What will it take?

[AmpedNow]

for the small markets to convert to HD?

I'm just wondering what the holdup is... Is it iBiquity's licensing fees and cost of equipment? Simple lack of interest? Lack of radios? Or all of the above?

If it is the setup or licensing costs, would you be interested in converting if costs were cheaper or in better economic times? Or are you just not interested at all?

I can see why AMs wouldn't be too interested, esp in this region, with ground conductivity issues being problem enough. But I've heard enough HD-FM to conclude that the "end-of-the-world" interference issues are simply not there. The SQ is improved over analog, station name and info and artist/title tagging is good to know, and the whole subchannel thing is neat, too.

There are fringe "blending" issues, as I've mentioned before. But that should be mostly gone should the FCC approve the HD-FM power increase.

While there are issues with HD, imo it's worth looking into for FM stations. Just about all of the majors and many mediums have already converted. But it's still almost non-existent in many small markets.

I'll go ahead and head off the FMextra stuff... This will never be a digital standard because there are no radios. There have been 1 million HD radios sold to date, with new models and even portables coming out later this year. So while HD may not be the "superior" technology and has failed to set the world on fire, it's still well ahead of the game.

RDS: should have been implemented faster years ago... While it's neat to see more stations using it, it's old tech at this point. Nor is it digital.

AM stereo: was the band's best chance to hang on to audience. Another useful technology that was allowed to fall by the wayside. Though I must say that interference issues aside, AM-HD is stereo-capable, though many AM-HD stations I've heard are still wired in mono.

Just some thoughts...

[dhodges82]

I think it will require there to be a financial incentive for the small market stations to upgrade. At a minimum, I would say it's probably $50k in licensing and equipment fees to upgrade a digital-ready transmitter to HDFM. For a medium to large market station, this is a small drop in the hat. This is a small portion of a months billing to pay for the transition to digital. No problem.

However, for small market stations, this could be the equivalent of several months (or a year's worth) of billing to pay for the upgrade.

And the bottom line is that for these small market stations that are struggling to pay the bills, they are not going to spend a huge portion of it on a technology that is not going to bring any more money into the station.

Has anyone shown that being an HD radio station has increased billing or non-commercial giving? Is anyone making any money off their HD2 streams?

In these times, station managers and small station owners don't want to spend money on a technology that will not increase the billing of their stations.

You could argue that HD radio would increase the listener base of your station. However, in small markets, Arbitron has pulled out or is only doing a small number of diarys. Agencies aren't buying on those stations so they are not affected by Arbitron ratings.

My two cents.

-Dave

[Ace Purple]

I'm still waiting to hear the HD/HD2/HD3 success stories. There are CHRs (such as WRVW in Nashville) that use their HD2 stream to play brand new music, but I haven't heard them (or anyone else) use cross-promotion with the FM signal when an early new song from the HD2 breaks big to mention how it was "heard first" on the HD2 feed or whatever.

[Tom Taggart]

HD radio is dead, has been for some time. Just hasn't been buried yet. IBAC on AM just generates interference to other stations and often to the main carrier of the station transmitting the signal--as the digital signal gets decoded as a persistent hiss behind the audio. Never found anyone who could hear the difference between main channel and IBOC audio on FM--absent a drastic difference in processing. Claimed improvements in multi-path distortion are too esoteric to sell radios. The reason no-one has heard success stories about the secondary channels is that there is no-one listening to the secondary channels.

Any small business owner that drops $50K on equipment with no chance what so ever of adding to the bottom line is either nuts, or running the business as a hobby. Would make more sense to give away $1,000 a week for a year in the morning show.

[Force Commander]

for the small markets to convert to HD?

I also don't think there is a future in IBOC. The fight is on to stop it all together.

http://www.stopiboc.com/

Read the IBOC story and WHY YOU DON'T NEED HD-AM for starters.

[Hoosier Daddy]

Refarming the AM and FM broadcast bands offers a much better solution to today's mess than any "add on" technology. Clean up the AM band, make the lower frequencies (540-1200 kc.) available for nationwide, clear channel operations. 1200-1600 kc. for regional stations with significant nighttime power (no flea power allocations), and 1600-1700 kc. for community based, 500 watt and lower non-commercial operation. Expand the FM band as previously discussed down to 82 MHz (or even 76 MHz) be reclaiming TV channels 5 and 6 from the digital television migration, and divide up the allocations so that NPR, LPFM, and the religious translators all have a piece of the pie, as well as all those displaced AM stations and existing FM rimshots that never quite covered their intended market. "Digital from Day One" operations could be required on the expanded band, with perhaps a total conversion of the existing FM allocations sometime in the future. FM receivers could be made to automatically sense the digital vs. analog signal and adjust accordingly, as well as be capable of receiving the new frequencies. Market based coverage through multicasting is also a possibility, such as in markets like Morgantown-Fairmont-Clarksburg-Weston, where the population is essentially in a 75 mile straight line along major highways. So many possibilities. IBOC is certainly not the answer, though, especially on AM.

[Big Media]

I believe HD Radio is still suffering from being misunderstood---much like HDTV was years ago and still is, to some extent. I am in the media industry and I don't understand HD Radio. Until I purchased my first XM satellite radio, I thought satellite radio was CD quality or better. I had no idea it would sound like a 8k streaming internet station.

If the industry were to have a real go at it, HD radio would have been made standard on every radio sold.

Recall, it took an act of Congress to make ATSC tuners standard on all televisions sold.

[Hoosier Daddy]

You bring up a good point about HD being misunderstood and I agree. I must also say that IBOC is a poor choice from a technical standpoint because there are a number of issues it will never correct. With that being said, IBOC and it's inventors/investors/marketers have too much invested, as do the handful of radio stations that already got on board and bought all the IBOC stuff, so we are stuck with it. A good next step would be to require IBOC capable tuners on all new radios with perhaps the ability for the user to expand the FM tuning capabilities downward to 82 or 76 MHz when and if the FCC ever adopts an expanded FM band.

[Arp2]

...and existing FM rimshots that never quite covered their intended market.

Wouldn't that reward the move-ins you've been so much against?

[AmpedNow]

Great discussion...

You could argue that HD radio would increase the listener base of your station.

Maybe through niche formats on subchannels, but it probably won't bring listeners in to the main channel just because you're "now in HD". Although I have listened to formats I don't personally care for for a time just to hear what it sounds like and how it works.

I always looked at it like an added bonus to your P1s. They stumble upon an HD unit and you happen to be in HD, well, all the better.

I'm still waiting to hear the HD/HD2/HD3 success stories.

There aren't many, but I've heard reports of some HD-2s showing up in the NYC PPMs. The HD push has been huge in that market, and will be where its most likely to succeed.

HD radio is dead, has been for some time. Just hasn't been buried yet. IBAC on AM just generates interference to other stations and often to the main carrier of the station transmitting the signal--as the digital signal gets decoded as a persistent hiss behind the audio.

No argument from me that HD on AM presently causes problems... But will the technology forever remain like that? Could we assume that future technology and chipsets may minimize the sideband hiss? Remember that this is still the 1G version of HD radio. Samsung is working on the 2G chipsets as we speak, possibly due out this time next year or sooner.

Never found anyone who could hear the difference between main channel and IBOC audio on FM--absent a drastic difference in processing.

I don't have engineering ears, but as a casual audiophile, I can usually hear a difference. Sometimes it's minimal, sometimes it's profound.

"Digital from Day One" operations could be required on the expanded band, with perhaps a total conversion of the existing FM allocations sometime in the future. FM receivers could be made to automatically sense the digital vs. analog signal and adjust accordingly, as well as be capable of receiving the new frequencies.

One thing to consider is analog FM is a rather inefficient use of bandwidth and electricity. Similar to DTV, a single FM station broadcasting in pure digital could cut its analog bandwidth in half and still have room for 3 to 4 subchannels, while using a fraction of the power an analog signal requires. Also, the whole "third adjacent rule" would go out the window Even second adjacents in the same market would no longer be a big deal.

This is why I could support a full digital mandate for radio as well. We might even need less time to convert people over than it did with DTV.

Market based coverage through multicasting is also a possibility, such as in markets like Morgantown-Fairmont-Clarksburg-Weston, where the population is essentially in a 75 mile straight line along major highways. So many possibilities.

This is why I also like the Eureka 147 model of digital broadcasting. It allows for multiple repeaters in a given area with no interference issues while HD is still tied to pushing a signal from a single point. Nor does it play nice with boosters.

Of course, it's obvious why the powers that be went with HD instead... Eureka requires a separate band all together.

I believe HD Radio is still suffering from being misunderstood---much like HDTV was years ago and still is, to some extent. I am in the media industry and I don't understand HD Radio.

Agreed. HD (on FM anyway) isn't the big, bad boogieman it's been made out to be. I can see where it can be very useful.

If the industry were to have a real go at it, HD radio would have been made standard on every radio sold.

I thought that was the original plan...

Quite frankly, the iBiquity folks do share some responsibility for HD's painfully slow rollout... Demanding manufacturer kickbacks for their chips and requiring yearly licensing fees from FMs at this stage of the game isn't very bright.

Get as many radios out there as fast as possible, then worry about that stuff later.

[Hoosier Daddy]

...and existing FM rimshots that never quite covered their intended market.

Wouldn't that reward the move-ins you've been so much against?

I guess I've come to terms with the fact that move-ins are here to stay, like it or not. My only problem with move-ins is that outlying communities were stripped of their once local broadcast outlets to become an also-ran for the big city. Reconfiguring the broadcast spectrum to make room for lower powered (and less cost to operate) signals in outlying communities satisfies my mantra about still having a local radio presence in small cities and towns.

[genlock]

The outlying communities will have to find jobs for several hard drives and satellite dishes.