“As I gently pointed out to Bill on the panel, the reason that nobody’s listening to his HD2 channel isn’t that HD Radio is s**t, it’s that his HD2 channel is s**t.”

James,

Actually, both are s**t. Technical issues with HD Radio abound from interference, to poor coverage, and worse quality than analog. Why do you think iBiquity is trying one bandaid after another to “fix” thir faulty system. I will not go into every detail, but I called my local Kia, Ford, and Scion dealerships and NO HD Radio.

One more thing, Clear Channel is no longer providing time for the HD Radio Aliance commercials, and good-luck finding any mention of HD Radio on their websites.

Greg, you have – as ever – missed the entire point of this post; but once more thanks for your predictable response. Glad your Google Alerts are working well.

I have to agree and disagree with Mr. Cridland’s comments. Quality content and promotion are definitely paramount for any programming but the reasons HD failed are that it was expensive for stations (for HD transmitting equipment) and listeners (for HD receivers). HD did not have enough real benefits to get listeners to buy new receivers for home and car. The Internet came on the scene and simply blew HD out of the water with the ability to provide radio and Internet-only streams anytime anywhere. For stations, the Internet provides a whole new advertising inventory than their broadcast signal. There is no comparison between the Internet and HD as a delivery platform. As we are seeing, the Internet is becoming and will be the primary delivery platform for all media.

Richard Fusco
Radio Woodstock WDST
Radio Woodstock LIVE
Radio Woodstock 69
radiowoodstock.com

Hello, Richard. I don’t quite understand your point – if the internet has “blown HD out of the water”, then why is nobody listening to this service on the internet either? Nobody’s listening to this service – but WMMR blames HD Radio, not the internet. But why? Surely internet radio – which is tiny – is just as much to blame as HD Radio for this service’s poor audience figures? Why have they singled HD Radio out for criticism, when the internet has done just as badly?

FM radio took 44 years to overtake AM in the US. Why do you expect HD Radio to do the same in less than five years?

I do not expect HD Radio to “overtake” AM or FM in the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, the technology itself has several structural deficiencies, one of which is its wholly proprietary nature. This is why the FCC has made HD adoption voluntary – and, in nearly 10 years of being on-air, less than 20% of U.S. stations have added an HD component and receiver penetration is at an abysmal .007% nationally.

When you do consider these aspects of HD, you begin to understand why stations have not invested in their potential HD2/3/4 subchannels, and are not promoting them. Adding insult to injury, the U.S. radio industry has eviscerated its creative side, leading to many (but not all) HD subchannels being soulless variants of a station’s main format, or otherwise something with little human element.

I think it’s a bit disingenuous to compare HD to DAB as well – you say that BBC Radio 6 Music gets 60% of its listenership on DAB, but what’s the actual listenership of the channel? Is it significant? Is Radio 6 a digital-only channel? If so, how does its listenership stack up against extant analog services?

Radio’s digital transition has a lot of arduous years ahead of it, regardless of the OTA transmission technologies in play. But platforms do matter and, in the case of HD, I would say it’s getting in the way of the program innovation that you (and I) would like to see.

James. I absolutely believe in the Internet as a delivery platform for radio over HD for many reasons. Internet is available on smart phones, office PCs, home PCs, tablets, game consoles, TV sets. HD isn’t.

Why should I get an HD radio which has limited content available rather than a smart phone which plugs into my current car radio or home stereo and has access to unlimited content? The Internet also offers advertisers many more bells and whistles than HD will ever be able to deliver. I don’t know anyone who has an HD radio. Everybody I know owns one or more of the above list. Can you list any benefits for station owners or listeners that compares?

The only real problem with the Internet for radio is the accountability aspect for advertising compared to Arbitron’s sample based measurement that has been the currency for media buying for decades. The shift from sample-based measurement to the more accurate measurement of Internet listening is going to be tough for radio.

[...] Many in broadcasting have been calling HD radio D.O.A.  for a while now.  Even the  station themselves,  who offer HD radio, do little to promote the fact that they offer other alternatives to listen to.  It’s almost as if they are ashamed to admit HD radio is available.  HD has been the stepchild for FM for quite some time now and while it desperately clings to life the Internet continues to show signs  of helping HD radio to it’s final resting place by growing a larger audience than HD has.  Without much support from the very people who gave HD it’s life how much longer can it survive?  Read More… [...]

John – BBC Radio 6 Music (bbc.co.uk/6music) is a national radio station in the UK and gets 1.2m listeners a week, listening for over 9m hours. It’s available on DAB, Digital Television and Online and as James says, the majority of listening is through DAB.

It’s a similar size (though a little smaller) to Absolute Radio which broadcasts AM nationwide and on FM in London (as well as through digital radio too). By reach, its around the 20th biggest station in the UK (looking at both analogue and digital stations). So it’s definitely a player.

Great points as usual. My only argument is with a comment you made in the comments, James, about how long it took AM to succumb to FM. While that is true, in the last 20-25 years, things have literally been speeding up. The audience has a short attention span, and if you don’t hit all the right buttons at the right time, the technology will fail, because the audience has moved on. This, in turn, makes the powers that be in radio skittish to try new ways to get to their audience, especially for smaller, independent stations. HD will probably never hit its stride, and internet options will probably do better. Terrestrial radio is not dead yet…and continues to be the most listened to medium, therefore the best investment.

I agree that its a content and discovery problem. If compelling content is easy to access, people will look for it. I am very curious to see what the new “radio” button on Spotify will do to their listenership. I tend to listen to radio for speech content, so that’s more analysis and considered opinion. Oh, and comedy. Since I live in a non-English speaking country, my use of web radio (increasingly via the iPad) is not typical I know. But the recent free apps from Channel 4, NDTV, and Bloomberg are very tempting too.

Your point is a valid one and very well argued, but you do appear to be skirting the issue of what you make of HD Radio as a technology. Yes, content must be attractive and properly promoted, but surely the platform you choose also plays a part in the overall listener experience. I have not had the opportunity to listen to HD Radio, and other than noting that it is a proprietary technology have no views about it.

Mike – the point of this post is that it is not fair to blame the technology if your content is either woefully under-promoted or simply not actually very good. What I think of HD Radio is irrelevant to this post, so that’s why I’ve “skirted” the issue.

Michele – I agree with you. I’m not saying it’ll take 44 years for digital radio (in whatever form) to overtake FM. But I am also saying that it’s unrealistic to expect digital radio to have the majority of audience in just five years.

Bottomline is HD RIP. Internet killed the HD star.

Richard – that’s exactly not the bottom-line as evidenced by Bill’s comments. This station is on internet as well, but still nobody listens. How can anyone claim that internet has killed HD when the internet also fails to bring in the audience?

The point of the above post is that people are decrying HD Radio when actually its their own poor promotion that is making nobody listen – on whatever platform.

We’ve had all this here in Europe five years ago; we’ve now understood that it isn’t enough to put new stations on-air (whether on HD or on internet), but you also need to promote these new channels. In WMMR’s case, above, there is no benefit to the station to ever have their HD-2 service listened-to, since it’s commercial-free: indeed, a listener to WMMR’s MMaRchives service is bad for the main WMMR service, since it takes them off the official figures for WMMR, and doesn’t put them on a service that carries commercials or is currently being monetised. The smart operator would do one of two things: either sell MMaRchives as a part of the main network sell (i.e. a sell for WMMR also includes the spot on MMaRchives, and combining the two when selling); or a smarter operatore would close the station down. It’s doing nothing to grow audience, nothing to benefit HD (because it’s never promoted), and the audience figures would show that it’s also a poor listener experience and is damaging the brand.

In the US, it costs per-song, per-listener to stream on the internet; and it costs your listeners bandwidth to listen (when they are in a signal area, and when there’s enough bandwidth). You can’t air the same ads as on-air because of AFTRA, you can’t claim these as listeners since Arbitron doesn’t monitor your internet streams, and it’s hopelessly unscalable for bandwidth costs and infrastructure. Listening on headphones is incompatible with radio’s place as a secondary medium, consumed while doing something else.

If you truly believe that the future of live radio is all IP-based, you will send the medium bankrupt. That’s the bottom line.

I don’t think that the music business with the sales of CDs diving will allow Internet media to go bankrupt. Bandwidth costs will continue to drop. Arbitron has just announced a combined measurement of radio across all delivery platforms. Big companies such as Clear Channel, CBS, Culumus/Citadel are all putting their eggs in the Internet basket. Broadcast radio will not go away but in a very short amount of time the number of people listening to radio using broadcast will be about the same amount of people who watch TV using an antennae. Advertisers love the accountability of Internet advertising.

We all need to forget the past paradigms and open our minds to new approaches to media and the music business. Everything is changing and changing quickly. The smart phone is becoming the “go to” device for EVERYTHING. In some way or another the Internet will be a part of all our communications, entertainment and information needs.

James,

Even if the programming on the HD2s was terrific, the poor IBOC transmission system would kill any hope of HD Radio taking off. Consumers won’t put up with all of the dropouts on the HD2s, out of sync HD1s, and constant flipping between analog and digital modes on the HD1s. On top of that, even Bob Struble admitted that “no one goes into Best Buy and asks for the radio department”. HD Radio really doen;t offer more “radio stations” because it blanks out the adjacent channels. Actually, analog listeners have lost radio stations due to interference. With HD Radio, listeners hear the HD2/HD3 channels instead of adjacent analog stations. Put terific programming on the HD2s and watch the rampent consumer apathy continue, kind of like DAB in the UK. This is why Struble is trying to force HD Radio through the automakers.

“Put terific programming on the HD2s and watch the rampent consumer apathy continue, kind of like DAB in the UK.” – Mike, you’re talking about things you don’t understand. DAB accounts for almost one-in-five of listening to radio in the UK – 18% of TSL – and used by over 25% of people every week. That’s the kind of rampant consumer apathy that HD Radio would kill for.

But, once more, this posting is pointing out poor promotion of additional channels, not discussing the HD Radio technology. MMaRchive is a failure on internet as well as HD Radio. Funny how nobody is saying that internet radio has failed.

Because Internet radio hasn’t failed. And what will make radio channels on the Internet successful in the long run are: quality, unique content, a strong globally recognized brand and continual promotion. But there is more. They must have a multi-media identity with cross-promotion across all media outlets.

Richard, I can tell you’re a big fan of internet radio.

I’m glad you enjoy it but in the UK it accounts for just over 3% of all radio listening, so it has failed to take off.

The main problem with internet radio is the introduction of data tariffs – in the UK very few mobile companies are offering unlimited data usage. Not many would want to switch from the unlimited free listening of the BBC networks on FM or DAB in the car or on a handheld to a system where radio listening is charged by the minute.

That’s why internet radio is only part of the future of radio, alongside broadcast platforms.

Richard: you say: “What will make radio channels on the Internet successful in the long run are: quality, unique content, a strong globally recognized brand and continual promotion.”

… that’s no different to HD Radio, or – indeed – radio in general.

This isn’t a binary discussion. This has little, if anything, to do with platforms. This has everything to do with promotion and marketing, and – as you rightly say – content.

A clever operator spreads the risk in his distribution strategy. The internet is not the only future for radio; and if you put all your eggs in that basket, you’re a brave man.

My final comment on this subject is this. I said the Internet will be the primary distribution channel for all media…not the only one. Yes…the best strategy is to distribute unique, quality, branded content via as many delivery platforms as possible and promote that content using as many different methods from traditional promotional campaigns to new ones such as social media.

All that being said, HD will wind up with Beta video, 8-tracks and TV antennae. HD is going nowhere.

Happy Holidays.