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

Happy Holidays.

… 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.