Having a change of thought of HD Good thoughts!

[jras20]

Well I really hope HD will make it. I'm liking the formats now. If HD goes away, than there will be nothing but Hip hop, country, and rock. I can receive 4 hiphop stations on my analog receiver here near Austin : Way to many for me! I like to listen to some local rock and dance and oldies and Texas country. What HD-2 channels offer around here. I hope it will stick around! Maybe more people will like it when they hear the new choices.

 

[pocket-radio]

Everyone seems to forget radio is a mass media and is a business supported by advertisers. If enough people don’t listen to a station, then advertisers won’t support it. If broadcasters can’t see a profitable strategy they won’t support it either.

Enough HD ready radios must be sold so people can sample HD programming and make an impact with Arbitron. The reason you don’t hear radio playing local music is because people still want to hear familiar hits.

Do we really need more radio stations when current analog properties are struggling to provide content and are now competing for ad dollars with new media. Adding HD stations will cause the shares of profitable stations to shrink, driving up CPPs and ad rates down. HD was meant to compete against satellite radio and other technologies. However the business models are completely different. Satellite is programmed for paying subscribers and can support niche formats like 40’s & 50’ or unknown music from local artist. Broadcast is a mass media, supported by advertisers and programmed for Aribtron participants.

It’s a chicken or egg situation. For HD to survive more radios must be sold. And listeners must have compelling reasons to adopt another radio. With the exception of a few early adopters the public hasn’t shown any interest. Compared to Ipods sales of HD radios are flat, a heavily promoted new technology.

 

[jras20]

Why Ipods? Do you have proof of that HD-Radios are not selling? KFMA is now in HD sounds good.
I do have a MP3 player, not a Ipod, I hate how they work. I only listen to a few podcastings on my MP3 player.

 

[Savage]

jras20, I hear loud and clear that you've decided you like HD Radio. That's fine and I hope you have many years of happy listening to what you get locally on HD.

Unfortunately for IBOC fans, HD's vital signs are not good. Receiver sales are most telling, and every indicator strongly suggests they're abysmal. First, iBiquity, which receives a royalty for each HD chip sold, has undeniably accurate receiver sales figures but stubbornly refuses to release actual numbers. It's hard to draw any conclusion from that other than "they suck," since any favorable data would only help the company's cause. Anecdotal reports from the field are that most major retailers have pulled the plug on HD, including BB, CC and the Shack, which has all-but-discontinued the Accurian. More anecdotal reports from the field indicate that the return rate on HD Radios is horrendous, because the devices are hard to use and demand unrealistic efforts from consumers to achieve acceptable reception. Every store I've seen around here that sold HD radios (note past tense) has open-box returns in evidence, generally in the "closeout" area. Your experiences have been typical, but you're far from a typical radio listener. Most potential HD audience members simply will not expend the effort to listen to HD that you have.

Station conversions have all but stopped. In the contracting universe of radio revenues, the prospects that thinking radio executive are going to continue to shoot themselves in the feet by fragmenting audience among multiple products and driving up operating costs, are just about nil.

As far as your demand that critics provide "proof HD radios aren't selling," that's not for us to do. iBiquity wants HD to fly. The burden of proof is on them to prove their system is succeeding, not on us to prove it isn't.

 

[Carmine5]

As far as your demand that critics provide "proof HD radios aren't selling," that's not for us to do. iBiquity wants HD to fly. The burden of proof is on them to prove their system is succeeding, not on us to prove it isn't.

Absolutely. Ibiquity has kept these sales figures very close to their chest. We think it is only a few hundred thousand units sold.

The only reliable indication we have that HD Radio is not doing well is statistical analysis from research companies who specialize in media. The polls these companies conducted show that few people have heard of HD Radio or would consider buying one (check Edison Research). Also, as Mr. Savage said, the number of stations converting to HD have slowed greatly. In fact, with AM stations it has virtually stopped. (check out the HD Radio pie chart in last month's Radio World).

Then we have Mark Ramsey's latest piece in which he discusses Google Trends analysis of listener trends for Internet, Satellite and HD Radio. As the chart shows, HD Radio has either flat-lined or is barely showing a pulse (as opposed to the other two classes of radio which are doing well, especially web radio).

None of this is looking good for HD Radio's future.

http://www.hear2.com/

C5

 

[jras20]

Thanks for the good information, yeah I did take some time at trying to get the best reception, but I did that also for analog radio.
I think HD Radio should of educated the public a little more on the new technology instead of saying on the radio "its time to upgrade, its time to upgrade" I think they should put on some air time talking about how it works and how to get it to work good in a home/car. They just don't talk about it enough other than advertising it.

 

[Play Freebird]

Brian Beezley K6STI has been keeping an eye (and ear) on analog vs. HD-1 time alignment in the southern California region. He just posted updated information showing how well stations maintain this critical parameter:

http://ham-radio.com/k6sti/roster.htm

I couldn't help but notice that several stations owned by some of the biggest corporate promoters of HD are way out of spec. As I mentioned in another thread, most of the blame for this problem falls on the executives running these companies. They've cut engineering support staff at the local level and then given the CE a flawed technology to try and maintain on top of everything else.

For the amount of money stations pay iBiquity to license this system, they should demand much better reliability than they've been getting.

 

[dumber than a box of hair]

I think they should put on some air time talking about how it works and how to get it to work good in a home/car. They just don't talk about it enough other than advertising it.

The problem is that we live in a sound-bite world. Anything that takes more than five seconds to explain is a tune-out...and when you couple that with "you can't get HD without a new radio" or even "buy a new radio to receive HD" you've thrown the listener a negative, which PDs avoid like the plague.

The other problem is that when they do deign to talk about it, the promotions come off as either insipid or insulting, and it's a real puzzle because radio used to have no equal when it came to promoting itself. The geniuses at iBiquity who came up with promotions such as "radio with a boob job" are just adding to the overwhemling rejection of HD by consumers.

 

[KB1OKL]

Thanks for the good information, yeah I did take some time at trying to get the best reception, but I did that also for analog radio.
I think HD Radio should of educated the public a little more on the new technology instead of saying on the radio "its time to upgrade, its time to upgrade" I think they should put on some air time talking about how it works and how to get it to work good in a home/car. They just don't talk about it enough other than advertising it.

Are you serious? Educate the public on the "new technology" of HD radio? It's tanking now, that would absolutely kill it even worse that it already is, It's technical faults are glaring,they don't want anyone to know that that doesn't already know it.

 

[Mike Walker]

People buy new radios when their old radios die, or when they buy a device (shelf system, home theater receiver, car stereo) with the new technology. That's how it'a always been, and always will be.

There are many dozens of products out now, fromt he biggest names in the business, and the number of stations, and formats grows every month. Plus there's a tremendous buzz among radio nerds about the new Sony HD Tuner that has spectacularly good reception...even if never tuned to an HD station.

Just as AM Stereo brought the synchronous detector, which greatly improved AM reception (and allowed sync selectable sideband on enthusiast radios and communications receivers), HD has brought digital detection, filtration, and stereo decoding techniques to even the analog section(s) of tuners like the Sony, enabling a one-hundred dollar tuner to perform likea multi-kilobuck "super-tuner" from years' past. ALL radio listeners will benefit from these new techniques in the future. And the fact that HD can be "tossed in" on such affordable devices means it'll come "along for the ride" with increasing frequency.

Ibiquity has no responsibility to release sales figures (or any other financial information) to anyone but their stockholders. ESTIMATES, however, have run to a couple of million, not "a few hundred thousand"...and with HD installed in so many new devices, no doubt lots of people take home HD ever day without even knowing it. They probably won't, until the HD light blinks, and they hear programming they've never heard before.

Waiting for the public to understand what HD radio is? Good luck with that! Ask them what AM (or FM for that matter) stands for, or what the term "FM Stereo" means. Yet that technology seems to be holding on nicely (though it took FORTY YEARS for FM's audience to reach parity with AM! FIFTY, if you count Armstrong's first FM stations, and "Yankee Network" from the 1930s!)

 

[Savage]

Estimates have "run to a couple of million." Now I know it's absolutely true. Now, I HAVE heard EVERYTHING.
OMG, Mike. How can you seriously post something like that?? :

As far as iBiquity's have a "responsibility" to post sales figures, of course they don't. Frankly, I don't care, nor do I think anybody in the world but HD proponents care about sales of their radios. iBiquity and the Alliance are the ones who continue to stridently screech in the marketplace, against all common sense and evidence, that their HD system is catching on. If they actually want people to believe it, because experience in the field strongly indicates otherwise, they have to make a credible case.

It's their burden to demonstrate they're not circling the drain. It's not the critics' "responsibility" to make the Alliance's case for them.

 

[Mike Walker]

I've read that in Radio World (I think)...the "couple of million". Though I probably shouldn't have written it since I can't point to it. But hell, it's (likely) as accurate as a "couple of hundred thousand". The truth is, I DON'T FREAKIN' KNOW! And neither do you.

But politics aside, have you seen the number of products out there now with HD? It's everywhere. It's growing. It's in products by the biggest names in consumer electronics (remember when people here said "it's just a bunch of small companies nobody's heard of). It's cheap (remember when people said "it'll never be cheap enough people will pay for it") It's in shelf systems. It's in home theater receivers. It's in table radios. It's in PORTABLES (how many people said that wouldn't happen? I've heard the Coby uses a laptop battery (!)...still, it's portable. REAL portables will come with the new low voltage chips). It's in CARS from MAJOR MANUFACTURERS (not all of them, but some...and many here said THAT would never happen). It's available from the biggest retailers...nearly all of them (though you may have to scour the website of a few).

Now don't misunderstand...I'm not saying I think millions of people KNOW they have HD, or understand what the hell it is. I'm just saying that this isn't even necessary for the technology to succeed. Belief that consumers must understand broadcast technology for it to flourish is REALLY a stretch! HD is a standard, and as such it's being incorportated into more THINGS that people buy. Apple is sold on HD Radio, and working with to help with products that use the meta tags from HD, linking them to Itunes (meaningless to me, as I'm NOT an Ipod owner, and won't likely ever be!)

Digital audio is the next evolution in radio technolgy...EVOLUTION, not revolution (and then only for FM stations). As for stations not being able to sell ads on the new channels, I won't even justify that with a response. Ok I will...OBVIOUSLY it comes from someone who doesn't work in broadcasting, and has never met a GOOD Sales Manager!

People here often speak of satellite radio as if it's a roaring success. Fact: Goldman Sachs just changed their recommendations on XM and Sirius stock to SELL, despite the merger. Their reason? Young people ARE NOT ADOPTING SATELLITE RADIO IN LARGE NUMBERS!

Here's another interesting fact. Terrestrial radio listening for teens and young adults has actually been going back up this year (for the first time in several). The young audience that many here (and elsewhere) had written off as "unreachable" is being REACHED! This surprises me not a bit. Radio ALWAYS "finds a way"...always adopts to changing market conditions and listener expectations. Always has. Always will.

Now I'm not saying HD is the "salvation" of radio, or anything like it. As I (and others) have pointed out, success in radio is about PROGRAMMING! The programming department draws "warm bodies" around the box, so the sales staff can "pitch" to 'em. Our "business model" is really that simple. As for whether it's analog or digital...delivered by a tall tower, or the "interweb" (which is a series of tubes, in case you hadn't heard), matters not a whit. Digital WILL be (most of) the future because it's a more efficient way of delivering large amounts of programming with limited bandwidth. But frankly I don't care if, long range, those "packets of data" arrive via the much heralded (though nonexistant!) "Wi-Max" network, or via HD. It just makes no freakin' difference. It'll be digital. It'll be better. And, especially if analog radio co-exists...as it should for public safety reasons, everybody wins, and nobody loses (once the abomination that is AM HD is put out of it's, and our, misery!)

 

[KB1OKL]

I've read that in Radio World (I think)...the "couple of million". Though I probably shouldn't have written it since I can't point to it. But hell, it's (likely) as accurate as a "couple of hundred thousand". The truth is, I DON'T FREAKIN' KNOW! And neither do you.

But politics aside, have you seen the number of products out there now with HD? It's everywhere. It's growing. It's in products by the biggest names in consumer electronics (remember when people here said "it's just a bunch of small companies nobody's heard of). It's cheap (remember when people said "it'll never be cheap enough people will pay for it") It's in shelf systems. It's in home theater receivers. It's in table radios. It's in PORTABLES (how many people said that wouldn't happen? I've heard the Coby uses a laptop battery (!)...still, it's portable. REAL portables will come with the new low voltage chips). It's in CARS from MAJOR MANUFACTURERS (not all of them, but some...and many here said THAT would never happen). It's available from the biggest retailers...nearly all of them (though you may have to scour the website of a few).

Mike I know you mean well, but I think most of those "couple of million" are figments of ibiquity's and the Alliance's imagination, if it were even that high which is still a drop in the bucket, believe me they'd be bragging about it, there is virtually no presence of HD anywhere. I haven't seen it, nor do I expect to. If I didn't come to this forum and wasn't a radio aficionado I'd never even know it exists like 99.99% of the rest of civilization. It's a goner, nothing can sustain itself without selling. FM is just as bad as no one is buying the receivers and I've never seen a car with it, never have seen it advertised for cars except on pro-IBOC websites.