"Is HD Radio Toast?"

[radioskeptic]

Friday Morning Quarterback is dedicated to radio -- pop music radio (meaning CHR, Rock, Alternative, Country, anything but classical). It's always dedicated to the best interests of the radio business, but it's nobody's house organ.

So when FMQB runs an article titled "Is HD Radio Toast?" you have to assume that it's a rhetorical question. And you know that Ibiquity's brain-dead brainchild is in deep trouble. Read it here: http://www.fmqb.com/article.asp?id=487772

 

[SUPERCASTER]

The above FMQB article is a reasonably realistic assessment of the current condition HD radio. Critical and totally dependent on life support, with no cure in sight.

 

[Dighton Rockhead]

The picture for HD today would look much different had the technology been ready to roll out 15 years ago, before internet radio was anything more than a gleam in the eyes of some visionaries, and before satellite radio, and so many other choices.

What we're looking at is a technology that's practically obsolete before it's even had a chance to be properly introduced to the American public.

A good medical analogy would be to say that HD Radio is......stillborn.

 

[clouseau]

No quote...

Just a thought.

In the 50's when TV started up, do you suppose if there had been an internet they would have asked... Without radio drama in the daytime.... "IS radio toast"?

Did broadcasting magazine (Without the cable) actually think this???

I vividly remember my parents asking my in '75... "Why would we ever want a computer in the house." (Especially sweet as I send my laptop to my Dad so he can finally get n the internet".)

Is HD toast??? Not yet. It "IS' Definitly bread, though. Toast takes time to brown.

Time will tell..

Clouseau

 

[Radioman100]

Are they still publishing FMQB? Haven't seen one in years!

 

[LinoNYC]

Gotta love these middle-aged pundits so desperate to appear prescient.

Newsflash for proponents and detractors alike:IBOC Will Not Save Radio.

It's an enhancement.

Some gems from the article:

It is estimated that 14% of British households have a digital radio. In Europe there are nearly a thousand radio models available compared to less than two dozen in the US. Defenders might grasp at this apparent success of digital radio in Europe as proof that over time Americans will embrace HD Radio, but Europeans have no satellite radio and fewer commercial radio stations

This "estimate" is after nearly 12 years of the Eureka system and, as stated with no satellite and fewer existing stations.

Reason? You had to buy a new, expensive radio, once the price came down two years ago sales improved,,somewhat. People are now complaining about the "stuffing" of more channels and the resultant poor quality, they are also using a rather ancient codec.

The Canadian rollout has all but dead stalled.

" Defenders of HD Radio will say that we need HD to compete against new technologies. The people who are embracing satellite and Internet radio are doing so because they dramatically expand their choices, and the additional effort and cost required is worth it.

Earlier in the article the author points out "So for most people, FM is good enough. Well which it? Satellite by the way, is still bleeding cash and now openly pins it's hope of survival on merging the to providers. Oh, and this new entity will be headed by "Mr Quality" Karmazin.


". A New Yorker who buys an HD Radio gains the potential of hearing another 42 stations (probably far less), most of which he can already hear on AM or FM.

I assume he's referring to the hd subchannels
The author can be forgiven for not living-in or being familiar with the state of radio in New York City. With the exception of simulcasts by WNYC and WINS nothing on these subs is available elsewhere on the NY dial.

These subchannels are about trying to get back some of those lost to other media.

The remaining paragraph is the usual speculation that "programming" will reverse radio's declining fortunes. Can it be no one has thought of that, what a revelation.

Ofcourse the author conviently ignores the looming AM demo disaster. Why-o-why don't young people listen -could it be the audio?

Lino

 

[Mike Walker]

And the "estimate" for the UK leaves out the fact that for the last few years digital radios have outsold analog in the UK, and that it's getting difficult there to find an analog only radio. But it takes many years to overcome EIGHT DECADES of analog radio production!

HD is "doa" the way TV and FM radio were "doa" in the late 40s...the way the World Wide Web was "doa" in 1992, and the way broadband was "doa" in 1996.

 

[Savage]

Actually, that's incorrect....sorry. TV was slowed in the 1940s, first by WW2, then by inability to produce sufficient receivers to meet demand, chaos at the FCC over channel allocations and a war between RCA and CBS over a color TV standard. There was massive consumer demand for TVs long before there was even much programming on the air of merit (read Jeff Kisseloff's excellent narrative "The Box" for the story of prehistoric TV.)

FM radio didn't take off until broadcasters started investing in....programming, wow! What a concept! A major factor boosting FM was the FCC's decision to strictly limit simulcasting with sister AMs starting in 1965. As soon as FMs started putting actual content on, listeners began the migration from AM. WOR-FM was an example, bringing mass-appeal top 40 radio to the FM dial starting in October '66. Nobody ever seriously debated FM's superiority as a music medium over AM. Yet it took from 1946 to about 1980 for FM to overtake AM, because there was little mass-appeal programming on FM to attract listeners. (I recall buying my first FM radio in 1968, and in Binghamton, NY, where I was working, there were TWO - count 'em - FM's. One largely simulcast its co-owned AM and the other was connected - I am not making this up - to a VM record changer stacked with easy-listening LPs. You'd hear the tonearm cycle and drop onto the next record on-air.)

Same evolutionary deal with the internet and broadband. There was always consumer demand for those products from the outset. If the developments were "slow off the line" it was due to technology and availability. There was never any debate about technical shortcomings, nor was there widespread indifference to the concepts, which are both true of HD radio.

 

[Mike Walker]

It's NOT wrong. The point wasn't that the evolution of these technologies took identical paths (although FM was an incredibly slow starter...about five decades from it's inception in the 30s until audience parity with AM in the 80s (actually about 1983), four decades from the introduction of the "New" fm band after WW-II). And many tried, and failed with "mass appeal" programming on FM. There was still discussion in the 70s about whether FM would ever reach AM's numbers, regardless of programming. But I'm not that far off from your point about FM. My basic premise was that a year or two into the general introduction of these technologies, nobody had any idea what their eventual success would be.

Demand for the internet? The first couple of decades it was exclusively the province of government and universities! Personal computers were only geek toys until easy user interfaces and "power apps" made them USEFUL to the general public decades later. In the late 404/early 50s, the hours of operation per-day for a typical TV station was in the single digits. These are VERY good analogies! But a better one might be DTV. A decade after it's general introduction, only 40 percent of Americans have it, and only a third of those have an HD source.

 

[Hillbillicus]

I never realized until now that there are people out there that know everything about everything. Wow. I just wonder how it feels to never be wrong. I'll just keep watching these boards and maybe I can get to at least 50% knowledge of everything. But to be honest in my 50 years of living I don't think I could ever glean half of what there is to know.

 

[radionekkid]

I prefer to draw the analogy of selling someone a new innovative automobile in todays market but down playing or omitting a few “little” flaws with the “new kind if automobile”. Such as, it shuts completely off and restarts every mile or so. It shuts down during thunderstorms anywhere in the area and you have to stay within 10 to 25 miles of the house at night or near sunset, but when it does run, it runs very well. In today’s fast paced market that is a disaster waiting to happen and according to that the product is not racing off the shelves except to be returned to the manufacturer. Europe did not opt for HD mode and conditions are different there, so comparison is invalid.

 

[Radioman100]

Just another article from a programming consultant, only this time it's from a consultant I've never heard of in a magazine that has become irrelevant. Nothing new, nothing Earth shattering. It's the same myopic opinion regurgitated that the rest of the increasingly irrelevant consultants have already shared.

The only thing articles like this one prove to me is there's a good reason consultants like this one are going the way of the dinosaur. He's incredibly short sighted and has no vision for the future. His ilk would have been advising the big AMs in the 60s that there's no future in FM (and looking at the picture of this guy, he probably was.)

Notice how the consultancies that actually are relevant these days and still have a large client base remain silent on HD Radio? It's because they're about action, not usless postulating. They see HD for what it is, a potential vehicle for providing more programming, and they'll be there with real solutions for that programming when the time comes.

 

[Savage]

You've never heard of Richard Harker? Reminds me of when I was starting in this biz, where my 17 and 18 year old colleagues were making fun of Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald because they'd never "heard of" those "dinosaur" artists and they wanted to play immortals like Strawberry Alarm Clock and Balloon Farm.

Just because you've never heard of Richard Harker doesn't mean he's irrelevant.

And he's sort-sighted because he doesn't clasp HD to his chest with bands of steel, right? He's not just "wrong about HD Radio?" He's "incredibly short sighted" and "has no vision for the future?" In EVERYTHING he does or says, right?

So all consultants who harbor doubts about HD Radio are "myopic" but presumably a consultant who endorses playing a Strauss waltz every hour on the half and a Sousa march every hour on the hour, would be "okey-dokey with Radioman" as long as he/she advocated doing it in sparkling HD.

And as far as HD-FM "providing more programming" via subchannels, last I checked - that capacity is there, right now, today, irrespective of the presence of consultants, good, bad, old, or twerpy. And if additional channels represent the competitive opportunity HD advocates claim, once again it must be observed that corporate radio is screwing it up. A lot of additional HD-FM channels are widely panned as being more computer-delivered canned crap (with some exceptions) and with audio quality, in many cases, leaving a lot to be desired.

And it has to be pointed out once again how industry professionals over the age of approximately 25 are abused on this board solely because of their age. Another poster last week got tossed from the HD board for publicly ridiculing Watt Hairston, Jerry Arnold and yours truly because we happen to be in our late 50s.
To my mind there is no difference between this and putting someone down because of their sex or ethnicity. It lacks class and certainly hampers civil discourse or debate, and is not unlike calling some consultant you've never met names, because he disagrees with you about HD Radio.

 

[arnoldevns]

I don't know why I jump back in the sess pool of this argument so much, but I feel I must.

Mr. Harker's blog is really the best analysis of the HD radio problem I've seen. Kudos to him.

I would love for HD to work. I'd love for IBOC to work. The problem is that this system by Ibiquity just doesn't work well enough to get many people to plunk down 150 bucks for an AM/FM receiver. (or 100 dollars, or 75... or even 50) I've found a few stores that actually have HD radios set up that can pick up some HD radio signals. However, they're spotty at best and NONE of them pick up AM HD at all.
Ibiquity can start to get into cars and try to get more models out there on store shelves, but until they can demonstrate that their technology works reliably, people won't go looking to buy it.

 

[Mike Walker]

The sound quality isn't a real improvement over what we already have. The coverage area is vastly inferior to what we're used to. The programming is abysmal, so nobody will buy radios to hear it. Stations can do whatever they want, nobody is listening anyway. And it doesn't matter how many radios come on the market, nobody will buy them. They don't even offer the things in cars.
And none of these problems can be solved. The technology really is useful only to radio geeks.

Those are the arguments against the technolgy. The technology isn't HD, however. It's FM radio. And the year isn't 2007, but 1947. My point? Today's technology bashers can't see the future any better than those of decades past.

 

[LinoNYC]

You've never heard of Richard Harker? Reminds me of when I was starting in this biz, where my 17 and 18 year old colleagues were making fun of Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald because they'd never "heard of" those "dinosaur" artists and they wanted to play immortals like Strawberry Alarm Clock and Balloon Farm.

Just because you've never heard of Richard Harker doesn't mean he's irrelevant.

And he's sort-sighted because he doesn't clasp HD to his chest with bands of steel, right? He's not just "wrong about HD Radio?" He's "incredibly short sighted" and "has no vision for the future?" In EVERYTHING he does or says, right?

So all consultants who harbor doubts about HD Radio are "myopic" but presumably a consultant who endorses playing a Strauss waltz every hour on the half and a Sousa march every hour on the hour, would be "okey-dokey with Radioman" as long as he/she advocated doing it in sparkling HD.

And as far as HD-FM "providing more programming" via subchannels, last I checked - that capacity is there, right now, today, irrespective of the presence of consultants, good, bad, old, or twerpy. And if additional channels represent the competitive opportunity HD advocates claim, once again it must be observed that corporate radio is screwing it up. A lot of additional HD-FM channels are widely panned as being more computer-delivered canned crap (with some exceptions) and with audio quality, in many cases, leaving a lot to be desired.

And it has to be pointed out once again how industry professionals over the age of approximately 25 are abused on this board solely because of their age. Another poster last week got tossed from the HD board for publicly ridiculing Watt Hairston, Jerry Arnold and yours truly because we happen to be in our late 50s.
To my mind there is no difference between this and putting someone down because of their sex or ethnicity. It lacks class and certainly hampers civil discourse or debate, and is not unlike calling some consultant you've never met names, because he disagrees with you about HD Radio.

"Names" like "Captain Spanglish"?

A sure antidote for Mr Savage's claims of victimization is to go read his recent posts.

Lino

 

[arnoldevns]

Those are the arguments against the technolgy. The technology isn't HD, however. It's FM radio. And the year isn't 2007, but 1947. My point? Today's technology bashers can't see the future any better than those of decades past.

See, I knew I shouldn't have gone back in the HD radio sess pool debate. Look, I'll be the first to say no one can predict the future. However, it's pretty obvious this technology has failed to gain even a modest amount of interest with the public. If the Ibiquity backers want, they can bankroll this technology for years - maybe decades - to come. The station owners can keep the technology on the air indefinitely. Ibiquity can sign deals with all the radio makers to make the technology standard on all radios from walk-men to car radios. That's fine - I get that. But if the public doesn't gain a lot more interest in it than they have now, it'll just be a huge waste of money for a technology that few people use.

 

[vsa]

Just another article from a programming consultant, only this time it's from a consultant I've never heard of in a magazine that has become irrelevant.  Nothing new, nothing Earth shattering.  It's the same myopic opinion regurgitated that the rest of the increasingly irrelevant consultants have already shared.

The only thing articles like this one prove to me is there's a good reason consultants like this one are going the way of the dinosaur.  He's incredibly short sighted and has no vision for the future.  His ilk would have been advising the big AMs in the 60s that there's no future in FM (and looking at the picture of this guy, he probably was.)

Notice how the consultancies that actually are relevant these days and still have a large client base remain silent on HD Radio?  It's because they're about action, not usless postulating.  They see HD for what it is, a potential vehicle for providing more programming, and they'll be there with real solutions for that programming when the time comes.

All you can do is to slam FMQB and the author of the article, Richard Harker? Please make an attempt to counter any of his points. Do you have any? Putting down the opposition and making personal attacks is a sure sign that a person has lost the arguement. A crystal clear sign!

Most of us on the anti-HD radio side are not technophobes. I, for one, am a technophile who sees HD radio as a dinosaur. IP-delivered radio is already cleaning its clock. Getting excited about HD radio is like getting excited about MS-DOS in this century.


 

 

[hipporadio]

“HD Radio” was still-born—and has done little to improve its status! It consistently-ranks at the very-bottom of consumer preferences—behind even “a good AM section” in receiver desirability; and thus WILL NOT enjoy ANY prominence in the consumer marketplace. IT HAS NOTHING TO OFFER "John Q" on his visit to the stereo store!

The current HD-capable radios are mediocre – the PROGRAMMING necessary to drive such is even more-abysmal... There is NO HOPE for this defective and destructive, narrow-interest technology! SORRY, corporate radio—your investment was ill-fated!

 

[Savage]

I second Hippo's sentiments except for the "sorry" part. I don't feel one iota of sorrow for corporate radio management over the deIBOCle. They're the ones who hired non-radio industry nitwits to cobble together HD technology when their own engineering staffs, some like with decades of experience and expertise, told them the "IBOC" concept was bandwidth-deficient and that it would never work.

They're the genius capitalists who actually thought they could jam HD down the collective throats of the marketplace, regardless of economic realities, when a ninth-grade economics student knows better.

And they're the ones who bitterly attack HD opponents as being neanderthal, reactionary, obstructive...you know, "short-sighted," "mypoic," etc., etc. All because we won't fall into line and support a preposterous engineering concept which is being resoundingly rejected by both broadcasters and listeners alike (y'all probably noted that Australia has said "no weh mates" to HD AM & FM as have their Dominion brethren in Canada.) That leaves the lonely 1700 or so HD stations and a like number of HD listeners in the USA and a midget's handful of Brazilian stations to comprise the IBOC universe.

It's a sorry commentary on the state of corporate radio management that IBOC ever saw the light of day. Radio's woes will continue until the industry's "leaders" stop poking the HD cadaver with a stick ("There!! I swear, I SAW IT MOVE!! I really did!!") and buckle down to terrestrial radio's real problem: lack of content and community involvement. How many times have you listened to a corporate station and not heard even so much as a local weather forecast for an entire weekend, much less a live voice?

It's sobering to note that in many cases, XM's "60s on 6" has more LOCAL content than the allegedly "local" terrestrial station does!