HD Radio--what went wrong and can it be fixed?

[oldiesfunhouse]

    CAwasinNj said "Stations on HD only are irrelevant in 2023." My question is why? When HD Radio first hit the scene I remember promos saying you could discover new stations and the audio was clearer and I got excited about it. I bought a little portable HD radio and now we have an HD radio in our car and the HD stations work great. Why is AM, (My apologies to the AM lovers out there) with its crappy sound and its interference still relevant in 2023 but HD radio, which sounds great and it's either there fully or it's gone when you move far away from its signal, is not? Your mission, should you choose to accept it, anyone who cares to, is twofold. 1. Explain why HD didn't take off like it should have, and 2. Come up with a plan to make it at least as relevant as AM apparently still is. Maybe it's "mission impossible." I think it was CA who said call letters being relevant in branding's ship has sailed over a decade ago. Has Hd Radio's ship sailed? Is it because of streaming? Is it expensive to make HD Radio a standard thing in new car radios? I'm just trying to understand what went wrong because I, personally, think HD radio and HD only stations are ... KOOL. Pun intended. But, joking aside, I do think they're cool. It was pointed out that digital radio is successful in Europe. Why there but not here?

[amanuensis]

I think the reason for HD failure is Sirius XM. Sirius saw free HD radio as being a threat to its pay-to-play model. Sirius pays car manufacturers to pre-install Sirius in new cars. In 2016, the NY Times reported that Sirius was then paying the car companies a billion dollars per year. www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/business/media/siriusxm-fights-to-dominate-the-dashboard-of-the-connected-car.html Why would car manufacturers bite the hand that feeds them by making it easy for drivers to find a free alternative to Sirius?

[jmpstar]

I'm sure the licensing fees don't help from a broadcaster adoption standpoint. :/ Broadcasters must pay annual fees, correct? And HD broadcasting equipment is more expensive? I might be remembering incorrectly, but that's what I seem to recall.

[David]

For starters, iHeart did away with all their HD2 channels in Salt Lake City, and I believe nationwide as well. Second, almost none of the local radio stations like KSL and the Broadway Media stations actively promote their HD channels on air, so people aren't really aware they exist unless they have an HD receiver. KSOP is the only local radio station I know of that actively promotes its HD2 channel on the air, and I usually hear at least one spot for 104.3 HD2 on KSOP-AM every hour. Lastly, the penetration rate for HD Radio is only about 30% according to the most recent information I could find on the web. When HD Radio was a relatively new technology, I used to hear promo spots for it on several local radio stations, but it's been at least five years or more since I heard any promos for HD Radio on the air. Basically, I think the technology is dying a slow death from benign neglect.

EDIT: iHeart did keep "Business 99.1" on KJMY 99.5 HD2, but I suspect that has more to do with Bloomberg's compensation to iHeart than anything else. Also, HD radio signals can be very difficult to receive if you're on the fringes of the signal, especially with the inadequate antennas supplied with many HD radios. My Sangean HDR-15 is a great example of a good quality radio that's hampered by a cheesy wire antenna that only works for the HD subchannels with strong signals. The average consumer doesn't want to fiddle with an antenna for 5-10 minutes to receive a radio station, especially if they live in an area where FM signals don't penetrate very well. I live about a mile from the mouth of Ogden Canyon, and "regular" FM signals can be difficult to receive at my location, let alone HD FM signals.

[CAwasinNJ]

It may not be possible to say "x is what's wrong with HD Radio and y is how you fix it." Like life, it's not that simple. Certainly one problem is a lifetime collection of radios. I have twenty-something radios and only one of them is capable of hearing HD, and that I just got less than a year ago. Sure I could replace all my radios, but that brings up another problem: expense. I can pick up a standard AM/FM radio for $10. An HD one will run $100 and up. That's a big expense and without any experience listening to those additional stations what incentive is there to spend that much? There might be more, but that's what I can think of off the top of my head from the consumer side.

From the broadcaster standpoint, as I mentioned previously the big radio companies are in financial trouble. The additional streams cost money to license. If nobody is listening that's an easy way to shave a few bucks off the expense sheet. The transmitters are already bought, paid for and installed, so there's no reason not to run the HD1. That also gives them the option to add HD2/3/etc if they ever want to. It will be interesting to see what happens when those transmitters need to be replaced and whether stations will opt to replace them with non-HD models. I wonder if that's what happened with KRCL. I asked them if there were any plans to resume HD broadcasts and got no reply.

[oldiesfunhouse]

These are all excellent responses. Thank you. I hadn't even thought of SiriusXM. I suppose Europe didn't have that complication. 

[David]

May 4, 2023 11:42:52 GMT -6 oldiesfunhouse said:

These are all excellent responses. Thank you. I hadn't even thought of SiriusXM. I suppose Europe didn't have that complication. 

Some European countries have dropped conventional FM radio for digital audio broadcasting (DAB), or Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM). I don't know if either technology has been more successful in Europe than HD Radio has been in the United States.

[amanuensis]

I wonder if there is any data about how many people listen to an HD2 signal from OTA versus a stream. I love KRSP's Deep Tracks HD2. But I listen to it only streaming because I don't have an HD radio in my car. (I thought I was getting an HD radio with the last one we bought, the salesman said it had it, and that trim line was supposed to have it, but it didn't.)

But I have to confess. One reason why I love it is because there are almost no commercials. (The more important reason is the play list.) So it can't be making Bonneville any money, given the overhead they have running it.

[David]

I doubt that Broadway Media is making any money with KUDD 105.1 HD2, but I'll continue to listen occasionally as long as KOOL FM remains on the air. I really miss the on air jocks that used to be on KOOL FM, but I don't know of any other radio station in Salt Lake City that plays "pop, soul and rock & roll" recorded prior to 1975. Besides X96 Classic and KRSP's "Deep Tracks" channel, I'm really not interested in any other HD radio channels besides KOOL FM and KSOP-FM HD2. There may be more compelling reasons to own an HD radio if one lives in one of the Top 25 radio markets, but quite frankly I'm not very impressed with the Salt Lake HD channels.

BTW, is it just my 50 something ears, or does the audio on KRSP 103.5 HD2 sound "quieter" than the main HD channel? I always have to turn up the volume when listening to The Arrow's "Deep Tracks" channel, and I've often wondered if it's just me, or if other listeners have had the same experience.

[oldiesfunhouse]

I think the audio on a lot of HD subchannels is quieter than the main channels. All these other companies should be required to take lessons from KSOP. They do it right.

[CAwasinNJ]

I don't think SiriusXM had much to do with whether HD Radio was included in cars. The only way I can see that it would would be if SXM made not including HD a condition of the deal they made with the car manufacturers. I've never heard of that happening. I'm pretty sure the NAB would have howled and there would have been legal issues. A wider choice of music was only one part of SXM's strategy anyway. The marketing that I saw was more focused on being commercial free and having exclusive content.

I don't know if it's always true but mostly the OTA signals (whether HD2/3/etc or not) are reported separately in the Nielsen's from the stream. They're just so low that they don't show up that much.

As for whether subchannels are quieter than the main channel, are they actually quieter or is there more dynamic range so that the average is quieter? There's a difference.

[amanuensis]

How I picture it is that car manufacturers wanted Sirius to stay in business BECAUSE Sirius was giving them all of this nice green stuff with pictures of dead men on it. So they avoided doing things like HD Radio that would imperil Sirius XM's health. There may never have been an overt quid-pro-quo, just, as I posted before, a desire to not bite the hand that was feeding them.

[oldiesfunhouse]

I don't know about dynamics and all that but I know that there are several HD subchannels where you have to turn up the volume to hear them at the same level as the main station. There are others, like KSOP HD2, where you don't. I don't know if it's volume or dynamics or what the reason is, but, if it were just due to the nature of the signal, it seems like the lower volume levels would occur across the board.

[tardiscaptain]

I just barely got my first HD radio in my last vehicle purchase. Since I never had a way to listen, I never gave it much mind. While reading this thread, I wondered if I could get some of these streams from the station's website. I looked up 103.5 and I had to dig to find the stream to deep tracks (which I've been impressed with). X96 HD2 was simple to find from the website, but X96 isn't at the top of my listen list so I never bothered to look before this. KSL radio's website keeps trying to get me to turn off my ad blocker (not going to happen since I'm trying to protect my computer from viruses) so I didn't have much luck digging there.

When I'm in the office or car, I just turn on the radio and 103.1 The Wave is right there. I hit a button and I can get to sports talk or 103.5 or any other station I want to listen to. Even in my new vehicle, I have to manually tell it to go to the HD2 station (compared to hitting next station on the steering wheel). I don't see myself digging for any of the HD2 streams on my computer at this time.

Speaking of Sirius Radio, it came with my new car. I tried it on a trip to Idaho, but I don't see myself using this or subscribing (even at the $5 a month that they are trying to tempt me with). I'm usually within range of a station or I've got my phone connected to the car via Bluetooth.

[henry]

May 3, 2023 21:05:07 GMT -6 jmpstar said:

I'm sure the licensing fees don't help from a broadcaster adoption standpoint. :/ Broadcasters must pay annual fees, correct? And HD broadcasting equipment is more expensive? I might be remembering incorrectly, but that's what I seem to recall.

This is the correct answer. Analog FM is royalty free. It's as cheap as the hardware is to make.

IBOC FM has a royalty. That means it's more expensive for broadcasters. It's more expensive for consumers. And only a radio nut like me pays Kenwood the extra $100 to get the "HD Radio" version of their car headunit. And even I find the experience disappointing. I lose the HD and hear analog that's out of sync. Find the compression can sound worse that analog on some stations. And in most areas, can't get the HD at all. Android Auto is a much better experience, using my phone's data. (HD? Certainly won't ever buy another one.)