The Beginnings of FM Radio Broadcasting (2018)
theradiohistorian.org
theradiohistorian.org
> To the shock of RCA and other television proponents, the commission reassigned TV Channel 1 – 42 to 50 MHz - creating 40 exclusive channels for FM radio.
Undoing that monumental fuck-up was a mammoth undertaking, I know I was in the thick of unraveling it at the time.
Anyway, I challenge anyone to come up with a worse case example (at least in the post-War era).
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Some background: the Channel-0 was damn stupid engieering decision, huge TV antennas, Sporadic-E propagation, and so on. Channel 5A had to be so named as the higher channels were already allocated and station owners rightly objected to having their station IDs changed. Note: this all didn't happen in the early experimental days of the 1920-30s but in the 1960s long after both TV and FM had been established worldwide!
So after nuking the FM spectrum what to do about the missing FM Service?
Well, the Goons running spectrum management (the ABCB—Australian Broadcasting Control Board) proposed to solve their self-made problem decided to introduce a unique Australian style UHF-FM service.
Opponents—amongst whom was yours truly—objected on multiple grounds but mainly that a UHF-FM service was an unfair technological tariff on the Australian people, as the FM radio sets would be one of a kind and have to be made locally, and therefore much more expensive. Moreover, there was only one Australian manufacturer namely AWA (Amalgamated Wireless Australasia). So much for competition.
And here the plot thickens, the proposed UHF-FM specs had been concocted by both the ABCB and AWA joining forces.
Anyway, after much skulduggery and political lobbying on our part which led to a Royal Commission (the McLean Inquiry) we eventually won. We got our FM band back.
BTW, it's not as if the 88-108MHz FM band was vacant before being taken over by TV, the ABC was broadcasting a simulcast of one of its AM band frequencies on FM. That had to be closed down when TV channels 3, 4 and 5 started.
Right, Australia is the Olympic champion of spectrum management fuck-ups.
The entire notion of numbered channels never made sense to me growing up in Europe, and I was very confused about it until I learned how strongly the concept of a logical channel and a physical broadcasting station (and the associated RF channel) go hand in hand in the US and some other places.
The first thing to do when we got a new TV always was to program the mapping of station numbers to RF channels, and there was no generally accepted "right" way to do it, so at home, a given TV station might be on program 4, whereas a friend's family might have it on 5.
That did get really annoying with digital satellite or cable TV, though – the station numbers now regularly go up to the hundreds or thousands!
That CB effort was a little before the FM lobbying (it was useful for me as I gained experience dealing with politicians). (For the record, as far as I know I'm the only common link between the CB and FM lobbying efforts).
Nothing's perfect anywhere but I've told you very little of the full sordid story about how commercial AM interests killed the introduction of FM for 30 years from just after the War to the mid 1970s. It's complicated long and horrible (Rupert Murdoch's father, Keith Murdoch, was involved in these political machinations, need I say more!)
In fact, a stranglehold on the political process stopped any new radio station—AM or FM—in Sydney from the early 1930s until December 1974. Incidentally, that new station was not AM but FM. Yes, it'll be 50 years in December since that victory.
Getting the spectrum changed here in Australia was damn hard and determined work, fortunately the pent-up energy meant we had some very dedicated like-minded people to help. These efforts were a bit like Armstrong and Farnsworth versus RCA's David Sarnoff. (Incidentally, some months ago I posted a description on HN of my time working for RCA, therein I described my rather short meeting with Sarnoff when he visited here to open a new RCA record factory.)
It's a shame we've been so bad at documenting our radio history especially the FM side as bits of it are quite interesting. Some of our own skulduggery that I mentioned is hidden deep within the archives and is unlikely to ever see the light of day unless one of us mentions it (and there aren't many of us left).
For instance, we sought help to beat the entrenched opposition (all-and-sundry including Government department gnomes (ABCB, etc.), commercial interests such as FARB (Federation of Australian Radio Broadcasters), local manufacturing and such who argued for the status quo or for a lame-duck UHF system). We approached commercial equipment importers and others with vested interests such as academic educators (broadcasters) for help and the information many provided was very useful.
One particularly helpful source was the local Rohde & Schwarz agents who brought out to Australia the no nonsense, straight-talking very-opinionated Dr. Lothar Rohde who gave evidence to the Royal Commission. Rohde had spent time in South Africa helping to establish its FM network a decade or so earlier.
Before the Commission was established both serendipity and some good political acumen by few of our lot led us to the wily and very cleaver politician James McClelland† (the cognoscenti knew him as Diamond Jim). McClelland had been looking for ways to rout his 'dodging' bureaucrats especially the ABCB on a number of matters and by chance we met him informally after giving evidence to a Senate Committee hearing on other matters (about education, arts and science). McClelland was its chairman. He was quite delighted as we gave him the technical evidence he needed to shaft them (he was a lawyer and not technical). How that meeting happened is a great story but I've not time to go over it here.
That encounter led McMcClelland to obtain the services of Sir Francis McLean‡ who had been head of BBC Engineering as one of the Royal Commissioners. I'm not sure if the Hansard (parliamentary transcript) was taped or not but I'd love to hear a reply of the dialog between Rohde and McLean, it was wonderful. After that, we were rubbing our hands with glee; we knew that the Inquiry had to come down in our favour.
Incidentally, a while after the Inquiry we approached McLean (who by then was long back in the UK) to become the patron of first properly licensed FM station in Australia. Not only did he accept the offer but he came to visit us and was very interested in our 'homemade' bespoke transmitter (that too is another great story).
McLean was a very intelligent and charming man; it was a privilege for me to have known him.
† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_McClelland
‡ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_McLean_(engineer)
Edit: I just found this Wiki (it's the sanitized version: :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Inquiry_into_Frequ...
I find it fascinating that frequency is such a hot commodity. Then as our technology progresses, a bit more spectrum gets opened up (by either expansion, or bandwidth consolidation with new tech).
Borrowable, for now.
'Light beam link' sounds super innovative for ~1942.
Bell found that many substances could be used as direct light-to-sound transducers. Lampblack proved to be outstanding. Using a fully modulated beam of sunlight as a test signal, one experimental receiver design, employing only a deposit of lampblack, produced a tone that Bell described as "painfully loud" to an ear pressed close to the device.
This feels like building tension, given where FM eventually lands.
Not only did it work, but it was accurate and didn’t sound too, too robotic. Will definitely try again.