[HN Gopher] Court settlement calls for NPR to get $36M to operat...
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Court settlement calls for NPR to get $36M to operate US public
radio system
Author : geox
Score : 90 points
Date : 2025-11-18 18:19 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Call me ignorant but isn't it drastically cheaper to run an
| internet radio station? Then let others, including other radio
| stations repeat your internet stream over radio. I'm genuinely
| curious.
| floatrock wrote:
| What happens when a major CDN goes out? Or, god forbid, a major
| datacenter region has a DNS blip that apparently 1/3 of the
| internet depends on?
|
| Or, what if a hurricane or ice storm knocks out some internet
| connectivity? That would be a time when you really want to
| broadcast a message to anyone with a cheap fm/am radio.
|
| Cheaper isn't always the metric here.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| CDN? for internet radio? Internet radio predates all that.
| floatrock wrote:
| Predates, sure.
|
| Is affected by? No idea, but I'm sure there's some
| cloudflare rep convincing you that you need cloudflare to
| make sure your high-availability stream stays highly
| available when just yesterday azure got a ddos measured
| with Tbs. Just not today... today those cloudflare reps
| happen to be busy.
|
| Point is, radio comms serve a public utility that often is
| a Plan-B if internet links go down. Multicast it onto your
| podcatcher of choice, sure, but don't make that your
| backbone.
| E39M5S62 wrote:
| I'm curious too. As a complete outsider to that problem space,
| it seems like a lot of the tech was designed/created in an era
| before wide-spread broadband and internet-based content
| distribution. I'm sure a lot of it is simply that new hardware
| from that vendor is largely a drop-in replacement for each
| station, so there's no need to re-engineer their broadcast
| booth.
|
| ...
|
| I guess HN is the new Reddit. Downvotes, not a single response.
| You can do better, HN.
| tb_technical wrote:
| Some equipment is drop in - hooking up an audio output to a
| keyed radio is only occasionally difficult. You see a lot of
| these solutions in the HAM radio space.
|
| The actual radio equipment is a tad more sophisticated - and
| in poor areas (where it's barely hanging on) is held together
| with spit, glue, and prayers (exaggeration, joke, but aspects
| of it are true).
|
| Believe it or not, the RF cables are (in many cases) more
| expensive than the radios themselves.
|
| Background: Computer systems, radio systems, General class
| HAM, but certainly not an expert.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never
| does any good, and it makes boring reading.
|
| Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into
| Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Stealthisbook wrote:
| The justification for many of these stations is emergency
| preparedness. They're maintained for the ability to receive and
| transmit emergency alerts despite power outages or transmission
| line cuts. The daily programming is mostly incidental beyond
| maintaining listenership
| frugalmail wrote:
| The burden on taxpayers would be significantly less if it was
| strictly satellite coverage for use during emergencies.
| mindslight wrote:
| The burden on taxpayers would be significantly less if the
| government simply paid to run the system rather than
| additionally funding two sets of attorneys to duke it out
| in court to make an out of control executive actually
| execute the law. It's getting harder and harder to believe
| that this fascist movement was ever earnestly about saving
| money.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| What reason would people have for maintaining equipment
| capable of receiving radio though?
| tb_technical wrote:
| Same reason communities still maintain HAM radio clubs
| and rely on them for emergency communications in a grid
| down situation - it's an interesting (though expensive)
| hobby that has some merit for isolated communities.
| iso1631 wrote:
| The cost is having the satellite systems in place, working,
| and available. You don't save money by not using the tiny
| amount of bandwidth when it isn't "an emergency"
| ndiddy wrote:
| The stations that rely on CPB funding as a main source of
| income are the "others" who repeat the NPR content over the
| radio. They're tiny stations (typically 1-2 full-time
| employees) that mainly serve communities where internet
| streaming is not a viable option due to spotty cell coverage.
| jandrese wrote:
| Also, receiving internet service requires some kind of paid
| monthly plan. The cheapest plans have very low data caps.
| Streaming audio over them is much less practical for the end
| users than having a simple radio receiver. Radio waves also
| propagate further than cell broadcasts.
| woodruffw wrote:
| The US is pretty large, and has large areas without reliable
| cellular or wired Internet connections. Public radio ensures
| accessibility in those areas.
| almosthere wrote:
| I wonder if we should just pass a bill that requires Starlink
| or Amazon Leo to use 0.5% of their bandwidth for low quality
| (but higher than radio) free access to Inet Radio streams in
| some special way. Then start building out the infra in
| vehicles.
| woodruffw wrote:
| There are plenty of places in the US that don't have
| reliable satellite access either (not because of orbital
| coverage, but because of geographic features like
| mountains/deep valleys).
|
| (And these aren't remote/unpopulated areas: you can find
| plenty of satellite dead zones 2-3 hours outside of NYC in
| the Catskills.)
| MostlyStable wrote:
| Honestly curious: how many of those satellite dead-zones
| have good radio coverage? In my various times driving
| places, I've often lost radio signal in a sufficiently
| remote place where I 100% would have had satellite
| coverage. Those same features that can block satellite
| will also block (some kinds of) radio, if you don't have
| a broadcast tower at the top of the ridge or something.
|
| Yes, I agree that satellite coverage is not 100%. But
| neither is radio.
| woodruffw wrote:
| It's definitely a mixed bag, but the areas I'm thinking
| of have decent FM radio coverage (from local stations
| that affiliate with public radio). AM coverage tends to
| be good regardless.
|
| I've had the same experience as you around remote places,
| but those places were generally the flat-and-desolate
| kind :-)
| slumberlust wrote:
| Most towns have the repeater(s). They are cheap and easy
| to maintain.
| mrandish wrote:
| > because of geographic features like mountains/deep
| valleys
|
| I remember this being quite an issue trying to target
| geosync broadcast satellites like DirectTV/Dish. Even
| being in the shadow of a relatively small hill could
| block access if your location and local topology happened
| to create an unfortunate alignment. I've naively assumed
| Starlink's rotating constellation of thousands of LEO
| satellites reduces how often this is an issue - but maybe
| it doesn't?
| iso1631 wrote:
| Starlink has other issues. I have locations in London I
| can get to specific geostationary satellites, but can't
| use starlink there as there isn't much sky coverage
| kulahan wrote:
| Seems like a really expensive solution to an already-solved
| problem.
| fckgw wrote:
| Or we just continue to use the infrastructure that we
| already have and works?
| almosthere wrote:
| Because... it does not work, I want 100% access to any
| audio stream. I get garbled crap on terrestrial.
| jtbayly wrote:
| This doesn't answer the question. Why not use the internet to
| get the radio _to_ those stations?
| mig39 wrote:
| Isn't that what they do now? They describe a lot of the IP-
| based transmission stuff in the link.
| esseph wrote:
| This is ironic because it may be _radios_ delivering
| internet to those stations.
| jandrese wrote:
| I don't think the distribution of the signal to the
| transmitters is the problem here.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| A major reason for the enduring use of satellite in radio
| distribution is that, for live events like sports or (more
| common in NPR's case) political events, the satellite system
| provides appreciably lower latency than distribution over the
| internet. Reduced jitter also allows for generally higher
| reliability, you never hear the radio station buffering. There
| are options for low-latency land-based connectivity but at the
| scale of PRSS, the satellite system is cheaper to operate.
|
| Most stations can also receive this programming over the
| internet, another reason for the satellite system is that it
| provides a completely redundant path for programming delivery.
| This is important for general reliability but especially so in
| an emergency.
|
| Historically, radio networks distributed their programming over
| leased telephone lines. Satellite took over because it was
| cheaper. That gap has probably narrowed as terrestrial
| communications infrastructure continues to expand, but the
| internet struggles with low-latency real-time media, and an
| arrangement like leased fiber wavelengths to member stations
| would still be more expensive than the satellite system.
| There's a lot of member stations in a lot of places, satellite
| reaches all of them at once.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| > the satellite system provides appreciably lower latency
| than distribution over the internet
|
| Is that true? Round trip to/from geostationary satellites is
| about 240ms.
|
| And, with most stations using HD encoding, which adds 8
| seconds to the transmission delay, any network latency isn't
| going to be that important anyway.
| standardUser wrote:
| Not during a major earthquake or hurricane.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| The system in question is actually pretty interesting from a tech
| standpoint;
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Radio_Satellite_System
|
| > _In 2007, the SOSS was retired for the newest and current
| system of the PRSS, the ContentDepot. The ContentDepot no longer
| uses linear feeds of SCPC-based digital audio bitstreams like the
| SOSS. Instead, it uses a dedicated TCP /IP-based one-way
| connection uplinked via satellite from PRSS, which is received by
| a storage receiver (a combination satellite data receiver & file
| server) manufactured by International Datacasting [5]. Program
| feeds are requested and set up at a special internet-accessible
| web site (known as the ContentDepot Portal) that member stations
| can log on to, where they can subscribe to specific programs and
| live feeds. The subscribed programs are then delivered via
| satellite as a file transfer to the storage receiver in the form
| of MP2-encoded ACM-based WAV files, which then can be imported
| into a station's automation and/or playback system._
|
| > _Live feeds are sent in the ContentDepot system as streaming
| MP2 audio, sent over the same satellite transponder, but as an IP
| multicast stream (as opposed to a file transfer for pre-recorded
| programs) which is decoded by a special streaming audio receiver
| (called a stream decoder) set to the IP multicast addresses
| assigned for live audio streams on the satellite transponder used
| by ContentDepot._
|
| > _The newest generation of ContentDepot hardware for the PRSS,
| as of 2014 and also manufactured by International Datacasting, is
| a special version custom-manufactured for PRSS of their
| commercially available "Superflex Pro Audio" receiver. It
| combines both the stream decoder for live programming and storage
| receiver for pre-recorded programming in one rack-mounted system,
| in previous comparison to separate units for live decoding and
| program storage respectively with the introduction of
| ContentDepot._
|
| > _Some components of the previous SOSS still are in use in the
| ContentDepot era: one of the ABR-700 demods (as well as the
| downconverter) is still used by NPR as a "squawk box" for verbal
| announcements regarding programming to NPR stations_
| closeparen wrote:
| > TCP/IP-based one-way
|
| What would it mean to have one-way communication over TCP?
| Don't you need to send the acknowledgements back?
| CharlesW wrote:
| Good catch, I think the article needs a fix. As I read it, at
| the edges, everything is TCP/IP. Over satellite, IP multicast
| (UDP) is used for live audio, and unidirectional file
| broadcast (using a proprietary protocol with inline forward
| error correction) for program files.
| tb_technical wrote:
| Normally, yes.
|
| In the case where you don't expect a response, you can still
| rely on the rudimentary error checking of TCP (checksum and
| sequence numbers) to detect when damaged or dropped - but
| this smells like a custom implementation of the protocol.
|
| But this is a scientific wild ass guess.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Note that the CPB probably won't exist anymore in three years,
| for next renewal.
|
| And because of congressional action not executive, so probably
| legal.
|
| > The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the conduit for
| federal funds to NPR and PBS, announced on Friday that it is
| beginning to wind down its operations given President Trump has
| signed a law clawing back $1.1 billion in funding for public
| broadcasting through fiscal year 2027.
|
| > The announcement follows a largely party-line vote last month
| that approved the cuts to public broadcasting as part of a $9
| billion rescissions package requested by the White House that
| also included cuts to foreign aid. While public media officials
| had held a glimmer of hope that lawmakers would restore some of
| the money for the following budget year, the Senate
| Appropriations Committee declined to do that on Thursday.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2025/08/01/nx-s1-5489808/cpb-shut-down-p...
| rbanffy wrote:
| Let's hope the midterms changes enough of Congress to make it
| more sensible.
| JadoJodo wrote:
| As someone who grew up hearing pledge drives every few months on
| (ad-free) Christian radio: Would that be an option to fund NPR?
| Surely those who want to listen/watch/support would donate
| regularly.
| kej wrote:
| Every local public radio affiliate station already does this.
| jandrese wrote:
| Public Radio is already famous for their pledge drives with
| their tote bags.
| DerekL wrote:
| Half of NPR's revenue comes from payments from stations to run
| their programs, and most of the rest comes from individuals,
| businesses, and foundations. Those public radio stations are
| also mostly funded by listeners and donors.
|
| Also, this isn't relevant anyway, because the article is about
| a dispute about a particular program that NPR was running.
| exabrial wrote:
| How on earth does it cost this much?? This could be done for like
| $5k/month on even the most expensive of AWS setups if you weren't
| pinching pennies.
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