The CGC Communicator Newsletter Web Posting

April 4, 2006

I respectfully disagree with your assessment that "HD Radio is the biggest series of missteps we have seen in a long time." Did we do better with FM Stereo? (I remember "FM multiplex" being available for many years before there were any mass-produced FM stereo radios on the market.) Did we do better with AM Stereo? (Remember the famous "marketplace decision"? Remember the Kahn/Motorola battle in the courts?) Did we do better with FMX? (What's that?) How about HDTV, which is just now gaining traction after many years of availability but with affordable receivers and monitors out of reach?

From my perspective, we've come a long way in a very short time. Crawford put one of the first HD Radio signals on the air in Chicago in 2003. The Chicago radio dial is now well populated with HD radio signals. Detroit is fully saturated. Here in Denver, I count nine AM and eleven FM HD signals, and four of the FMs have offer multicasts. There are now 756 HD Radio stations on the air, mostly in major markets. Receivers are now available from ten major manufacturers and the list is growing. Receiver prices are coming down and availability is increasing. We expect to have more OEM radios available in the next year or two.

And don't believe everything you read about the Boston Acoustics Recepter Radio HD. I have one here in my office and it is an excellent product. BA has evidently addressed the earlier noise/sensitivity problems. I don't make too much of the fact that BA is now supplying a dipole antenna for the FM section. My Bose Wave radio came with one, too, and I have never seen one negative word written about the Bose Wave because an external antenna is needed for good FM reception. The Recepter comes with both internal and external loop antennas for AM. How many times have broadcasters lamented the fact that tabletop/portable radios did not have provision for external AM antennas? Good for BA for listening to us!

I think the next twelve to sixteen months are make-or-break for HD Radio. If we want it to succeed, if we pay attention to the technical details on our end and promote-promote-promote, we'll be a long ways down the road to success at the end of that period. If we naysay and have a lukewarm or negative attitude toward HD Radio, it's guaranteed to fail. And in five or ten years when our listening audiences (particularly AM's) have eroded because of satellite radio, Internet streams, portable MP3 devices and other "new media" competition, we'll have only ourselves to blame.


Cris Alexander, CSRE
Crawford Broadcasting Company
Denver, Colorado

Posted by Steve Blodgett
Earthsignals.com