RSSComing Soon: High-Definition Radio
By Ed Oswald | Published December 6, 2005, 3:29 PM
Seven large radio conglomerates said on Tuesday that they had forged a strategic partnership aimed at accelerating the development and deployment of HD Digital Radio. Called the HD Digital Radio Alliance, the charter members will include Bonneville, Citadel, Clear Channel, Cumulus, Emmis, Entercom, Greater Media and Infinity.
The organization will help coordinate the rollout of the technology, as well as work to encourage adoption by automobile manufacturers. The companies also plan to help make the technology affordable, and aid in the marketing of HD digital radio products.
Traditional radio is beginning to feel the squeeze of satellite radio, and is looking for ways to offer consumers better programming.
Chief among the complaints from radio listeners has been FM's lack of variety. As consolidation in the industry continues, less popular formats such as alternative and dance music have been pushed to the side.
The Philadelphia radio market is a prime example of this problem. In February of this year, popular alternative station Y-100 was abruptly pulled from the air after twelve years and replaced with an urban format station.
Although the station averaged a half-million listeners, owner Radio One said the change was out of a desire to move its urban station "The Beat" to a higher power frequency, as it felt it was a more marketable format. The Beat's old frequency wasn't given to Y-100; a gospel station replaced it.
Other markets, such as Miami, Los Angeles, New York, Washington D.C. and Chicago have made similar abrupt changes to programming, ripping popular dance and rock stations off the air with little or no warning. Oftentimes, they are replaced with Hispanic music and talk stations, which have proven more valuable in many cities.
However, with HD radio, the companies have pledged to create a better diversity of formats. The also stress a big difference between themselves and satellite radio: their programming is free.
The industry has already begun to push the no-cost aspect on its traditional radio properties. Some stations such as WYSP "94.1 Free FM", an Infinity-owned rock station in Philadelphia, now promote the fact that they don't charge listeners in an attempt to separate themselves from satellite radio.
In any case, the new CEO of the HD Digital Radio Alliance said such collaboration between competing media conglomerates has never occurred before, and the group would help to speed the deployment of the technology.
"These companies should be congratulated on coming together to create a joint action plan, and committing air time and money to move HD digital radio forward," CEO Peter Ferrara said. "I'm honored to be asked to help lead this important initiative."
Other advantages of the HD technology are FM broadcasts that have CD-quality sound, AM broadcasts that sound like FM, and the elimination of the static, pop, hiss and fades normally associated with traditional analog radio.
The technology will also allow stations to program multiple streams on a single frequency, called HD2. The stations will be locally programmed and initially will be commercial-free, the companies said.
The organization added that already, over 600 stations nationwide are broadcasting their primary programming signal in HD-quality.
Interesting reading this. Here in Europe there are two digital radio systems now, DRM and DAB.
DRM (DigitalRadioMondiale) is broadcast on short and medium wave (what you call AM)now by big time staions like BBC WS, Radio Netherlands WS and radio Luxembourg, the biggest commercial radio group in Europe. It gives either FM quality on AM or stereo in somewhat lesser quality, but better than the old AMstereo. One problem though: the promised receivers are not te be bought anywhere yet, you have to modify your pc to listen to it. One big German station already went back to AM cos of this.
DAB is broadcast on the band III television spectrum, european channel 12 is cleared for this, others will follow. DAB can give CD quality, but does not.Why? Too many programs in the signal.Sets are expensive, and programming is mainly public radio also available on AM/FM. The system is promoted and subsidized by governments thru a european union plan. Commercial stations stay on FM, that is where the listeners are. DAB is only a succes in the UK, where there are many stations. In Germany they think about stepping out of DAB.
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|Hey I have an idea... how about stereo AM...
Oh forgot that was tried and failed!
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|The only time the radio is worth listening to is when local sports are on when you are stuck at work other than that the best thing is to have a small pair of computer speakers and load up the mp3 player nothing beats your own tunes and playlists.
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|I have enough trouble picking up broadcast HDTV already. It's as bad as satalite, goes out when it rains, etc. Now HD Radio? None for me sir.
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|It has taken them awhile to finally push HD Radio. Its a step in the right direction for "free" radio, but its a little late. Satillite has far more potential. I too have stopped listening to regular radio for the most part. I am so sick of hearing the same songs over and over again. There isn't enough variety.
True you can't please everyone, and HD Radio will help solve that some, but will have commercials and stupid DJ's.
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|That all depends on the station, your thinking Clear Channel.
There are some stations which only have, say, three minutes of commercials per hour. Compared to Clear Channel, which is over 15 minutes.
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|Personally, the heavy-handed FCC regulations are going to hamstring anything done by over-air stations anyhow. What's the point? Artists and talent are scurrying to satellite so they can have creative freedom.
Data-streaming radio is nice, but it's the same thing. "...and the elimination of the static, pop, hiss and fades normally associated with traditional analog radio" are now replaced by compression artifacts and packet loss. Depending on the compression rate, it could easily be worse than broadcast FM. Better than FM means that they'd have to broadcast full spectrum, particularly over the 15kHz range. Think they'll do it? Don't bet on it.
This has nothing to do with being better. It has to do with reconfiguring "radio" so stations can have more channels. Maybe that's better, but more than likely instead of innovating, the additional channels will be micro-genre one-hour loops, worse than what we have today.
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|Oh boy, high definition (don't ya just luv buzzwords?) crap programming and endless commercials. I can't wait!
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|Didn't the FCC already do this? http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/c...facts/digitalradio.html
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|High Definition Radio with Low Brow DJ's.
Perfect.
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|comercial radio sucks. Go get a satalite radio and be able to listen to more than the same 10 songs that are played. HD radio what a joke.
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|"Seven large radio conglomerates said on Tuesday that they had forged a strategic partnership aimed at accelerating the development and deployment of HD Digital Radio. Called the HD Digital Radio Alliance, the charter members will include Bonneville, Citadel, Clear Channel, Cumulus, Emmis, Entercom, Greater Media and Infinity."
Wow, now people can hear sh*tty music in high def! Wicked!
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|So how does this affect me and my ipod? One of the main reasons i got it in the first place was to listen to it, while i'm in the car driving to work. The radio just had too many commercials on it now-a-days.
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|Check out JackFM if they've launched yet in your area. Based on the iPod shuffle feature, you get a *wide* variety of music. Not some choked, heavily rotated top-40 BS.
The next song almost always suprises you.
Of course, I've looked at a few of their websites and the playlist seems widely varied at each, which is a good thing, but all are different, you'll hear more coutnry on one, or more metal on another.
I suppose it depends on your area.
Commercials on the one in this area are limited, and the huge variety in genre and popularity (they often play the B tracks) make this one a keeper in my book. Now if they'd just pipe it through the net I could listen to it at work (in my apparently lead-lined ZERO reception from any outside source office).
/ad.
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|We have JackFM here in Minneapolis. They play a wide variety of complete and utter garbage. 90% of it is songs from the 80's you didn't like then and you still don't like now.
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|Well, there's no accounting for taste.
;P
104.1, man. All the way. Though I do usually end up switching to 93X every so often..they definately do *not* play enough heavier stuff on Jack..(though 93x is pretty light-weight when it comes to metal, anyway)
Another Minneapolitan, eh? I hear it's going to get into the 30's this week.
w00t! Heat-wave, baby.
And why the hell can't anyone drive over 30 MPH on 35W, dammit. It's just salt for God's sake.
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|yeah i'd lve variety, but i'm like so spoiled by corrosion internet radio (search it, i'm unafilliated) anyways man x_x variety, they dun even play metallica (not that i'd care if they did)
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|Killer Rock Radio goes FM in 2006. Check us out. ;)
I won't spam a link, just do a search on us. Over 4 million unique listeners a month.
Help us go FM by taking the FM petitions we have and getting them signed.
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|What does the quality matter if you have DJs and commercials yammering away half way into and out of the song?
Pointless.
I hope they waste 1000s on this and go bankrupt.
The only decent stations are either local or Internet nowadays anyway. Anything owned by Clear Channel or Cumulus out here plain and simply sucks.
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|I don't care if they are "free" or not...the programming on regular radio sucks. I'm glad to pay a fee to listen to the type of music i want and not have SOMEONE YELL AT ME during a commercial.
"free" radio is on the way out...especially in small areas (like where i live) where they don't even understand the word jazz or blues. they have two types of music here...country and country. i can listen to some country ...but not all the time... but they still have annoying commercials with people telling me about their bad credit, their problems and trying to get me to buy and overpriced car ... bye bye FM!!!!! Everyone i've shown my sat radio to has ended up buying one
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|I hope HD Radio sounds better than XM or Sirius.
They sound like 96kbps MP3s. My local radio in SOCAL sounds better and more "CD Like". What a scam.
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|A scam just like cable was when it was first introduced as a alternative to air waves..
I wouldnt think it is over 128kbps streams however are you sure it just isnt your speakers or head unit? If its fm modulated you will lose a little quality there, I can tell you one thing on my Alpine head unit with MB Quart component speakers and JL12w3 subs it is crystal clear and extremlly superior to terrestrial radio, plus I am excited to listen to stern without 20 minutes of commercials.... Scam I think not, there is always something playing that interest me, my FSEEK always pops up with a song I like, and I always am hearing songs I liked but forgot about over the past 5 years, there is no 10 song loop like some of the local hit stations on FM. So do your research first buddy, its not a scam.
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|I have to say... I have had both XM and Sirius. They both were totally horid... Get stuck under an overpass during rushhour and there goes your music (living in the Bay Area, almost everywhere is packed and they love to build overpasses, don't they?). I ended up dropping both and now just generate random playlists on my MP3 player.
As for HD Radio, I agree that this isn't a scam... this is just like the big cable push in the 80's without the cost being tied to it. Terrestrial radio really needs to do something to compete with satellite, no question about that. What they do to compete is another question entirely. As most people know, the JACK format is a complete waste of time. I don't want to hear DJ's and commercials blasting in my ear for over 4 minutes, I also want a good variety of music in whatever genre happens to fit my mood. If HD Radio can offer similar programming that satellite radio offers with no cost, I believe we are going to see XM and Sirius losing their client base rather quickly.
Also, someone above was complaining about getting good HDTV reception... 2 choices, cable-based HDTV or an outdoor, roof mounted antenna. I had Dish Network for all of 2 months and dumped it largely because of their horrible HDTV offerings. Recently I went back to Comcast and got their HDTV package (We don't have a single SD TV left in the house now... heh) and added an offair antenna... I am now getting about 35 channels of HD programming with virtually no downtime at all...
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|I will have to agree with you on the bridges cutting out, however that isnt a problem in Florida so other than that, there is no bother to me. HD radio will be censored however because it will be under the FCC's control, not a big deal to some, but a huge deal to me, I hate hearing edited songs. I am also against the corny local DJ's and commercials that are not aimed at any target, sorry but I am 21 I am not planning for life insurance due to the "average funeral costing $6,000" ya no thanks.
However when it comes to sat tv, forget about it, I can not tell you how many movies I have ordered on pay per view and have a small storm waste it, I can look outside and say o no tv tonight. That bugs me, its a shame that digital cable has to have the adds all over there menu, sat is good about having nice clean menus I will give them that. I hear ya on the HD tv part though. Nice intelligent response!
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