What Is The Real Future Of HD Radio?

The other day I was having a conversation with a Market Manager about HD Radio. He was going on about how wonderful the audio quality was going to be -- much better than what we get now with our main terrestrial signals and certainly better audio quality than what satellite radio has to offer. And here is the best part … it's free! Yippee! OK. I agreed with him on the audio quality part. It does sound better. The free part? Not so much. Nothing is free. You will have to buy new receivers. Your current ones won't pick up anything in HD. But at least you don't have to pay a subscription for it. Time will tell how willing consumers will be to fork over more money for a new radio. Wait … I'm getting to the point behind that last statement.

Quality programming is what wins, not whether it's in HD or not.

I then asked the manager how he was going to program his new channels in his 4-station cluster. After all, he will now have 4 more new stations to supply content to. He immediately answered with "all this great music we can't put on our existing stations. It will be wall to wall music for at least a year. No commercials. And we'll stream it online until the receivers get into the marketplace." So basically, I said, you're going to be a giant iPod that either I have to leave in my car, or leave in my house. I won't be able to take it with me wherever I go outside of those two places, like I can my iPod. He suddenly got that blank stare as if I just told him his daughter was going to marry the station mascot (nothing against those who are wearing mascot suits, because I did it in a previous life)! I said if that is all you are going to do, don't waste your time or the bandwidth. I can get that now without investing in an HD radio. And quite honestly, while music is extremely important and is the first thing music radio listeners tune in for, it's not the only thing.

Content will win the battle for listeners

Here is my point on whether consumers will fork over money for new radios or not. It's content that is going to drive receiver sales, not better audio quality of the same stuff we've been giving them. And as has always been the case, it will be content that ultimately wins the battle for listeners. I've read and listened to all the radio group heads, most of them fairly smart people, and even some of the folks who work for Jones Radio, all really smart people, talk about how HD radio will be the thing that saves radio from satellite, iPods, Internet radio and all the other things eroding radio listening. I've not read or heard one person talk about how we are going to train new radio talent to be compelling on-air talent, how we are going to better serve our community with localism, teach our PDs to be more than a music director on steroids, build a stronger news staff, offer better weather coverage, get involved with community events, or how to simply be better at being entertaining and informative. It appears we are all going down the same road we've already been down. We're relying on content we neither own nor have total control over -- the music -- to get us where we need to go.

Most of the big companies and broadcasters are very excited and passionate about the dawn of HD Radio. Fine. Let's be just as excited and passionate about the signals we already have … and can actually be heard now by all listeners. Let's work now to start providing better content between the songs. Let's let our PDs actually program and be creative now. Let's get our talent focused and let them be creative now. Let's start getting back to being community oriented and being creative now. Because if we don't, and we bring the same type of programming to our HD channels that we have now, it's going to be AM Stereo and Quad-FM all over again.

Look at TV

Television has had HD for a while. Let's learn from them. Quality programming is what wins, not whether it's in HD or not. Bad programming is still bad programming. Except that it's bad programming in high definition. Remember last month's ABC-TV show Emily's Reasons Why Not? Don't feel badly if you don't. It was a bad show, but it was in HD!! Still a bad show -- lasted one episode in spite of major marketing and a high profile star.

Let's make sure our new HD channels have truly better creative programming that relies on more than just the music. Otherwise you just might end up like the above mentioned TV show -- which is not a good thing. Just ask Heather Graham.