Our HD Future?
I'm not as convinced as others that HD radio will be a complete bust like AM stereo. Major broadcasters have made a serious (i.e. expensive) commitment to the technology for one simple reason - it expands the number of radio stations that they can put on the air. Oddly, I think that it will be more successful on FM than on AM because successful AM stations won't want to degrade their signal contours by going HD.
Am I convinced that Iniquity has the best HD product? Heck, no. It screws up the AM band for everybody - HD or not. The FM presentation actually can degrade the audio on the main channel, and the HD channel bandwidth can be narrow enough to sound as bad a satellite.
The biggest challenge to HD will be the expansion of WiMax technology, and the rollout of Wifi radios that will allow you to program your favorite streams to a bunch of push-buttons. The biggest problem with Wifi radio is likely to be that the content providers - radio stations - will need to significantly improve their stream bit-rates if the quality is going to compare to HD radio, let alone analog FM.
Here's where the satcasters may find a niche - providing higher quality streams of their exclusive content than they can offer via satellite. I suspect that they'll offer their streams with commercial content, while continuing to offer commercial-free content to subscribers.
Radio stations may counter with a similar split personality - commercial-free HD radio streams (which screw Iniquity out of their revenue cut) - and Internet streams with commercial content separate from their on-air sponsors, or sold in combo with their on-air sponsors. Reduced rates for these spots may allow more local businesses access to advertising, and allow broadcasters to reduce the number of commercial minutes per hour on the main channel.
Of course, there's always the danger that broadcasters will end up with lots of advertising options, multiple rate cards, and confused advertisers (and salespeople) who spread their dollars so thinly over multiple delivery systems that the advertising is virtually ineffective.