The Beginning of the end for HD Radio

[Kelly A]

Kahn prevented AM from having a chance by causing AM stereo to be delayed for four years while he took legal action. By the time a very poor FCC decision was made, AM was already over as a music medium. I never spoke with Kahn, so there was no "eye to eye" on this. I simply believe, like any good Monday Morning Quarterback, that he hurt AM very badly.

Not sure why some folks on this board keep lumping HD Radio in with Kahn and AM stereo. Not even close to being similar. Guess it's like the revisionist history about AM stereo: 'It would have saved AM from a certain fate'. But in reality, no it wouldn't.
And the whole idolization of Leonard Kahn? That's another head shaker.

 

[davideduardo]

And the whole idolization of Leonard Kahn? That's another head shaker.

Ah, I remember when I had to work on WADO in NYC. It just sounded funny on my portable, but no other station did. I visited the site and, lo and behold, a PowerSide was in the audio chain. That was made to disappear and the station sounded much better and I even earned a bonus off the next book!

 

[davideduardo]

The "stations between the stations" thing was actually the third marketing push for HD Radio. The first was "it makes FM sound like a CD and AM sound like FM" -- easily disproven by the poor quality of the proprietary codec they were using at the time.

And that one was knocked down within a month or two because the feedback from stations was that not even their own staff understood what the message was. But it was part of a set of messages that accompanied the debut that included the "stations between the stations".

I believe that in NYC the majority of stations tried the "makes it sound better" first then added the one about surround sound. A bunch of stations never ran the "stations between..." promos when managers said, "I don't want to be telling our listeners to go to another station".

Then it was the ability to broadcast in 5.1 channel surround sound -- years after the marketplace flop of DVD Audio and Super Audio CDs proved that there was no demand for surround sound music.

Also killed almost instantly because nobody at any station even had surround sound gear.

The first generation of HD Radio receivers didn't even have the ability to decode the HD2/HD3/HD4 subchannels -- a nice reward for early adopters.

Again, the iBiquity people were feeling pressure that satellite was ahead of them and the early chips shipped were really prototypes. Fortunately, very few of those were ever produced.

 

[Kelly A]

Ah, I remember when I had to work on WADO in NYC. It just sounded funny on my portable, but no other station did. I visited the site and, lo and behold, a PowerSide was in the audio chain. That was made to disappear and the station sounded much better and I even earned a bonus off the next book!

I know. Powerside=junk. I had pulled a couple out in my day too. In both cases, listeners flooded the station with calls: 'What did you do? I can hear your station again!'

 

[TheBigA]

As I said, the HD folks were reacting to Sirius and XM. They were totally focused on cars as they had the common impression that most radio listening was in vehicles.

If that was true why didn't they have a deal ready with car manufacturers to include HD Radio as standard equipment? It took years for that to begin.

Remember, when the FCC mandated the end to FM simulcasts about 33 years before that, manufacturers rapidly geared up to provide all kinds of FM radios and converters.

Part of that had to do with the fact that the Armstrong family allowed the patent on FM to run out in 1966, and it was available as freeware. Had iBiquity allowed manufacturers to include HD radio for free, things would have been very different.

 

[davideduardo]

If that was true why didn't they have a deal ready with car manufacturers to include HD Radio as standard equipment? It took years for that to begin.

What would be in it for the car manufacturers? iBiquity's business model was selling chips (or licensing them) to car manufacturers and their subcontractors. There is no kind of deal that iBiquity could have offered.

Part of that had to do with the fact that the Armstrong family allowed the patent on FM to run out in 1966, and it was available as freeware. Had iBiquity allowed manufacturers to include HD radio for free, things would have been very different.

Then where would iBiquity derive income? Their only product was the patents and the rights fees for using them.

 

[TheBigA]

What would be in it for the car manufacturers? iBiquity's business model was selling chips (or licensing them) to car manufacturers and their subcontractors. There is no kind of deal that iBiquity could have offered.

Then how could they say they were focused on cars, when they had no plan for cars? Were they lying? Were they deceiving everyone? It took many years for them to come up with a plan that some car companies accepted. But by then, the momentum was gone.

Then where would iBiquity derive income? Their only product was the patents and the rights fees for using them.

Their business model is not my problem. They promised the radio industry a revolutionary technology, and provided no way for consumers to use it. In a word, that's fraud.

 

[Theater of My Mind]

David, I have my own recollections of digital radio development but I've long wondered if they're really accurate. I probably read some of these things in audio magazines or news articles at the time and who knows if I remember them correctly, or maybe I dreamt them. As the resident radio historian here, can you confirm, refute or clarify? My memories go like this...

• DAB was first developed in the UK
• U.S. and Canadian broadcasters initially wanted to follow Britain's lead. The Canadian government approved the L-band for DAB, but in the U.S. that band was reserved for military use and the U.S. government would not give it up for digital radio
• Meanwhile, a competing proposal was made for HD Radio as we now know it in the U.S. which would not require new spectrum space, and it ultimately won approval. I recall it being called a compromise at the time.
• Canada forged ahead with DAB believing it would still become the worldwide standard and Americans would eventually come around
• DAB subsequently failed in Canada because no electronics manufacturer was interested in making radios solely for the Canadian market due to its relatively small population
• DAB is now struggling in the UK because it still uses the outdated MP2 codec that sounds like crap when the bandwidth is reduced to accommodate more multicast stations
• The rest of Europe has shifted to DAB+ which uses the AAC codec and solves a lot of problems, but the adoption rate is low

 

[davideduardo]

Then how could they say they were focused on cars, when they had no plan for cars? Were they lying? Were they deceiving everyone? It took many years for them to come up with a plan that some car companies accepted. But by then, the momentum was gone.

The plan for cars was the same as it was for traditional AM and FM: listeners would want free digital radio services and would want all the "new stations". They thought that the power of free radio and more formats and stations would require car makers to add the feature and buy their technology.

Their business model is not my problem. They promised the radio industry a revolutionary technology, and provided no way for consumers to use it. In a word, that's fraud.

The initial plan was good enough to 9 of the top 10 groups to sign on and sign a check for the required investment. That, in turn, encouraged the venture capital firms to pour more funds into the company. They all saw it working like the adoption of FM in the late 60's, but much faster and with greater station owner enthusiasm.

 

[Deus Ex Machiato]

They could have had the absolute best programming in the world, and no one would have known, because there were no radios available to hear that programming. There were no radios, car or otherwise, at Best Buys or Circuit City. No one in the consumer electronics world knew about it at all.

IIRC, there was no way they could have had the "absolute best programming in the world." There was never any real money behind it, and even those who thought "this might be something someday" handed off the programming of their secondary channels to people already burdened by wearing multiple hats at the primary signal. I remember launching our HD2 channel with the APD/MD. It was an "outlaw" country channel to complement the mainstream one. He put a lot of effort into the playlist, found a "man off the street" with a unique voice who was willing to do it for free, and I spent many hours creating the imaging.

We thought it sounded cool, but nobody cared. We used to joke that the three listeners loved it, but the station wasn't much more than just a hobby. Something we did in our spare time for fun. Not exactly a model for success.

 

[CTListener]

The initial plan was good enough to 9 of the top 10 groups to sign on and sign a check for the required investment. That, in turn, encouraged the venture capital firms to pour more funds into the company.

Fraud needs suckers in order to work.

 

[kevtronics]

David, I have my own recollections of digital radio development but I've long wondered if they're really accurate. I probably read some of these things in audio magazines or news articles at the time and who knows if I remember them correctly, or maybe I dreamt them. As the resident radio historian here, can you confirm, refute or clarify? My memories go like this...

• DAB was first developed in the UK
• U.S. and Canadian broadcasters initially wanted to follow Britain's lead. The Canadian government approved the L-band for DAB, but in the U.S. that band was reserved for military use and the U.S. government would not give it up for digital radio
• Meanwhile, a competing proposal was made for HD Radio as we now know it in the U.S. which would not require new spectrum space, and it ultimately won approval. I recall it being called a compromise at the time

U.S. broadcasters were terrified of DAB because it would suddenly put all stations in a market on a level playing field. It could give "rimshot" and low-power stations coverage equal to the market leaders, if they all came from the same DAB multiplex.

This isn't a problem in Europe where most stations are government owned and/or are national networks, but in the U.S.'s competitive commercial radio system it was seen as a looming threat (as well as that of satellite radio) and hastened development of alternatives that would add digital to existing in-band transmitters while preserving the differences in signal coverage between them.

All of the initial development of IBOC (In-Band, On-Channel) and IBAC (In-Band, Adjacent Channel) DAB was for FM only, but they soon realized that if FM went digital then AM stations would raise a stink about being left out and needing the improvement in sound quality even more than FM, so eventually they cobbled together a version that kinda sorta worked on AM, but with severe disadvantages that have been discussed here ad nauseum in years past.

I remember reading in the news as far back as 1993 that IBOC DAB was "right around the corner". They were only off by a decade or so...

 

[kevtronics]

Ah, I remember when I had to work on WADO in NYC. It just sounded funny on my portable, but no other station did. I visited the site and, lo and behold, a PowerSide was in the audio chain. That was made to disappear and the station sounded much better and I even earned a bonus off the next book!

But I remember the Power-Side reappeared on WADO in the 2000s and stayed on for a while until they began transmitting HD Radio (which itself didn't last that long on the station).

WWRL also used Power-Side after they switched to a talk format and shut off their C-Quam AM Stereo. I'm sure Ol' Lenny got a delight from seeing the Motorola box being removed and replaced with his own equipment! They kept using Power-Side (with the 15 Hz Kahn AM Stereo pilot tone) until at least 2012, as shown in this video:

 

[TheBigA]

The plan for cars was the same as it was for traditional AM and FM: listeners would want free digital radio services and would want all the "new stations". They thought that the power of free radio and more formats and stations would require car makers to add the feature and buy their technology.

But they didn't have the deals with car companies in place before the marketing began. People wanted the stations, but there was no way to hear them to even sample them. It was the old bait and switch, and it pissed everyone off. You don't build demand without a plan to deliver. They had no plan.

They all saw it working like the adoption of FM in the late 60's, but much faster and with greater station owner enthusiasm.

Except people could actually hear FM. They were prevented from hearing HD because there were no radios available.

 

[davideduardo]

I remember reading in the news as far back as 1993 that IBOC DAB was "right around the corner". They were only off by a decade or so...

The issue here was that the technology was developed by "The Phone Company" and did not initially have much radio industry interest. Some believe that the Kahn/AM Stereo/FCC debacle poisoned the well for new tech developments, but that sounds a bit conspiratorial.

It was not until satellite loomed on the horizon and AT&T was split, releasing its unfinished tech, that the digital system was put into a faster gear.

And, very definitely the fact that DAB would give daytimers parity with superpower FMs was frightening. But the major impediment beyond that was the fact that the European DAB band was mostly used militarily in the US. Whether reality or a convenient excuse, that put the damper on DAB here.

Interestingly, there has never been any interest in DAB in Latin America. Except in the Socialist nations of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, there is weak public / government involvement in radio and the commercial entities saw no advantage in something that would not enhance revenue but which would create major costs and implementation challenges in the larger, rougher terrain areas of the region.

 

[davideduardo]

But they didn't have the deals with car companies in place before the marketing began. People wanted the stations, but there was no way to hear them to even sample them. It was the old bait and switch, and it pissed everyone off. You don't build demand without a plan to deliver. They had no plan.

Except people could actually hear FM. They were prevented from hearing HD because there were no radios available.

As I said, I was opposed to this from the moment Strube told us there was no home radio plan and the power drain of DAC chips prevented portables "for the moment". To me, that meant that two-thirds of listeners would never hear it and then the third of listening that took place in cars would take a decade or more to be able to convert to HD enabled radios.

The whole thing was fueled by fear of satellite radio. Yet today, out of 260 million vehicles in the US, just over 30 million are paid satellite subscribers and we are about two decades into the satellite system. And the only resolution for in-home and portable listening to "satellite radio" is to stream it on your iPhone or Amazon device.

 

[Wwcs]

I have owned maybe 5 IBOC (What became known as HD) radio receivers.
my 1st 3 were Mighty Red Models in association with Radio Ink magazine. These matchbox sized units varied from a button version to primitive ‘touch screen.’ The touch screen had an annoying percussive thumping noise on weak analogue stations when the screen saver went dark which was particularly annoying. My other radio sets include a kitchen matchbox sized unit and now a clock radio

I live in a market with really no HD stations but I used these radios when I travelled. The 1st button operated Big Red and a subsequent similar audiovox model I acquired are great tuners. They are FM only devices. But tune HD well And analogue better that other analogue sets I have ever owned. The clock radio and larger hand held sound fab too. Great sound either HD or not. I had a after market Craig HD car radio and it was magnificent tuner AM and FM. But I parted with it when I traded in my car.

But here’s the heartbreak. When I bought my 18 Mustang. I went to my dealership to swap it out for a HD radio. “Ford doesn’t make them anymore.” They told me.

Because of Ibiquity’s software arrangement with stations and the lack of receivers IBOC was doomed from the git go. It’s kind of half assed digital anyway; but, like with black and white to color TV the compatibility was creative.

It’s a shame. It sounds good. The radio sets all and all are superior tuners with better sound. Certainly much better than compressed streaming services that are all the ragethese days. If your lucky enough to hear the sub channels formats HD’s a dream with lots of opportunities for lots of jobs. But it’s just a classic SNAFU like AM stereo was, only better real sound.

 

[Ai4i]

I live in a market with really no HD stations but I used these radios when I travelled.

Every NPR station I know of has at least one HD sub-channel,
with MPR's C24 being nearly an national HD2 network itself.

 

[CTListener]

Every NPR station I know of has at least one HD sub-channel,
with MPR's C24 being nearly an national HD2 network itself.

Let me introduce you to the stations of Connecticut Public Broadcasting, which only carry HD1 simulcasts of their own main feed, and it took them a long time to go HD at all. Apparently no interest in HD in the executive suites now, nor has there ever been.

 

[Kelly A]

Let me introduce you to the stations of Connecticut Public Broadcasting, which only carry HD1 simulcasts of their own main feed, and it took them a long time to go HD at all. Apparently no interest in HD in the executive suites now, nor has there ever been.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was providing pretty substantial grants to public stations to purchase and implement HD Radio across the country. It's always been up to the individual station or broadcast organization to decide whether to run any additional HD streams. Connecticut Public Broadcasting' management probably decided to stick with what their grant provided, which included HD1's only.
Here in the D.C. area; WAMU has an HD2 that regularly shows up in the ratings. It's a locally produced channel featuring Bluegrass Country.