The format is a good choice for the company. It certainly fits with their other content. The problem is that HD is dead technology. Who even sells HD radios? Listening will come via the App, but an FM signal would give it a real chance. Maybe they are looking to acquire 107.7 one day. When Audacy has finally had enough pain of failure, perhaps they'll sell it...
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Buffalo-Toronto Public Media has launched AAA “The Bridge” in Buffalo
- Thread starter DavidZ
- Start date
88.9 CIRV has a stock of HD radios imprinted with their name, which they sell. Mississippi Public Broadcasting gave free HD radios to their donors when they turned on HD in 2008.
People, pay attention. The big corporates are pushing to sell digital delivery, not AM/FM. On-line and on-app are the delivery systems of the future, and I'm not talking the distant future. Even the rating services are no longer separating listening by the delivery method. If there's an audience for this format they won't have any trouble listening to it. I personally think it will do OK, and bring new, younger ears to the WNYPB audience. Will they contribute enough to pay for it? That's the real question. If this becomes another revenue stream it will stick around. If listeners don't pony up, and they can't find underwriters interested in supporting it the stream will go away - just like in commercial radio.
It's only dead if you don't use it. But it's in better shape now than ever, because it's been standard in most car radios for the past five or so years. But as I said earlier, The Bridge streams, so it's available anywhere.
If The Bridge becomes a better revenue stream than classical, it could replace that format on WNED. Here's one market where that happened last year:
Nashville classical station will go Triple A in bid for bigger audience
Nashville Public Radio hopes to expand its news department with income from the new "music discovery" station.
current.org
Thank you all for posting this, I have several HD radios in the house and in both cars and will check this new station out. If I like it I might even donate. I don’t like streaming radio especially in the car. If someone calls or sends text the stream gets stopped & I have trouble getting it working again while driving. Plus it is hard to jump to a different stream if I don’t like the song or when the 5min commercial break comes on. With HD I can just jump around with touch of a button on steering wheel. FM translators are a problem and mess out of FM band. I can’t listen to 95.3 CING in HD since the 95.5 translator and 99.9 CKFM in HD since 100.1 translator went on the air.
Best Buy reports a run on HD receivers… all 27 units in stock at Western New York stores sell out in minutes. Now there are an estimated 53 in-home HD receivers in the Buffalo-Niagara Falls market. [/sarcasm]
But seriously, good on WBFO for trying. And yes, there are HD in-car receivers on some late model cars. More goodonya… but truthfully, tuning in an HD station on a car receiver isn‘t the easiest thing to do. In fact, it’s one of the major peeves that broadcasters have with the OEM auto industry, domesticate and foreign.
But seriously, good on WBFO for trying. And yes, there are HD in-car receivers on some late model cars. More goodonya… but truthfully, tuning in an HD station on a car receiver isn‘t the easiest thing to do. In fact, it’s one of the major peeves that broadcasters have with the OEM auto industry, domesticate and foreign.
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HD Radio in the early 2010's was what WebTV was to the 1990's, only big media talked about it being revolutionary but all it was is garbage. I had a chance to listen to The Bridge. Good mixture of what the current 92.9 WBUF and ALT Buffalo used to play from the songs I've heard so far. Not sure what the direction of the station or who their target audience is.
I would not go that far. As a stand alone product, it's worth is negligible. However, used to feed one or two FM translators, it can give someone who knows what they are doing a viable station in a market.
Note the time element: "HD Radio in the early 2010's was... The reference was to the early "channels between the channels" years of HD, before the AM translator option became available, not to the current state of HD.
The WebTV comparison is a good one. I actually tried it for a couple of years before moving up to a real computer. It was limited, but very much ahead of its time. Unfortunately, most TVs in use in 1997 were analog CRT sets, which limited what could be easily viewed on WebTV and the quality of the image. The legacy of WebTV is seen in Chromecast devices that transmit internet content to the TV, and, of course, today's TVs that double as gateways to online content.
Microsoft bought WebTV just over a year into its operations for about $450 million. While there was nothing much Microsoft could do with the original devices -- the internet was moving way too fast, and Sun Microsystems denied Microsoft access to Java, which crippled WebTV for an ever-increasing number of uses -- but the general idea anticipated the intertwining of television and the internet well before it became practical. I'd imagine MS found a lot it could use and improve on in the technical underpinnings of WebTV and probably still considers that $450m money well spent.
Bought this in May for under $70
Last week it was $117+....
Of course Past Warranty it won't boot up....Just hangs on "Welcome to HD Radio..."
Even in cars no one cares about HD Radio....
They've a USB Drive or phone to listen to....
And yet we see statistics that over 67% don't choose the USB or phone source in cars.
In a number of markets ethnic or specialty formats seem to be both profitable and attractive to listeners.
The largest special interest group would be those whose primary language is other than English or Spanish. In LA there are HD channels with Farsi, Armenian, Russian and Hindi that I know of, and I believe there are several others.
Any larger market with a significant language group can sustain such an HD channel if there is a business community that want's their patronage.
The same criteria may also be applied to other formats with special interest groups where a national stream of similar content does not address local communities and where streaming is not (yet) an acceptable way to reach such groups.
Naturally, such services won't get much Nielsen action as the ratings company does not do special treatment for any non-English language other than Spanish.
HD is not the same thing as a TV service. TV requires content that comes from expensive productions. Radio can be done locally with great ease and relatively competitive professionalism. So HD can do a good job of providing niche formats, whether based on limited appeal music formats or special interests ranging from sports wagering to foreign languages.
WebTV wasn't a "TV service." It was a set-top device that, when connected to the TV and a keyboard, displayed internet content on the TV screen.
Well, it was a paid "utility" then. It required renting the box from the provider, just like cable if I recall correctly.
HD does not require paying a fee, just acquiring a compatible radio or a car with it already installed.
Continuing to take this thread off the tracks...
WebTV boxes were sold by consumer electronics companies. The boxes were not leased. They required service from WebTV which could be categorized as an ISP of sorts. At the time internet was not considered a utility as it is today.
Again, we are debating terminology. The boxes, in my experience, could be obtained from WebTV. I did not know they could be also bought from outside suppliers. But the situation is the same... you had to buy hardware and then pay a monthly fee.
"The initial price for the WebTV set-top box was US$349 for the Sony version and US$329 for the Philips version, with a wireless keyboard available for about an extra US$50. The monthly service fee initially was US$19.95 per month for unlimited Web surfing and e-mail"
The box manufacturers paid a fee via the manufacturer to use the WebTV copyrighted system.
HD requires the hardware, but there is no fee for the service itself.
And WebTV, of course, was sold to Microsoft and it went off to die there. One of the issues, even before HDTV, was bandwidth. They original system was dial-up.
You crazy kids talking about webTV. HD radio was just launched on 101.1 CFLZ Fort Erie and it sounds good. HD is the stepping stone to get radio all digital. You FM analog people are stuck in the 60’s. FM analog sounds great if you have a great signal and are not moving. HD is just transparent to most people until you want to listen to something on HD 2 or 3 then they might have more of an interest.
The average car in the US is about 12 years old now. If there is a transition to all-digital on AM, it will take a decade or more if all car makers put HD in their dashboards. By that time, OTA radio itself may be obsolete.
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