"KCRW's HD Radio Odyssey"
"Although the flagship Los Angeles-area NPR station KCRW has been broadcasting an HD Radio feed for nearly a year, the audience until recently totaled perhaps a couple of hundred people. The initial listeners were mostly engineers from other stations and people who develop aftermarket radios in the region, says Steve Herbert, chief engineer at KCRW in Santa Monica, and its sister stations in Mojave, Indio and Oxnard... But on the other hand, KCRW is putting off the addition of HD2 broadcasts with alternate content because of quality concerns – for the time being, the station is content to stay with HD Radio simulcasts of its analog signal. Herbert explains that adding HD2 multicasts would require splitting the bit stream of the digital signal, reducing the signal quality... But in the meantime, content is king, Herbert notes, and that’s really what drives listeners. “If you've got crummy content, people aren't going to want to listen,” he says."
http://radio.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=60098
Whipee - HD Radio simulcasts of its analog signal ! Mostly, radio-geeks and broadcast engineers have bough HD radios, not the general public - that accounts for the few tens-of-thousands of HD radios sold.
"Although the flagship Los Angeles-area NPR station KCRW has been broadcasting an HD Radio feed for nearly a year, the audience until recently totaled perhaps a couple of hundred people. The initial listeners were mostly engineers from other stations and people who develop aftermarket radios in the region, says Steve Herbert, chief engineer at KCRW in Santa Monica, and its sister stations in Mojave, Indio and Oxnard... But on the other hand, KCRW is putting off the addition of HD2 broadcasts with alternate content because of quality concerns – for the time being, the station is content to stay with HD Radio simulcasts of its analog signal. Herbert explains that adding HD2 multicasts would require splitting the bit stream of the digital signal, reducing the signal quality... But in the meantime, content is king, Herbert notes, and that’s really what drives listeners. “If you've got crummy content, people aren't going to want to listen,” he says."
http://radio.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=60098
Whipee - HD Radio simulcasts of its analog signal ! Mostly, radio-geeks and broadcast engineers have bough HD radios, not the general public - that accounts for the few tens-of-thousands of HD radios sold.
