Folly or Futurist?

A top Hubbard Broadcasting engineer places his bets on HD Radio for an AM lifeline.

For many across the radio broadcasting industry, the concept of “AM revitalization” — as championed by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai — has little to do with any enhancement, improvement or upgrade of an existing kHz-based facility. Rather, the focus has been on that 250-watt FM translator designed to bring a bigger audience to a station on what many consider to be a dying broadcast band.

In some countries, where AM was defined as “Medium Wave,” all radio stations were permanently silenced and their programming shifted to DAB.

The U.S. failed to make that happen years ago, preferring in-band, on-channel HD Radio implementation, which until recently was hardly as successful as what transpired in Western Europe.

Now, HD Radio could be seen as a savior for AM radio — but not for those stations’ transition to FM radio multicast channels or anything like a DAB band as seen in Germany or the United Kingdom.

HD Radio technology in the form of digital-only AM broadcasts is being explored as the technical salvation for a broadcast band many younger audio consumers don’t even know exists.

Championing this possibility are two companies. One is based in Texas. The other is headquartered in Minneapolis and has a formidable presence in the nation’s capital.

It is at the latter company, Hubbard Broadcasting, where its Senior Broadcast Engineer, Dave Kolesar, just may be bringing to life the biggest technical advance to AM radio ever seen.

From Hobby To Lobby

At the center of Hubbard’s grand experiment, overseen by the Washington, D.C.based Kolesar, is “The Gamut.”

That’s the branding associated with the most eclectic Adult Album Alternative radio station you’ve likely ever heard, based at Class B WWFD-AM 820 in Frederick, Md. WWFD’s signal covers nearby Hagerstown and stretches to Montgomery County, Md., and much of Fairfax County, Va., during daylight hours.

It has an FM translator at 94.3 MHz in Frederick, and can be heard closer to the White House at 98.3 MHz — a second translator using a feed off of an HD multicast signal tied to top-rated all-News WTOP-FM 103.5.

The genesis of Hubbard’s AM digital experiment is a 10,000-song-plus internet-only radio station created by Kolesar several years ago as a hobby.

When Bonneville International Corp. sold its Washington, D.C., properties to Hubbard in January 2011, it opened a hole on WTOP’s HD3 channel, which had been home to The Mormon Channel. By December 2011, with Hubbard in control, that programming disappeared.

What to put in its place? “[WTOP SVP/ GM] Joel Oxley thought it would be fun to put what had been on a web station on the signal,” Kolesar tells RBR+TVBR. Thus, “The Gamut” was born.

Fast-forward roughly 15 months, to March 2013, and Oxley and the local Hubbard team started to rethink what to do with WWFD. By then, it wasn’t really targeting Frederick and had been a forlorn simulcast of programming based at the 1500 kHz signal that had once been the home of WTOP and then the home of The Washington Post Radio Network and Talk “3WT,” and eventually became what is today Federal News Network.

With Kolesar’s “hobby” gaining traction — meaning people were actually finding The Gamut, and listening — Hubbard placed it on WWFD.

It ran as an analog station through July 16, 2018.

Then, a most interesting development unfolded.

STATIC-FREE, SONICALLY

Around Christmas 2016, Kolesar started pondering what to truly do with WWFD.

It had a decent daytime signal; it covers a highly affluent portion of the National Capital Area, as well as many a Federal government employee either driving down I-270 to Washington or taking MARC or the Metro Red Line from Gaithersburg, Damascus, Clarksburg, and surrounding communities.

“I started asking what can we do with 820 to make it a player, and how could we just get it so that people could actually want to listen to it,” Kolesar says.

The pending arrival, in July 2017, of a Frederick translator helped immensely.

“The listeners were there and dedicated, but it was just not growing in number,” he notes. “I just could not get people to try this Triple A music format on an analog AM.”

But what if it were broadcasting in HD Radio?

Kolesar says, “Knowing that this translator was coming, I thought to myself that the AM was going to be useless.”

A thought occurred to him. “That facility was di-plexed, and on that facility was the iBiquity experimental station on 1670 kHz, where they were conducting field tests for all-digital AM mode.”

This early trial of HD Radio on AM got Kolesar excited about the possibilities for WWFD and “The Gamut.” He says, “I knew what all-digital AM HD could sound like, and the thought occurred to me, ‘Why don’t we just do that on 820?’”

A few weeks later, Kolesar headed to Las Vegas, and the 2017 CES. Spotting the booth for Xperi, now the purveyor of HD Radio, he walked up, introduced himself, and noted that he wanted to take one of his stations all-digital — WWFD. He asked for help.

“After the stunned reaction, a lot of planning and coordination, engineering and antenna system modifications were done over the next year,” Kolesar says with a laugh. Yes, they were willing to help. They just couldn’t believe that Kolesar was serious about, and committed to, his plan.

All that was needed was experimental authority added to WWFD’s license. This came, and has been renewed once, after a progress report was submitted to the FCC.

“This is an engineering STA for one year, where you ask the FCC for permission to operate using the MA-3 mode, under the condition that interference isn’t caused,” Kolesar explains.

What did Kolesar and Hubbard learn after one year of HD Radio’s presence on WWFD?

“Our daytime coverage is pretty incredible … especially in digital,” Kolesar says. “The full digital mode, which is the core and enhanced mode, is receivable on an average car radio, out to the 0.5 mv contour.”

For novices, this is purple circle one can see when calling up a station’s reach on popular website Radio-Locator.com.

“This is stereo audio with 15khz frequency response,” Kolesar explains.

The outermost circle is about the range of the “core-only signal,” he adds. Under ideal circumstances, you’ll still hear WWFD out to the signal contour, with mono audio with 15khz frequency response.

This, he found, is better than being in analog.

It could be a game-changer for hundreds of AM radio stations, in particular those in Florida, where static from thunderstorms can wreak havoc on reception.

Where it was in use, audio quality was extraordinary. This included the nowdefunct CJSB-AM “54 Rock” in Ottawa, which had a nighttime signal reaching much of Upstate New York. Alas, financial troubles led the owners to move the station to the FM band in 1994.

Four competing standards for AM Stereo prevented it from getting it off the ground. Today, the AM noise floor would never allow AM Stereo to happen. But with HD Radio, error correction in alldigital broadcasts counteracts the noise prevalent on AM band broadcasts. At

“Even in the worst of thunderstorms, reception is still robust enough for the average listener out to the 2mv contour, which is the core defined listening area,” Kolesar says, referring to the red circle one can see on a Radio-Locator.com contour map.

Among those who have heard WWFD in HD Radio is Ari Meltzer, a Partner with Wiley Rein. “It makes listening to music on AM a really viable and almost indistinguishable experience,” he says.

Into The Groove

As far as Kolesar and Hubbard are concerned, if you’re going to demonstrate a technology, you should shatter the expectation for what type of programming you’re going to put on it.

For the eclectic music found on “The Gamut,” the choice was near perfect.

“It sounds just as good, if not better, than analog FM,” Kolesar swears.

Similar claims were made some 30 years ago for a technology many industry veterans chuckle at: AM Stereo.

WWFD, an Omnia 7am processor with HD option is in use.

For the listener, tuning to AM 820 in Frederick won’t be any different than tuning to any FM station with HD Radio. After a second or two, the HD signal will lock, and the audio will become instantly enhanced. “This was something we got working just in time for the spring 2019 Nielsen Audio ratings book,” Kolesar says.

As soon as fast acquisition was working, the station’s listening reached new heights. For the first time ever, WWFD appeared in the Frederick, Md., Nielsen Audio ratings.

As WWFD is still an experiment, where is improvement needed?

“I am having trouble coming up with areas where there is trouble, because the coverage has exceeded my expectations,” Kolesar says.

Where improvements may come are with things that listeners won’t notice –such as refining the spectral mask of the

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