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Friday, July 13, 2007

How to Guarrantee HD Radio's Success

What's 2 years old and doesn't get any respect? HD radio.

Radio's theoretical saving grace is five years too late and by all the data we can see at Bridge Ratings, it will be a smaller consumer niche than satellite radio...if it continues down the path it is currently on.

And with the hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent by American radio companies to upgrade their existing equipment for HD capable broadcasts, there is a dire need for HD to be the technically next great thing for terrestrial radio. But how does this get done?

The answer lies in taking a look at the FCC's mandate for HDTV and applying it to radio.

The FCC notified U.S. television broadcasters that the standard for transmitting TV over-the-air would permanently change from analog to digital. While there are many technical, political, and economic reasons for and implications of this change, the end-result for the American TV audience is a dramatic improvement in picture and sound quality.

According to the original FCC rules, all full power stations were to convert to digital by the beginning of 2007, followed by shutdown of analog broadcasting. An escape clause stipulated that 85% of receivers in the service area must be "capable" of receiving digital signals before the shutdown could occur. At the time of analog shutoff, one of the channels (digital or analog) would then be returned to the government, with the other channel remaining as a digital station; the freed spectrum could then be used for other TV stations, with UHF channels at the high end of the band being decommissioned and sold for other uses.

The 2007 deadline could not be satisfied under many interpretations of 85% "capability" of digital signal reception. So....

On February 8th, 2006, President Bush signed into law the "Digital Television Transition and Public Safety Act of 2005". This law mandated a hard shut-off date of February 17, 2009 for the end of all analog (NTSC) TV transmissions in the U.S.

A similar hard shut-off date for the end of all analog FM radio must occur in order for HD radio to get past its current consumer growth doldrums. The forced shut-down of analog radio will give America the incentive to adopt HD radio.

Perhaps more importantly, like HDTV, a forced shut-off will force consumers to become more familiar with HD radio's offerings and benefits which will, in turn, motivate broadcasters to develop stimulating content.

This is really the only way to quickly stimulate the rapid adoption of this new technology. One wonders why this wasn't the FCC's plan all along. Why place a mandatory transition deadline on television stations and not radio?

Even our British broadcast neighbors are beginning to lobby their FCC equivalent (Ofcom, the Office of Communications) to turn off the FM band by 2015 in order to force British broadcasters to become digital. They have said they fear being antiquated in the face of all digital audio technologies.

They have a point.

What do you think?


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Broadcaster's would be forced out of business, as consumers would continue their apathy towards terrestrial radio. Consumers do not buy radios anymore, and would certainly not accept being forced to spend hundreds on mandatory in-dash HD radios ! And, this would stimulate consumer interest ? :D
DAB has stalled in Canada and interest in DAB is slowing in the UK and may be replaced with DAB+. Consumers do not care about terrestrial radio anymore, as they have moved onto other technologies !

http://hdradiofarce.blogspot.com/

Joe said...

Radio (and TV) in the UK is supported by license fees, and thus, if you're paying for it, you're more inclined to use the product. And because you have vested interest in it, you're more apt to support any efforts to improve it. We'd like to think radio in the U.S. is free, but technically, it comes "free" with the purchase of a car, alarm clock, or CD player. If you think about it, most Americans' "license fee" is a car payment.

When was the last time someone just bought a radio for radio's sake (satrad doesn't count)? XM/Sirius had the right idea by targeting new car buyers. I'm not suggesting terrestrial radio starts hawking HD alarm clocks, but it seems to me that HD will only be viable if, as you suggest, it's a replacement for analog and not a supplement.

Another point: BBC Radio 2 (a state-run national broadcaster, and thus, maybe not the best example) ID's themselves as "online, on digital, and on 88 to 91 FM". In this case, the UK radio listener is being conditioned to think of digital as just another platform, on equal footing with analog and online. In the U.S., HD is just another expensive Radio Shack gadget. And the UK has had "satellite radio" for years: the same digital versions of existing stations as channels on their Sky TV satellite TV packages. We should take more than one cue from the British on HD.

Anonymous said...

"Digital Audio Broadcasting Systems and Their Impact on the Terrestrial Radio Broadcast Service"

"We will not establish a deadline for radio stations to convert to digital broadcasting. Stations may decide if, and when, they will provide digital service to the public. Several reasons support this decision. First, unlike television licensees, radio stations are under no statutory mandate to convert to a digital format. Second, a hard deadline is unnecessary given that DAB uses an in-band technology that does not require the allocation of additional spectrum. Thus, the spectrum reclamation needs that exist for DTV do not exist here. Moreover, there is no evidence in the record that marketplace forces cannot propel the DAB conversion forward, and effective markets tend to provide better solutions than regulatory schemes... We find that such a policy, if adopted now, may have unknown and unintended consequences for a new technology that has yet to be accepted by the public or widely adopted by the broadcast industry."

http://tinyurl.com/7s48kd

There's your answer.

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