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Revisit Subscription HD Radio

Ai4i

Ai4i

Why hasn't one station, any station, tried it somewhere, anywhere?
Am I a couple decades too late with this idea, are there just too many ways to find content?
There must be something that can be sold to motorists with a small cheap addressable PNP-type decoder.

"You like our unique program, well for just a few bucks per month, you can have it 24/7 without any interruptions..."
 
They can't put a nice deep library of music that anybody would pay for; that's why. If they simulcast 2 or 3 XM channels and charged an annual rate of $30, then maybe it would work, but now XM's music programming sucks since Sirius destroyed it.
 
People aren't listening to it for free, how is charging them going to bring more listeners. If people want to pay for radio they will get satellite radio.
 
Zach said:
Subscription HD would be like an SCA only with better fidelity (sort of) and a completely unreliable coverage area. I doubt there'd be any interest.
Click to expand...
Coverage would be reliable, remember the SCA types all had two or three element antennæ on their Roofs pointing at the stations, but your second sentence has merritt.
 
Nick said:
Much easier to just have subscription Internet radio if it's intended for people to listen at home.
Click to expand...

Indeed - I was going to say the same thing. The SCA analogy isn't really valid as a distribution system like it was in the 1970's and 1980's. Although the time-brokered FM's here in the San Francisco Bay area have managed to sell their HD subchannels. How much they're getting, I have no idea, and I don't understand the language so I don't know what it is. But there's programming there.

Dave B.
 
I've heard this argument about how HD broadcasters can "monetize" their investments in IBOC by brokering the side channels. Let's think about the economic model for that idea for a moment.

First of all, understand that the analogy for SCA is inapposite, because the only applications for SCA that were ever economically feasible were nothing like traditional radio listening. SCA is used for highly specialized programming such as background music, storecasting or other narrowcasting purposes to tiny audiences, or to undiscriminating listeners who aren't consciously consuming the product. Presumably we're talking about HD2s and HD3s assuming the same kind of roles.

Main channel, subchannel. Doesn't make any difference: small audiences = small revenues. Maybe it's important to reach 100 members of the Ukrainian community, but nobody's going to pay much to do it. And then there's the (lack of) receivers problem.

If what's being offered on the subchannels has so much merit, somebody will put it on a main analog channel, where there are actual listeners. Again: your choices are (a) to put a lot of effort and expense into reaching a minuscule and irrelevant audience, in which case why do it? - or (b) to risk fragmenting your main-channel audience with a format which has mass appeal (and which will likely be ripped off by a competitor at the first opportunity.)

I mean - this is what the analog translators are all about, ladies and gentlemen. HD exists solely as a fulcrum to launch an actual radio station. The primary is meaningless.
 
It's my understanding that FMeXtra, now known as VuCast, contains the conditioned access data necessary to make this work. Ibiquity apparently didn't include this.

The more I find out about FMeXtra, which is an inexpensive, enhanced digital SCA-type sidechannel service using AAC+ audio coding, the more I wish this had been the FM DAB choice instead of HD. Imagine accomplishing nearly the same thing without licensing fees or new transmitters/antennas/exciters/combiners. What were we thinking? ???
 
ironbear said:
It's my understanding that FMeXtra, now known as VuCast, contains the conditioned access data necessary to make this work. Ibiquity apparently didn't include this.

The more I find out about FMeXtra, which is an inexpensive, enhanced digital SCA-type sidechannel service using AAC+ audio coding, the more I wish this had been the FM DAB choice instead of HD. Imagine accomplishing nearly the same thing without licensing fees or new transmitters/antennas/exciters/combiners. What were we thinking? ???
Click to expand...

I've been asking that question for years....
 
Well, "lack of understanding" is certainly The Stroob's strong suit, especially when it comes to radio - curiously, an industry of which he still shows profound ignorance. Willful or not? You decide.....
 
RadeoEngineer said:
Follow the money......
Click to expand...
"All of these people on the stage tonight are beholding to special interests..."
(paraphrasal of Mike Gravel during the last presidential contest)
 
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