Radio Shack: "No, We're Not Out of the HD Radio Business"

[Darth_vader]

"I wouldn’t put too much value in what the salesperson at Radio Shack told you, after all they probably don’t tell the salespeople anything more than they tell the general public."

If they tell them anything at all. Last time I went to Rat $hack, I was looking for 470K-ohm resistors and 6.5536 MHz quartz crystals, and all I got from the 19-year-old boy they hired to "help" me was a blank stare. Pathetic.

Hence their marketing slogan from days long past: "You've got questions, we've got blank stares."

 

[nocomradio]

"I wouldn’t put too much value in what the salesperson at Radio Shack told you, after all they probably don’t tell the salespeople anything more than they tell the general public."

If they tell them anything at all. Last time I went to Rat $hack, I was looking for 470K-ohm resistors and 6.5536 MHz quartz crystals, and all I got from the 19-year-old boy they hired to "help" me was a blank stare. Pathetic.

Hence their marketing slogan from days long past: "You've got questions, we've got blank stares."

The resistors, maybe, if the kid 'sorta had a clue..

The crystals? Never. Any kid born in the last 25 years probably hasn't the foggiest what a crystal is or what it does. The last time I bought a crystal at a Radio Shack was somewhere around 1980.

 

[nd2023]

How hard is it to memorize the color coding of resistors? That should be part of training.

 

[tomservo]

How hard is it to memorize the color coding of resistors? That should be part of training.

I have to wonder how much of RS's business is in the kits and parts they were famous for in builders circles. That's the sort of information a sales weasel is apt to know if it comes up a lot in helping customers.

Heck, I'm a ham and have completely forgotten the colors, and that's something I had to know for the test. I never build anything so that information went into the ether.

 

[ddsparxx]

Many associates at Cell Phone Shack-I mean Radio Shack and other electronic retailers know little or nothing in electronics these days, so I don't bother asking questions like "Do you have any (insert capacitance value here) capacitors or 10 K ohm resistors?" I just look for the drawer containing the parts and look for what I need myself. I didn't remember the color codes for the resistors either, but I look for the right resistance myself anyways.
"You got questions, we go 'Huh??'"

 

[Savage]

With all due respect to my esteemed colleague Mr. Hair, it appears that Radio Shack is NOT claiming it's "not out of the HD Radio business" (as alluded to by mnassour here.)

It looks like iBiquity is insisting RS isn't out of the HD business as opposed to The Shack itself. Those are two entirely different things. And, thinking about it briefly - neither position is surprising.

As early as Christmas 2008, local Shack managers here were dismissing HD Radio as a PITA that generated approximately a 1:1 ratio of sales to returns. And dwindling iBiquity staffers will keep insisting Baghdad Bob-style that "all is not lost" until reality submerges the last vestiges of this self-inflicted running sore. That's never gonna change.

Thanks, engineering geniuses who convinced a clueless management class that IBOC would be such a tech boon to the industry, while perpetrating a fraud and embarassment on the business we all love. You've had your chances to be big cheeses alongside the owners and managers and programmers for your fifteen minutes of blathering notoriety at trade shows and in radio pubs about "embracing our digital future." Now it's time for you to go back to fixing transmitters and IT problems, learning your lessons about candor, professionalism and ethics, and trying somehow to retrieve some humility. (You could start by admitting what a disaster HD Radio has been.)

 

[nocomradio]

Back in the 50's the Ford Motor Company decided on the bad advice of the younger folks starting to work within the company, who incidentally had no interest in the companies' profit, nor the direction of said entity, that a new car named after the son of the company founder was a great new idea. It featured so many new, technical things that everyone would just be lining up to buy, that they didn't even need to develop them before dumping them onto the buying public. The higher-ups listened, and produced that wonderful product we all now know as the Edsel.

Sound familiar?

 

[RadeoEngineer]

I said, before anyone had a "Hybrid Digital" system on the air, that it wouldn't work. I said it to my corporate DE, I said it to my GM and I said it to the CEO of my company. They went ahead and spent the money after I was gone. This is junk science, pure and simple. It's hard being right when you're out of a job for being right, but there's also a certain pleasure in sitting on the sidelines and watching them lose their asses on something with no ROI.

 

[tomservo]

Except the Edsel is now considered a beloved classic, even if it was an oddity. 30 years from now, HD will still be a joke and historical footnote.

 

[Darth_vader]

"Heck, I'm a ham and have completely forgotten the colors, and that's something I had to know for the test."

Bad
Boys
[red]R[/red]ape
Our
Young
[green]G[/green]irls
[blue]B[/blue]ut
Vernon
[grey]G[/grey]ets (the)
[white]W[/white]--es

*gasp*

[size=8pt]This is why I stopped using SMF years ago and went back to my Good Olde Wildcat. Sheez.

 

[Savage]

In OT-land: Without being pedantic, actually the Edsel was part of a comprehensive strategy by Ford in the postwar-1950s period to have car marques in every price category where each line could be directly competitive with GM. Thus Ford would = Chevrolet, Mercury = Oldsmobile, Edsel = Buick, and Lincoln would of course take on Cadillac.

As part of this strategy Ford launched the Continental line as a separate division, independent from Lincoln, as kind of a super-Lincoln. The $10,000 Continentals were marketed as a free-standing make for only two years, 1956 and 57. Chrysler had done the same thing with Imperial in the 1950s.

The Eisenhower recession of 1958-60 resulting in a dramatic dump in auto sales plus the ascendancy of Robert MacNamara, who hated the Edsel and the multi-tiered product strategy (he would later go on to be a member of President Kennedy's cabinet) wound up in that car's demise after a handful of 1960 Edsels were built (by that time the Edsel had been demoted to a rebadged Ford.) Ford also killed the hand-built Continentals for '58 since they lost money on each one despite the $10K price tag.

The Edsel's name was selected in a last-minute flurry of executive dithering after consultants, focus groups and ad agencies failed to come up with a name which suited Ford management.

 

[BRNout]

Interesting stuff about Edsel, I recall reading about some of these stories - but not all. And, of course, there was the horse-collar grille! :

Now, back OT, a simple question: If Radio Shack (or whatever they call themselves this week) is not out of the HD radio business, why is it that I can't find any HD radios on their website or in their stores? Hmmmmmmmmmm..... ;D ;D

 

[Savage]

One more OT: Ford was having such trouble naming the "E-Car," as it was called developmentally, someone came up with the harebrained idea of hiring poet Marianne Moore to submit ideas. Among her suggestions: "Mongoose Civique" and "Utopian Turtletop."

(No, I'm NOT making this up.) Check out the timeline entries for November and December 1955 at www.edsel.com.

On reflection I guess there are similarities between the Edsel and HD Radio, with a major exception: the Edsel worked. The cars were built like tanks, were powerful and comfortable, and nobody could accuse you of lacking style. I know: we had a 1958 salmon-and-white Citation convertible when I was a kid.

If the Edsel closely resembled HD Radio, the cars wouldn't have started. Their doors would occasionally fall off. And each one would tend to swerve into oncoming traffic, causing head-on collisions.

 

[ddsparxx]

I looked at the edsel website and I got the message that the website is reported unsafe. Sorry.

 

[DaveBayArea]

Vernon
[grey]G[/grey]ets (the)
[white]W[/white]--es

*gasp*

[size=8pt]This is why I stopped using SMF years ago and went back to my Good Olde Wildcat. Sheez.

Man - I heard it was "Paula Gives Willingly" (purple grey white)

Dave B.

 

[dumber than a box of hair]

One more OT: Ford was having such trouble naming the "E-Car," as it was called developmentally, someone came up with the harebrained idea of hiring poet Marianne Moore to submit ideas. Among her suggestions: "Mongoose Civique" and "Utopian Turtletop."

Funny how it ended up being "an Oldsmobile with a hernia," which was, I believe, the description of the late Tom McCahill.

As others have pointed out, at least we now remember the Edsel somewhat fondly and acknowlege its technical prowess. Would that we could say the same for HD radio.

I just keep coming back to the economics and scratching my head. In this economy, especially given the events of the past week, the fact that so many of the major group owners keep funding this zero-ROI turkey continues to amaze me. Throwing money into a fire pit when the bottom line is being endlessly scrutinized and jobs gaining no ground makes no sense whatsoever.

 

[Savage]

The Alliance players have already frittered away their money on HD. If they all stopped using it today at noon, the net savings industrywide would likely total $23.77. The equipment may still have to be further depreciated and iBiquity contracts may have time left on them.

We've seen that Clear Channel has stopped running the HD ads, which is definitely a "tell" about corporate attitudes. HD-AM stations continue to wink off, one by one, in a certain predictor of what will happen on FM. HD will hang around for years as an alternative-distribution system for AM news-talker sister stations in groups and for pubcasters who need a place to park jazz and classical formats. Oh, and as a pretense to launch analog FM translators.

Other than that: it's done. I just got an e-mail about a nearby Class B FM where the HD exciter cratered. The HD was off for the better part of a week before the contract engineer could get it corrected. Complaints about the loss of the subs and the HD-1 for days: zero.

Sorry about the Edsel site: I got no such warning.

 

[Ai4i]

We hope the couple who were Radiosophy are doing well.
Invested everything into it, the most attractively priced HD clock radios at the time, and they worked well.

 

[pocket-radio]

And why can't you walk into Walmart and find a portable HD radio? You can find portable AM/FM/ipod/weather, AM/FM/Clock/ipod/, AM/FM/CD/ipod/, ipod/clock, yet nothing with HD.
They sell limited car radio's with HD. But why can't you walk into Walmart and just find on the shelf a portable HD radio?

Interesting stuff about Edsel, I recall reading about some of these stories - but not all. And, of course, there was the horse-collar grille! :

Now, back OT, a simple question: If Radio Shack (or whatever they call themselves this week) is not out of the HD radio business, why is it that I can't find any HD radios on their website or in their stores? Hmmmmmmmmmm..... ;D ;D

 

[nocomradio]

And why can't you walk into Walmart and find a portable HD radio?

Because no one wants an HD radio. That is to say no one who shops at a regular store, drives a regular car, or lives in a regular house. Come to think of it, no one who does anything wants an HD radio. That's why the few out there are in the clearance bin awaiting a buyer. Like the Edsel, it will fade into the sunset, only to be remembered later as a "great" idea.