From the start, Ibiquity should have been begging broadcasters to adopt their system. That means no royalties on the transmitting equipment, no licensing fees to the stations, and no recurring annual fees Taking a lesson form the computer printer companies, subsidizing the actual encoding hardware would have been a good idea too. That might have made it reasonably attractive to smaller broadcasters, who possibly would figure out something creative to do with it. As it is, unless you are CBS, Clear Channel, etc., the cost of the upgrade is simply too much.
Taking the technical flaws aside, if HD actually worked as advertised, a lot of small broadcasters could use a method of delivering multiple programming channels. What first comes to mind is local sports coverage. That is a real money maker for many stations. The dilemma comes when there are more local schools than available stations to broadcast them on. At least where I live, people are rabid about their local high school and college teams. Getting sponsors for these broadcasts is like shooting fish in a barrel. You can hardly miss. I can easily see how many locals would actually purchase a HD radio just to listen.
But that's not the way they chose to model their business, so here we sit at the corner of "doesn't work very well" and "who cares?"