No One Cares About Or Listens To HD Radio

[RockTheGlobe]

KCBS-HD2, which usually airs CBS Radio's Last.fm Discover, has been running a dead carrier for around a week, and no one's even noticed.

If HD Radio was as robust and widely accepted as iBiquity or the HD Radio Alliance would have you believe, you'd think someone would've raised a red flag about this by now. If an AM or an FM goes off the air (especially in the second-largest market in the country), phones would begin ringing within minutes as managers demanded to know what's going on and how quickly it can be fixed, and armchair quarterbacks would begin speculating about format flips just as quickly.

HD Radio is a bust. Time to stop pouring time and money into an effort that obviously has little to no payoff. The technology doesn't work, the marketing campaign promoting it was horrible and did not properly educate anyone, and the content is not what was promised. When radio companies promise "new live and local" stations, that shouldn't mean piping in other FM signals from other cities or plugging in a national format channel, because that's no different than what satellite is offering, and HD Radio was specifically billed as a live and local alternative to satellite. On top of which, it's being touted as "free," when in actuality, it costs a decent amount of money to purchase and install HD Radio adapters to existing OEM in-car equipment or iPhones/iPods or even HD tabletop radios.

Let the radio people get back to what they should be doing -- programming the main AM or FM stations they were tasked to make as good as they can.

 

[K6JHU]

Could be that Last.Fm discover is not any good. However, if one of the three HD-2 channels that I regularly listen to has an issue, the station does hear about it and typically they will do something about it immediately.

 

[RockTheGlobe]

Could be that Last.Fm discover is not any good.

If it's not good enough for at least a couple of people to listen, then putting it on HD side-channels in 4 major markets with plans to put in other cities proves my point that HD Radio has become a dumping ground.

 

[radiocph]

The only place I seem to hear about HD Radio (other than on internet discussion boards/groups like this one) is a few ads on KTWV ("The Wave") every so often....

 

[Dave Atonement]

Word is recent storms may have severely damaged equipment on several Mt. Wilson sites -- wouldn't be surprised if engineers currently have their hands full just keeping their main stations on the air...

 

[gerald]

The only place I seem to hear about HD Radio (other than on internet discussion boards/groups like this one) is a few ads on KTWV ("The Wave") every so often....

Oh, then you're not listening to 100.3. Bonneville must have a big stake in HD radio because they run frequent, professionally produced spots with actors pitching this stuff. Probably runs in all their markets, in fact it might actually come from the alliance. It almost makes me interested enough to pick up a set, but not really. Once you get sat radio and/or internet radio, why bother with this?

 

[Dave Atonement]

I don't know where you're getting the (false) assumption that "no one cares" about HD radio. Maybe YOU don't, but for the record, KRTH and KROQ are both doing an outstanding job with their HD-2 channels, playing all the great 50's/60's and 80's music that put both stations on the map in the first place -- but now, due to understandable demographic realities, seems to have entirely disappeared from the FM airwaves. I don't know what's being done with HD channels in other cities, but in LA these two stations alone make purchasing an HD radio well worth the investment. As a former Sirius subscriber I can also attest that the variety of music both these HD stations play is vastly superior to what you get on corresponding satellite channels....not to mention the fact that (like the ads say) it's all free!

 

[RockTheGlobe]

I don't know where you're getting the (false) assumption that "no one cares" about HD radio. Maybe YOU don't, but for the record....

That's great that you care about HD Radio, but you are part of a very small minority -- as seen here in this very thread, many people don't even hear about HD Radio besides reading it being discussed on radio message boards or hearing it in ads on a couple of radio stations. And to return to my original point, KCBS-HD2 was down for a week before I posted about it here because no one seemed to notice. If a regular AM or FM signal goes down, chances are that someone will post about it on a message board within minutes, if not hours.

Bridge Ratings released their annual media-usage report in December 2009 and found that not only is HD Radio listenership down, but also the "intent to listen more" to HD Radio has dropped considerably over the past few years. In fact, it posted the steepest decline out of the three declining media (HD Radio, MP3 players and satellite radio). The intent to listen more to terrestrial radio actually increased from 2006-2009.

A chunk of the audience doesn't even really fully know what the product is. In a study done by Mark Kassof in September 2008, 7% of respondents thought that satellite radio and HD Radio were the same thing -- and that's up from the 3% who gave that response in his 2006 survey. Also, another 3% of respondents said they were listening to HD Radio even though they didn't have an HD-capable receiver, proving they didn't know what was required to get HD Radio.

...in LA these two stations alone make purchasing an HD radio well worth the investment.....not to mention the fact that (like the ads say) it's all free!

I find the dichotomy interesting that you'd say "purchasing an HD Radio" and "it's all free" in the same statement -- one of my points was that it's not free, since you have to buy the actual hardware. To actually listen to HD Radio, you have to buy a $50 tabletop radio at the very least (and many of the tabletop radios I've seen only have 1 speaker... hard to experience the wonder of amazing HD sound with a single 5" speaker), or an $80 iPhone/iPod adapter that you have to lug around with you (which makes it less portable), or a $100 add-on to your car stereo (plus installation and labor costs).

 

[K6JHU]

Let's look at the histroy of FM radio. The FCC authorized the current band in the late 40's. Nothing happened (nobody listening, lousy programming - simulcast) unitl the FCC mandated radios have FM built in. Still nothing happening. The FCC actually had to mandate that FM and AM have seprate programming in the late 60's before anything really ahppened with FM. So it took almost 20 years before anything really happened with FM. Now I won't go into how long it took for FM Stereo to be on radios and most stations to be FM Stereo. My conclusion. At this point in the developement cycle, it is way way too early declare HD a failure.

 

[Dave Atonement]

I don't know where you're getting the (false) assumption that "no one cares" about HD radio. Maybe YOU don't, but for the record....

That's great that you care about HD Radio, but you are part of a very small minority -- as seen here in this very thread, many people don't even hear about HD Radio besides reading it being discussed on radio message boards or hearing it in ads on a couple of radio stations. And to return to my original point, KCBS-HD2 was down for a week before I posted about it here because no one seemed to notice. If a regular AM or FM signal goes down, chances are that someone will post about it on a message board within minutes, if not hours.

Bridge Ratings released their annual media-usage report in December 2009 and found that not only is HD Radio listenership down, but also the "intent to listen more" to HD Radio has dropped considerably over the past few years. In fact, it posted the steepest decline out of the three declining media (HD Radio, MP3 players and satellite radio). The intent to listen more to terrestrial radio actually increased from 2006-2009.

A chunk of the audience doesn't even really fully know what the product is. In a study done by Mark Kassof in September 2008, 7% of respondents thought that satellite radio and HD Radio were the same thing -- and that's up from the 3% who gave that response in his 2006 survey. Also, another 3% of respondents said they were listening to HD Radio even though they didn't have an HD-capable receiver, proving they didn't know what was required to get HD Radio.

...in LA these two stations alone make purchasing an HD radio well worth the investment.....not to mention the fact that (like the ads say) it's all free!

I find the dichotomy interesting that you'd say "purchasing an HD Radio" and "it's all free" in the same statement -- one of my points was that it's not free, since you have to buy the actual hardware. To actually listen to HD Radio, you have to buy a $50 tabletop radio at the very least (and many of the tabletop radios I've seen only have 1 speaker... hard to experience the wonder of amazing HD sound with a single 5" speaker), or an $80 iPhone/iPod adapter that you have to lug around with you (which makes it less portable), or a $100 add-on to your car stereo (plus installation and labor costs).

By your "logic" then, AM and/or FM radio isn't "free" either, since one (presumably) must first buy the actual radio....then there's the cost of batteries, electricity, etc. If we can get past your "point" (which sounds a lot more like the picking of nits to me) perhaps we can then at least agree that the act of "listening" is indeed "free" in that --once you've acquired the equipment & paid your power bill -- there's no further charge to utilize and enjoy the free product being offered (i.e. no monthly subscription, internet access fees, etc. etc. OK??!!

 

[radiocph]

Let's look at the histroy of FM radio. The FCC authorized the current band in the late 40's. Nothing happened (nobody listening, lousy programming - simulcast) unitl the FCC mandated radios have FM built in.

When did the FCC mandate FM in radios? I remember seeing (and buying) AM-only radios all throughout the 70's and 80's....

Are you sure you're not confusing this with TV (FCC mandated UHF coverage?)

 

[calguy]

I've been thinking for quite a few years now that if radios came with HD built in more people would listen. That's the real problem. By making it a "special" radio that costs quite a bit more than a normal AM/FM radio and also making it hard to find it's no wonder that it hasn't taken off. The same could be said for AM Stereo. I owned a couple of cars with factory AM stereo's and they were great, but they were the exception and not the norm. Make HD receivers the norm and the listeners will come. But once they do you have to give them something. Right now only a handful of HD-2 and HD-3 stations actually program more than what amounts to a jukebox.

 

[RockTheGlobe]

By your "logic" then, AM and/or FM radio isn't "free" either, since one (presumably) must first buy the actual radio....then there's the cost of batteries, electricity, etc. If we can get past your "point" (which sounds a lot more like the picking of nits to me) perhaps we can then at least agree that the act of "listening" is indeed "free" in that --once you've acquired the equipment & paid your power bill -- there's no further charge to utilize and enjoy the free product being offered (i.e. no monthly subscription, internet access fees, etc. etc. OK??!!

You're missing the point of my "logic." AM/FM radio, as it has been in the product landscape for many years now, is standard or even ancillary equipment. You don't buy a standalone radio anymore specifically for the radio. You buy a home theater system that happens to have an AM/FM radio built into the amplifier. You buy a car that has an AM/FM radio as standard factory-installed equipment. You buy an alarm clock that has a built-in radio that you can also wake up to. You buy an iPod dock that has an AM/FM radio built into it. Hell, even some models of iPods come with FM radios in them now. But you are getting the radio as an add-on and not the primary reason why you're buying that specific piece of electronics. When was the last time you went to a store with the primary intention of buying a standalone AM/FM radio with no other functions other than playing an AM or FM station and were able to walk out of that store with that simple radio? (Or go to an online store with the same intent and results.) People buy other pieces of electronics and then use the radio as an added bonus to the primary function they originally intended to buy the component for. HD Radio requires you to buy either a specific add-on component to allow you to upgrade your existing radio to receive it or you have to buy an all-new standalone radio -- that, for now, only allows for radio functionality and doesn't have any other features.

Yes, once you get past the whole purchase, setup and installation, the listening experience of HD Radio is free. But that free comes with a large asterisk that isn't mentioned in the marketing campaign. It's like saying that HDTV is free. Well, yes, it is -- but in order to watch HDTV, you have to spend several hundred (or, depending on the size and kind of TV you want, several thousand) dollars to actually view it. Which brings me to my next point...

Let's look at the histroy of FM radio. The FCC authorized the current band in the late 40's. Nothing happened (nobody listening, lousy programming - simulcast) unitl the FCC mandated radios have FM built in. Still nothing happening. The FCC actually had to mandate that FM and AM have seprate programming in the late 60's before anything really ahppened with FM. So it took almost 20 years before anything really happened with FM. Now I won't go into how long it took for FM Stereo to be on radios and most stations to be FM Stereo. My conclusion. At this point in the developement cycle, it is way way too early declare HD a failure.

While I can appreciate the history of the adoption rate and timeline of FM radio, that time has passed, and the world we live in now actively consumes and thrives on multimedia. New products and technologies come out regularly to willing buyers, and almost all of the other major media technologies introduced over the last decade are being adopted at rates well beyond and much faster than HD Radio. Since it launched six years ago in 2004, there have been only 1.3 million HD Radios sold nationwide. It took XM Satellite Radio (as the first of the two satellite radio companies launched) only two years to get 1.3 million subscribers, and that's not even counting the Sirius subscribers who also became satellite radio adopters. It took less than three years for 1.5 million HDTVs to be sold in the U.S., with 2.1 million cumulatively sold at the end of 2001 -- and that was at a time when HDTVs still cost several thousand dollars each. Blu-Ray players launched in the market in 2003, only a few months before HD Radio was introduced, and by the end of 2008 (only five years in), just under 10 million players had been sold -- and the technology achieved this success despite a format war with HD-DVD at the time.

At this point in its development cycle, HD Radio has had enough of a chance to shake the bugs out (which it hasn't done yet), achieve widespread consumer awareness (which it hasn't yet) and provide compelling enough content to spur sales of the product (which it hasn't yet).

 

[calguy]

The marketing of HD radio has been very different from the way XM and Sirius did their marketing. While it is true that the HD alliance has been inundating the airwaves with HD promos/commercials I have yet to see any HD spots on television. The satellite companies did do TV. Also, the satellite companies advertised what their content would be, actually enticing people to subscribe. All HD radio has done is to pump the "it's free" aspect and to boast the fact that there are many more "free" stations to listen to without telling anyone about any specific content. This is a failure if you ask me. That's because HD radio stations have been mishandled in much the same was FM's were prior to the 1970's. They're basement or closet operations with companies spending as little dollars as they could to get these stations up and running. If stations weren't using digital delivery systems like Audio Vault and Prophet which allows for easy start up of an HD station then it may not have happened at all. If they want it to work three things need to happen. HD receivers need to be a standard component on all AM/FM radios/receivers, content must improve and marketing must be stepped up in the same way satellite radio executed their advertising. But that costs money and this industry doesn't want to spend on it's main AM & FM stations, so its probably not going to happen anytime soon if at all. Again, with bean counters/salesmen in charge instead of real broadcasters, this industry is doomed... Just my opinion.

 

[nmoore6676]

Let's look at the histroy of FM radio. The FCC authorized the current band in the late 40's. Nothing happened (nobody listening, lousy programming - simulcast) unitl the FCC mandated radios have FM built in.

When did the FCC mandate FM in radios? I remember seeing (and buying) AM-only radios all throughout the 70's and 80's....

Are you sure you're not confusing this with TV (FCC mandated UHF coverage?)

I think that including FM in radios was more of a market driven force rather than Government mandate. I am old enough to recall when FM was a kind of techno-geek kind of thing, yes I am one of those. I can also remember putting a little black box FM tuner into my dad's care so he could get FM while driving. The requirement for UHF tuners on all TV sets was my first recollection of government mandated receiver design. The government did mandate one color standard for TV and eventually one stereo method for FM radio but of course the receivers had to conform.

The HD or digital radio listening seems to be going the way it is now because of consumer demand. There is a lot of thought that they selected the least efficacious process, but ultimately it is the consumer who will give the thumbs up or down. Perhaps because of internet and satellite there is no public perception of a need for digital terrestrial radio. We have so many delivery methods available and so much content to chose from that HD may be getting left in the dust. Back in the day of the dawn of FM stereo record companies were putting out their product in stereo and people naturally wanted that on their radios. But you couldn't go to the internet back then and satellites were mostly inert objects the size of a grapefruit put up by the Russians. The desire for binaural audio had more to do with the decline of AM radio than any other factor as I recall.

As for digital TV we had no choice, they forced the shutdown of analog transmission and that was that. I do not see the public accepting that for radio and they might just eschew their radios for the myriad of other choices out there should some government agency mandate an end to analog radio. So long as the listeners have a ho-hum attitude about HD the content will not be offered. Lots of you may not have recollections but I do of a time when most FM radio stations were broadcasting all or at the least most of the programming of their companion AM station. The government eventually changed that by requiring separate programming and that led to the proliferation of the automated programming machinery that we all love so much these days.

 

[flakunkel]

Let's look at the histroy of FM radio. The FCC authorized the current band in the late 40's. Nothing happened (nobody listening, lousy programming - simulcast) unitl the FCC mandated radios have FM built in.

When did the FCC mandate FM in radios? I remember seeing (and buying) AM-only radios all throughout the 70's and 80's....

Are you sure you're not confusing this with TV (FCC mandated UHF coverage?)

The FCC never mandated FM in radios. It did, for a while, mandate separate programming on commonly-owned AM and FM stations in all but the smallest markets. But that requirement was rescinded a number of years ago.

 

[LKellerIII]

I've said this a number of times when the subject of HD radio has come up. The CD player in my car stereo died, and I needed to replace it anyway. The HD unit I purhased cost only $20 more than the comparable unit without HD. Considering that I'm getting about 2 dozen additional music feeds without paying any subscription fees, I think it was a bargain. Yes - the HD2 stations are only "jukeboxes" so far, but you can't expect the broadcasters to pay for DJs and announcers yet when very few people are listening. On the bright side, while few people are listening, they can't sell advertising either, so its commercial free. I think the comparsion to early FM radio - when all the stations were either automated or AM simulcasts - is apt.

The problem is - most people replace their cars before they have to replace their car stereos. The broadcasting industry has to convince more car manufacturers to install HD in their new cars. Only a few (BMW is one) - do it now.

 

[landtuna]

The broadcasting industry has to convince more car manufacturers to install HD in their new cars. Only a few (BMW is one) - do it now.

Based on the number of complaints and service calls BMW has recorded because of problems with their HD radios how much convincing do you think it will take for other manufacturers to follow suit?

The reason manufacturers put options on cars is to sell the basic unit. It doesn't sound to me like HD radios will drive sales.

 

[JustPastBuffalo]

Some good points in this thread. But HD, WiMax and satellite may be moot points as manufactures begin to equip new cars with entertainment consoles with USB ports and 30 gig hard drives. Plug in your thumb drive, iPod or mp3 player and away you go.

 

[davideduardo]

Based on the number of complaints and service calls BMW has recorded because of problems with their HD radios how much convincing do you think it will take for other manufacturers to follow suit?

I spoke yesterday with the service manager at my BMW dealer while I was in for a little mechanical issue... and she said that she had no record of any complaints on the HD module. And we are talking about one of the top couple of BMW dealers in the country in a city where there is a higher percentage of BMWs than anywhere else in the country.