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Cumulus To Shutter HD on FM?

R

RadioMan203

I was speaking with an engineer in another market yesterday evening and he mentioned to me that some of Cumulus FM's have or will be shuttering their HD transmitters. He couldn't be specific if it was related to operating costs (i.e., electricity to run these things for the few who listen) or related to the licensing renewal for the technology.

At this rate it seems AM Stereo from the 80's was much more accepted than HD radio is today. It sounds like it's time to pull the plug on the dying patient!
 
Seems digital radio it's not doing well enough in any market to make it a viable commodity. Recent iBiquity public releases indicate that the ship is sinking quickly. They've gone from concerned to outright panic. Struble must have trouble sleeping. This is a very good thing for all concerned. They've blew millions on advertising with essentially nothing to show for it. Investors have got to be getting tired and at some point reality has to set in. Hope this is it.
 
Yeah - He's been careful what he says now since his past rants have gotten him into trouble. A pending class action isn't helping either.
 
Does HD programming pay for itself at Cumulus? Or anywhere - with the possible exception of some public radio stations?

Cumulus is about to embark on a foray into the land of leverage. Their proposed debt load after the merging of Cumulus, Cumulus Media Partners, and Citadel will be worse than the debt load that sank Citadel in the first place. Every nickel spent to prop up a failed technology will cost people jobs.

Imagine how many radio jobs would have been preserved if companies hadn't wasted millions on HD - with no positive results. Digital is definitely in radio's future, but IBOC ain't it. The digital answer is "there's an app for that".
 
Nick said:
WEBE 108 in Connecticut no longer transmits IBUZ or even RDS.
Click to expand...

That was the first one I noticed locally but I haven't been around to see if any others in the Connecticut cluster are off or not.

Considering their expenditure to mop up Citidel I suppose it will be a decision of letting either people go or dropping joke technology. Better to keep people employed than run some obscure over the air nonsense that only a handful of people can hear With most of the HD-1 channels I've heard with similar garbage processing as their analog counterparts why even bother to waste the power running it?
 
We can only hope everyone shuts HD off. With shortspacing and a flat terrain here in FL, IBOC causes some problems during our ever-common inversion problems in the spring with 1st adjacent stations.
 
Count me in as another who wants IBOC to go to the place mentioned in Revelation 20:10 in the Bible. IBOC just does NOT come anywhere CLOSE to meeting my requirements for a digital system, including but not limited to: 100% lock even in a noisy environment when the signal is so weak that a QRSS CW signal would be detectable but unidentifiable when there's very little noise, ability to get weak adjacents right next to the transmitter site of a strong signal, ability to separate multiple stations on the same channel (maybe with low-level-modulated infrasonic morse IDs) like the graveyards, and undetectable even right at the transmitter site on standard analog radios - doesn't interfere with distant reception of co-channel analog stations (although a field strength meter may show a reading).
 
Bill DeFelice said:
I was speaking with an engineer in another market yesterday evening and he mentioned to me that some of Cumulus FM's have or will be shuttering their HD transmitters. He couldn't be specific if it was related to operating costs (i.e., electricity to run these things for the few who listen) or related to the licensing renewal for the technology.

At this rate it seems AM Stereo from the 80's was much more accepted than HD radio is today. It sounds like it's time to pull the plug on the dying patient!
Click to expand...

I think your friend and you are engaged in a lot of wishful thinking. His lack of specificity probably comes from the fact that he's making this up.
 
Gee, that's funny. One of the national radio pubs (can't recall whether it was RBR or Radio World or Inside Radio) had the story about Cumulus. Guess they were making it up too....?? ???
 
Savage said:
Gee, that's funny. One of the national radio pubs (can't recall whether it was RBR or Radio World or Inside Radio) had the story about Cumulus. Guess they were making it up too....?? ???
Click to expand...

Probably. Well, they might not have been making it up, but they may have bad info. Do you have a link to it?
 
We need no link to intuit that Ibiquity is having hard time with their "Flying Pig Circus".
 
Tom Wells said:
We need no link to intuit that Ibiquity is having hard time with their "Flying Pig Circus".
Click to expand...

Maybe not, but you do need one to prove the credibility (or lack of it) in this story.
 
Okay, fair enough. I must have combined accounts of the Citadel-Cumulus merger, Cumulus and HD, radio trades and some blogs I read in my mind. Given the company's 09 SEC filing, though, it's fair to assume that HD is going to have tough sledding in a reformed company. The new one will have even more debt than the load that sunk Citadel in the first place. "Iffy" and "costly" are not words likely to thrive in the new entity's lexicon.

Let me try to head off the tendency of these discussions to veer into "how may angels can dance on the head of a pin" type arguments. Look: the point is, HD is not doing great. That much is beyond dispute, while we all can joust endlessly about the reasons why. If HD represented anything but a headache and a liability, (a) there wouldn't be any controversy about it and (b) Cumulus would be "embracing its digital future" with dispatch and enthusiasm.

The most charitable characterization any fair-minded observer can make of HD Radio is...."troubled." As Cumulus-Citadel brings the helm about and heads into stormy seas and towering waves, they're going to make everything on deck fast - no loose cannon or swinging anchors. Unless they're a lot dumber than I think they are. HD? Not making this crossing.
 
radiogooroo said:
I think your friend and you are engaged in a lot of wishful thinking. His lack of specificity probably comes from the fact that he's making this up.
Click to expand...

You're free to think what you want. I doubt this engineering colleague was making it up especially since it coincides with the fact that at least one Cumulus station is confirmed as pulling its HD - makes it sound plausible to me. I would guess anyone who is pro-HD would try to discredit such a claim.

Face it, why burn up all that electricity for a handful of listeners? I would wager the calls to the station regarding it being pulled didn't even reach double digits!
 
Not quite Cumulus yet, but Citadel Providence pulled it's three HD signals in the past year, WWKX, WWLI, and WPRO-FM were all running HD with no sub-channels, all three are off and the Legal ID's have been changed.
 
"Cumudel" is going to be owned by banks, expecting Lew Dickey to maximize profit while paying off a massive loan. Is HD a profit center, or an expense? Is ANY radio station making a profit on HD?

Bob Struble is Lew's next Farid Suleiman.
 
I don't think it will be this fast, but I do suspect that the FM HD's will be shut down as transmitters are replaced. It would be my luck that Cumulus would do this, tho. After 7 years of being fairly idle, the FM part of my home stereo is now owned by someone on the other end of an ebay auction. Our favorite FM station got buried in noise back then, and we finally decided we could use the shelf space for something better. It just so happens that the interfering station is owned by Cumulus. Oh well - if it happens, it's good for radio.

Dave B.
 
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