eviscerating the past. Radio broadcasters, once a vital part of American culture, have been shedding listeners for decades — the mass transition to digital media has been particularly brutal for the AM band, where listenership against FM audiences is at a record low of 15 percent. Predictably, there are only a few people that care about this impending extinction — but one of them just happens to head the Federal Communications Commission.

Old-timey mass media

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai grew up listening to high school basketball games on KLKC 1540AM in his native Parsons, Kansas. It’s not hard to envision the son of Indian immigrants actively becoming more American as he participated in this aural ritual practiced by generations of homebound sports fans before him. AM’s low fidelity makes it relatively unsuitable for music compared to FM; this has traditionally made it a home of hyperlocal talk-radio programming, particularly when it comes to sports and community news. The AM band is still home to 90 percent of all news and talk programming.

“I’m often asked why we should care about the future of AM radio,” Pai said in September at a meeting with the National Association of Broadcasters. “If you care about diversity, you should care about AM radio. Most minority-owned radio stations are located in the AM band … If you care about localism, you should care about AM radio. Many AM radio stations cover local news, weather, and community events.” KLKC still airs ball games today, as well as a sort of Craigslist-without-the-internet show called The Trading Post.

"IF YOU CARE ABOUT DIVERSITY, YOU SHOULD CARE ABOUT AM RADIO."

But listening to AM radio in 2014 can be an exercise in frustration. When amplitude modulation was developed in the early 1900s there was little else in the air to get in its way. Now we have iPhones with as many as eight transmitters onboard, pervasive Wi-Fi, and military communications in the mix. Non-digital machinery like cars can also wreak havoc on a signal: you can usually hear the RPMs of your motor fluctuate clearly with in-dash AM receivers, whining up and down with each gear shift. Even nearby lightbulbs can make an otherwise-clear broadcast sound like garbage — that’s because almost any AC-connected appliance radiates frequencies below the 30MHz band, which is also where AM lives. High-powered ESPN and Radio Disney affiliates can usually be heard clearly, but the nostalgic core of AM — those small-town stations like KLKC — are increasingly marginalized by the massive financial, technical, and legal costs of operating a licensed transmitter.

This is where having an AM junkie like Pai at the head of the FCC gets interesting: he’s letting his nostalgia for the antiquated band leak into his policy decisions.

A Pai with a plan

On October 29th, the FCC published a set of guidelines it hopes will “revitalize further the AM band by identifying ways to enhance AM broadcast quality and proposing changes to our technical rules that would enable AM stations to improve their service.” There are six core proposals in the FCC’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM 13-249): the first is to allow AM broadcasters an exclusive opportunity to file for an FM translator — that is, to take their existing signal and rebroadcast it into the more widely consumed FM band. Easy enough to understand.

The remaining five address some very technical economic regulations.

In its first 50 years, AM was a large enough player in the media landscape that it required lots of technical regulations to keep stations from interfering with one another’s signals while simultaneously serving their communities with adequate signals. Advertising money was pouring in, and business was big enough that it could support a large and robust engineering workforce to ensure compliance with all those regulations. Now that its audience is relatively microscopic and competition is low, those regulations need to be relaxed to make AM a viable medium, especially for minority and rural (read: small-budget) broadcasters to be able to effectively serve their communities.

If the FCC doesn’t adopt these rules, or something like them, the AM band may simply be too big of a hassle for Americans to both produce for and listen to. In a comment filed on the FCC’s proposed guidelines, Leigh Ellis, the owner of WAKE 1500AM in Porter County, Indiana said: “As helpful as some of these proposals in the NPRM might be, they may not … achieve … a noticeable change in the AM services long-term.”

Ellis is one of the many small-market station heads that filed official comments in support of the proposed changes to the AM band itself, but he’s also resigned to the fact that their businesses will probably be untenable if they don’t get an FM translator as well. Even if every AM listener in the country could hear any local station they wanted to perfectly clearly 24 hours a day, the fact remains that there just aren’t very many people hitting the “AM” button on their tuners these days, and there’s almost nothing anyone can do to change that trend. So what we end up with is proposed legislation that mostly aims to aims to enhance the AM programming band by turning it into FM programming.

Digital, or “HD” AM transmission is something we’ve been hearing about for more than a decade — but most of us have never actually heard it. Like digital TV, it sounds better, but requires stations to buy new transmitters and listeners to buy new receivers — and unlike TV’s transition to digital, there are still legal barriers to rolling out all-digital broadcasts. The National Association of Broadcasters commented on their ongoing experimentation with digital AM broadcasts, but pointed out inherent regulatory challenges: “Deployment of all-digital AM radio service would require a change to the commission’s rules.” After spending so much time in technical and legal beta, digital AM seems more like an expensive, niche destination than a viable alternative to its analog ancestor.

Virgin Atlantic using Google Glass, Sony smartwatches for London passenger check-in

Virgin Atlantic has begun a six-week test aimed at giving its employees more information about some passengers as they enter the London Heathrow airport. The program, which is currently designed only to aid customer service staff attending to upper class passengers, uses Google Glass and Sony's SmartWatch 2 to serve up information about passengers and their destinations:

From the minute Upper Class passengers step out of their chauffeured limousine at Heathrow's T3 and are greeted by name, Virgin Atlantic staff wearing the technology will start the check-in process. At the same time, staff will be able to update passengers on their latest flight information, weather and local events at their destination and translate any foreign language information. In future, the technology could also tell Virgin Atlantic staff their passengers' dietary and refreshment preferences - anything that provides a better and more personalized service.

FOR FLIGHT INFO, WEATHER, AND LOCAL EVENTS

Virgin says the program replaces an existing service that gave its employees customized information. If successful, Virgin says it could bring Glass or the Sony watches to other airports, though the company did not say whether it might trickle the service down to passengers with lower tier tickets.

Google Glass continues to be available only to those who sign for up the company's Glass Explorer program, with the hardware running $1,499 a pair (or more if you opt for the new prescription frames). It's unclear just how many units of Glass and the Sony smartwatch Virgin Atlantic bought and plan to use as part of the pilot.

Nokia and HTC bury hatchet in patent disputes

The two have been battling since 2012, and several HTC phones have been banned from sale in Europe

Nokia and HTC have settled their long-running patent infringement battles, which played out in several countries and have seen a handful of HTC phones banned from sale in Europe.

The two companies, both major players in the smartphone industry, said they have agreed on a "patent and technology collaboration" that will settle all outstanding litigation.

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Precise details were not revealed, but the companies said HTC will pay Nokia an undisclosed sum and the collaboration will involve HTC's patents on LTE technology. LTE, often called 4G, is a high-speed wireless data transmission technology being rolled out by carriers in many countries.

Nokia's chief intellectual property officer, Paul Melin, hailed the agreement as validating Nokia's patents while HTC's general counsel, Grace Lei, said her company was "pleased to come to this agreement."

Nokia had asserted since 2012 that HTC infringed on about 50 of its patents and engaged in unauthorized use of proprietary innovations.

The cases had been making their way through the courts in countries including the U.K., Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.S.

In March 2013, Nokia won an injunction in Germany against some HTC smartphones that were found to infringe upon a power-saving technology.

In September, the U.S. International Trade Commission ruled HTC infringed two patents held by Nokia related to cellphones and tablets, and in October the High Court of England and Wales ruled that some HTC devices infringed on a Nokia mobile network standard patent.

Nokia won a sales ban against the HTC One Mini smartphone in the U.K. as a result of that latter judgment.

Patent battles between major smartphone manufacturers have become a common part of the industry in the years since Apple introduced the iPhone and sparked the smartphone boom. Faced with a highly competitive marketplace, companies have been suing each other when one considers a competitor's products look too similar to their own.

The iLuv iMM747 Audio Cube

The iLuv iMM747 Audio Cube is a fully-dedicated iPad stereo docking station. The Audio Cube provides two speaker channels, each with iLuv’s enhanced jAura Soundcell Technology. The iMM747 features easy docking via an adjustable, sliding docking wall, which provides secure iPad vertical support and a flexible 30 pin connector that automatically adjusts to dock your iPhone 4 or iPod as well.

Cost: $149.99

 Attractive dedsign. Clever dock connector design. Works on iPods, iPhones, and iPads. USB connection works flawlessly for syncing devices. The iLuv Audio Cube looks nice and can handle any iPod, iPad, or iPhone device, but its underwhelming power and lack of a remote prevent it from being a compelling dock.

Court bans AT&T's Aio Wireless from using magenta color

A federal court has granted T-Mobile a preliminary injunction against AT&T subsidiary Aio Wireless on grounds that the low-cost carrier's color scheme infringes on T-Mobile's iconic magenta. In the decision, Federal District Court judge Lee Rosenthal writes that "T-Mobile has shown a likelihood that potential customers will be confused into thinking that Aio is affiliated or associated with T-Mobile based on the confused association between Aio’s use of its plum color and T-Mobile’s similar use of its similar magenta color." The opinion prohibits Aio Wireless from using its plum color in advertising, marketing, and store design.

In the complaint, T-Mobile argued that Aio's plum color scheme and similar wireless services confused customers into thinking that the low-cost carrier was associated with T-Mobile. Winning a preliminary injunction requires a strong case, as T-Mobile had to prove that it had a strong likelihood of success in the final case. Considering the likelihood that Aio was infringing — and the damages that the infringement was causing to T-Mobile — The court decided that it should stop Aio from continuing to use its shade of plum. A final ruling is yet to come, and issues such as monetary damages will be decided later.

'Flappy Bird' creator says that tomorrow he's pulling the game offline

Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen has said in his twitter update that tomorrow he's pulling the game offline. It is assumed that he will remove it from IOS & Android App Store for some unknown reasons.On Twitter, Nguyen, whose surprise hit is making $50,000 a day in ad revenue, said that he "cannot take this anymore" and would remove the game 22 hours from now, or midday Sunday.

https://twitter.com/dongatory/statuses/432227971173068800



The notoriously difficult Flappy Bird was created in mid-2013, but it only gained recognition over the past weeks as a sudden rise in popularity brought it to the top of both the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store. It's received both genuine and backhanded praise for its simple design, which asks players to simply navigate between pair after pair of pipes without hitting either one. Just a few days ago, Nguyen told The Verge that he was thinking about a sequel, so this is a sudden turn of events. We've reached out to Nyugen for more answers, but for now, play Flappy Bird while you can, in case it really is gone tomorrow.