Why is HD Radio important for public radio?
As a self-proclaimed evangelist for HD Radio, I am often questioned about this technology and asked why I have inculcated it so deeply into the workings of WAMU in Washington. We have three channels of content, two devoted to news and information, and one to bluegrass and Americana music. For the first year, we cross-promoted channels 2 and 3 on our flagship frequency at least 15 seconds over every hour, and we currently do so at least four times a day, utilizing our well-known hosts to give listeners the current schedule on all three channels in our “radio community.” This represents a sizable investment in airtime, and certainly effort on the part of the traffic department that writes all the copy and manages three separate logs, so I’ve given considerable thought to this one question: why is HD Radio important for public radio?
1. HD Radio is cost-effective.
Let’s examine the landscape for starting new radio stations. The last noncommercial station that changed hands in Washington, D.C., sold for $13 million – and that was in 1997. In 2004, Minnesota Public Radio purchased WCAL for reportedly $10.5 million. In 2005, Xavier University in Cincinnati sold WXVU and affiliated stations for $15 million. The acquisition cost for a commercial station in a market the size of Washington can exceed $50 million or more.
In contrast, when WAMU moved our bluegrass shows and our 40+-year history with this music to 88.5-2 in October 2007, we added live shows, several full-time employees, equipment, and a greatly enhanced sense of place for this community of listeners, all for a few hundred thousand dollars. Still a sizable investment for us, but nothing approaching the multi-million dollar outlay required just for the frequency, had we started from scratch. We also launched a second news/talk channel on 88.5-3, focused on international news and emerging shows like The Takeaway, to sate the bottomless D.C. appetite for news and information. Why would we not? I believe it would be criminal to let fail a technology that allows you to start up new radio stations for such relatively small capital expenses. It’s also important to note that those capital and personnel costs are definitely scalable by market; in a market that’s smaller or less expensive overall, costs would undoubtedly be proportionately less.
2. HD Radio allows you to focus on content.
Currently, there are 1,925 stations across the country broadcasting 2,995 HD Radio channels; in Washington, D.C., alone, there are 22 stations broadcasting 39 channels. Formats range from South Asian to gospel, from bluegrass to the Mormon Channel. These multicast channels have nothing in common, save the technology that allows them to exist and the sheer variety of the content they represent. This is, to my mind, the most important benefit of HD Radio – it gives public radio the opportunity to provide new content, different content, niche content – to focus on CONTENT, period. HD Radio allows us to combat the well-founded sense that radio has become too format-driven. The possibilities inherent in that capacity remind me of the golden days of FM, when our DJs played what they wanted, based on their own deep understanding of their music.
For those who would say that focus on niches distracts from their main revenue sources, consider this: by better serving the niches of our market with our bluegrass and international news stations, we are freed up to focus on growing our flagship frequency into a powerhouse. While our main news/talk audience may not, in large numbers, tune into our bluegrass station, they have voiced appreciation that we have not left that audience behind. I believe it is no coincidence that since we launched WAMU’s Bluegrass Country and WAMU-3 for international news, both our fundraising and our corporate support have grown by double digit percentages. Public radio fans of any stripe will appreciate your efforts to focus on the content, and they’ll support them.
3. HD Radio technology prospects are improving.
HD Radio technology has taken a lot of hits, many justified, but I do believe the prospects for the technology are continually improving. Our research showed that for more than 30% of our audience, the price tipping point for HD Radio was $50; the newest portable HD Radio from Insignia is $50. Now we will see if they really meant it.
Automobile manufacturers are helping grow the audience by including HD Radio technology as standard or optional equipment in more models. Ford, Volvo, Audi, BMW, Mercedes, and Hyundai all include HD options on some or all of their models.
To appreciate the possibilities for growth that this represents, remember how powerful bundled software on PCs has proven in growing market share for different applications and web browsers – once the application was made part of the purchase, any roadblocks to usage simply melted away. Becoming “standard equipment” should have the same effect for HD Radio and multicast channels.
Another stumbling block has been the limited coverage area. Now, the FCC is considering approving a ten-fold power increase, so that multicast channels can have better structure penetration and an expanded coverage map. I’m looking forward to NPR Labs study results of this proposed increase, and hope the outcome of such an increase will allow each one of our listeners to hear all three channels of robust content that we air. In fact, WAMU is taking a leadership position in testing higher HD power levels with the installation of a new transmitter in September. We will be asking our listeners to provide feedback on improvements they hear when listening to our multicast channels in office, home and mobile settings.
4. HD Radio as a programming strategy is WORKING.
The question always is, who’s listening? The answer is encouraging. We have initial data in the form of the National Topline Report from Arbitron that show a 5,500 cume for Bluegrass Country. We also have web statistics showing more than 50,000 unique monthly visitors to the station’s site, bluegrasscountry.org. Among our constituency, we hear from angry people when we make changes to our multicast channels, a sure sign that the audience is engaged. Finally, it is undeniable – one other signal of the traction that HD Radio is gaining is that on the commercial multicast stations, you’re starting to hear commercials.
However, I think that to truly “get” the importance of HD Radio, you must abandon the old metrics, and stop trying to layer those measurements on the new landscape.
The days of double-digit share are gone; 1-2% may become a good share in the brave new world. The landscape has irreversibly changed, with so many platforms available to tempt the listener. Podcasts, mobile, Internet radio – the competition for ears is everywhere, as we all well know. I believe that, comparisons to Betamax and 8-tracks aside, very rarely does a format completely disappear – the pieces of the audience pie simply get smaller, and you need to be accessible on every possible platform in order to get the same aggregate AMOUNT of the pie.
My career in public radio has been based on careful fiscal oversight and ceaseless attention to ROI. I submit to you that above all, HD Radio returns a high yield in rich content, program development, and listener goodwill for a relatively modest investment.
-Caryn G. Mathes, General Manager
WAMU 88.5 FM American University Radio, Washington, D.C.
Reprinted from Current
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"In addition, local stations, having already developed expensive secondary programming for their HD stations that nobody listens to, are excited to have another outlet for that programming. They see this as a great salvation from the HD experience, because they’ve already invested that money, and everything that they’re putting on their secondary [HD] channels, that their audience isn’t able to hear either because of the antenna problems with HD, their location, or because they don’t want to invest in HD radio, said Sopato. All of those secondary streams are on the web and on this radio. Now, they don’t have to tell their audience, 'go get an HD Radio.'â€
http://tinyurl.com/ygg3t7g
Seems NPR is becoming disillusioned with HD Radio, for good reasons. Go blow smoke up someone else's ***.
Sounds like an approved letter to me seeing "robust" indoctrinated into the speech pathology. And the 10 times power increase FCC examination mentions waiting for the new results from listeners on the improved coverages with no mention of the potential interference from other non-com FM stations opting to 10 fold their nearby digital contours.
Because of the government and donations from listeners, Public Radio created the first interest in digital broadcasting's multicast hype and the noisy interference, killing protected contours (another reason 3rd adjacent FM protections have been reduced FYI). And now alt channels are the excuse for getting rid of Polka,Foreign Language and other formerly welcomed ideas replaced with the same political material (mainstream interests) 24/7. BTW, it was the variety that made Pub Radio extremely valuable since smarter people simple stayed tuned or came back later in appreciation for the "choices" offered, not the stuffing of a format into a hole for those who could hear it. The real tragedy is a donation station could easily have offered at wholesale cost a radio capable of receiving 10 channels of specialty programming at a cost of about 100.00 per set in large quantity purchases, installed the subcarrier system for broadcasting 10, not 3 channels for less than 25,000.00 per station and never raised the noise floor as this digital system has already created-a 20db increase in spectrum noise. This is no laughing matter any longer. Thanks for those who sacrificially work in public radio. But they must know the truth to be set free from this sad state of affairs digital has created.
"CPB/NPR to Fit Square HD Peg Into Round Hole"
"First, National Public Radio (through the CPB) has already extensively studied this issue, more than anyone else in the industry, and the results are pretty unequivocal that increasing the power of a station's FM digital signal will adversely affect not only its own analog host-signal, but also those of neighboring stations. So much so, in fact, that the (first) study's coordinating engineer has admitted in other fora that an increase in HD sideband power levels is much more likely to do harm than good."
http://www.diymedia.net/archive/0409.htm#042909
it's obvious that Mike Starling caved to CPB/iBiquity. I can't wait unti NPR starts jamming their own stations, with self-interference and adjacent-channel interference. and, all of these IBOC cheerleaders think that this is going to force listeners to buy cheesy HD radios- well, the opposite may be happening:
"WUFT-FM officially makes switch to talk radio"
"WUFT-FM made the switch Monday to a 24-hour news and talk station... Classical music now can be heard on the station's HD2 signal, which requires a special digital radio to receive... In subsequent weeks, classical fans protested in letters, through an online petition drive and at meetings in a local home. There are a lot of upset and disappointed people, said Gainesville resident Sue Yelton, an organizer of those efforts. Yelton and others said they refuse to buy HD radios to continue to hear classical... Others, however, have decided to take the plunge. Radio Shack on Archer Road sold out its clearance models of HD radios but has two other types remaining for $130 and $150."
http://tinyurl.com/n2ab9m
Hopefully, listeners will stop donations to NPR, as more of the General Public figures out what is really happening. Nazi Public Radio.
1)HD radio is a closed-source, proprietary technology. It is approved for use NOWHERE but in the US!
Although currently still analog, people living near the Canadian or Mexican borders or in parts of South Florida where a Bahamian station will come through will hear those stations broadcasting in other digital formats that an HD radio can't process, and will be unable to purchase radios able to process those digital broadcasts.
2)It also means that is is the technology, not the market that is setting the price. The radios are priced about like satellite TV receivers and don't receive as many different things.
Another problem that seems to have arisen is that the coverage was supposed to be equal to the station's analog coverage. This, so far has not proven to be the case! The reliable coverage has proven to be about half that of the station's analog coverage, leaving many listeners in the outer suburbs of the major cities, and in the suburbs of the smaller cities out in the cold. I suspect, but can't prove that this is a result of trying to kluge the digital signal and analog signal together. It would mean that, since most listeners are still on analog, the modulation on the HD side is deliberately set low to prevent background noise in the analog signal!
Also, the transition to digital television is occurring during times of a slowdown in the economy, this means that purchase of an HD radio is just another strain on the already tight budget! There is not, and never has been, a fixed date when all FM broadcasting will go digital, as there is for TV, so, what money is available goes into television.
Another problem is simply the poor quality that most HD radios exhibit when used in the analog mode. Since not all stations are HD, and every market has some non-HD stations, it is important that the analog reception be at least as good as the HD reception. Few people are really willing to pay $150 or more for a radio that performs like a $20.00 Dollar General special! I tried what was supposed to be a good HD radio in it’s analog mode on a station that did not broadcast HD. It’s reception and sound quality proved far short of a non-HD radio costing 20% as much!
The way radio is headed, with the corporate types having much more control, and the real radio people having less control than ever before there just is not enough good radio out there for people to spend the bigger bucks on a radio receiver!
As a lifelong radio hobbyist it hurts me to say this, but over-the-air, local radio does appear to be a legacy technology at this point, and unless there is a change in philosophy in the whole recording industry, radio will never resume its former place as a source of new music for the everyman!
Radio is, for the short-term at least still a viable way to get into places that satellite and cell-phone signals just don't reach, but how long can they live on that?
Along that same line, how many of these "extra stations" differ materially from what is available for audio streaming over the Internet? woxy.com has been an internet radio station for years, they started doing it while they were still a local FM station in Ohio. When the FM station was sold out from under them, they continued as internet-only radio. They recently also added the HD-2 channel of WVXU!
Internet radio has finally found enough audience to make it worthwhile. Took a while, until most people had broadband, but it did happen.
It is time for the radio industry to re-think the conversion to digital. Some digital format is inevitable, but are they going about it right?
Radio will at some point in the not-too-distant future migrate to the Internet. To a certain extent, it already has. The biggest barrier to Internet radio right now is that outside certain “hot spots,†most of them in the major cities, you have to be “wired†to receive it. Over-the-air radio has always done well in cars. Satellite radio solves this problem for now, but it has problems among the tall buildings in the big cities. Like satellite television, it tends to “skew†toward rural areas and outer suburbs, where, now most Over-the-air stations do not have interference free secondary coverage areas, as a result their coverage is spotty and HD radio is all but impossible! Whether the satellite radio business model is workable this way remains an open question.
I find it difficult to believe that there are anywhere near 5500 HD radios in the greater Washington area. What percentage of that cume comes from the 105.5 translator analog broadcast? 99%?
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