Station Streams show in Arbitron, but where's HD?

[pocket-radio]

I’m sure $75.00 a day wouldn’t be enough. But let’s be clear, taking cheap shots at stupid radio executives is expected and the right thing to do. But poking fun at a former sitcom star, who had a dynamite little body and big boobies just isn’t right. We need to have some standards. LOL

 

[KB1OKL]

Sally Struthers, says just $75.00 a day can help feed former radio executives who lost their careers because of the HD radio plight. The NAB has set up an emergency fund to help Poverty stricken HD executives and station owners. $75.00 a day goes a long way to clothe and feed the deflated egos of once full of themselves former radio warriors. Wouldn’t you like to make a difference

Maybe a certain former movie star can do a yearly telethon for victims of HD-Syndrome and also help broadcast professionals who have been affected by the devastating and debilitating malady in some way or another?

 

[Radioman100]

The July Philadelphia Arbitron PPM numbers were released yesterday, and I happened to notice that WBEB's stream got a cume audience of slightly over 25,000 -- good for 53rd place in the metro. While this number is far below WBEB's first-ranked "over the air" cume of nearly 1.8 million, this is the first time I've seen a station's stream show up in an Arbitron book, so this event rates as an accomplishment.

http://www.radio-info.com/content/arbitron.php?market=007-6cume

However, the various commercial-free HD-2 channels are conspicuously absent, despite all of the promotion that's been aired over the last two years. I thought about this, ran the numbers, and then realized it would probably be impossible for an HD-2 to show in the Philadelphia Arbitron.

By the most optimistic estimate, a million HD receivers have been sold. Philadelphia has a total 12+ population of 4.3 million, compared with a national 12+ pop of about 250 million, or about 1.7 percent of the national audience. Assuming uniform distribution of HD receivers, this would translate to 17,200 radios sold in the market. Probably a bad assumption, as they aren't readily available in medium and smaller markets -- so let's be generous and figure 30,000 HD receivers have been sold in Philadelphia. (And I'll disregard the number which have been returned.)

So... if just one HD-2 channel could attract the interest of half of those receiver owners at least weekly, this would represent a cume of 15,000 person -- but would fall about 10,000 short of the minimum necessary to be included in the book.

Is it any wonder then that station owners don't seem to care about keeping their HD-2 services on the air? It will be years before any of them show in the ratings, unless they're also offered as streams.

None of the Houston streams made the minimum for inclusion. One Philly stream makes it. After 6 or 7 years of streaming and promotion of streaming, one stream makes the grade - barely.

This doesn't bode well for PCs at all. There must be zero interest in them.