HD Radio -- Does Anybody Care?
Perry Michael Simon, All Access News/Talk/Sports Editor, writes in an open letter that nobody cares about HD Radio:
"I've pretty much come to the
conclusion that nobody cares. At least, nobody in charge cares. Okay,
that's a gross generalization, but when I hear some of the stuff I've
been hearing lately, it makes me feel like nobody cares.
"That isn't new, of course. For the
last few years, I've heard and seen things going on in radio, some of
which I've chronicled here, that made me feel that nobody was paying
attention. This week, though, that feeling is just intensifying with
each new head-scratchingly puzzling thing I hear. (And this is going to
devolve into a rant about HD Radio, among other things, so if you're
sick of that, you can skip ahead to the Talk Topics plug).
"Some of it is just sloppiness. The
jock on a country station who stepped all over about 20 seconds of the
vocals of some Taylor Swift song, well, either the guy had no idea how
long he had, or something happened with the voice tracking... but since
the song had a short intro, even a voice track should have hit the
post. And, yes, I heard my share of dead air, weak and underdeveloped
talk topics, unprepared personalities, and stop sets filled with PSAs
and those painful "Radio Heard Here" things (I know, business is bad,
but... wow, that sounds dire) that made me wonder if the PD or GM or
Regional VP or anyone with a title was tuning in.
"But the worst of it came from my
experience playing with one of those Best Buy portable HD Radios. Yeah,
yeah, I know. But it's the cheapest and easiest way to get HD in my
car, and since I can't get L.A. FMs at my house, that's the only way I
can hear what they're doing on those HD subchannel things. And, despite
the limited appeal of an FM-only radio in an age when even your
keychain can play MP3s, store photos, and cook dinner, it's not a bad
little device. In fact, I kinda like it. So when the local Best Buy
finally started to sell them, I fought through the mobs of excited HD
Radio purchasers and....
"Okay, there were no mobs. In fact,
that's "Nobody Cares," Chapter 1: If you don't go searching for them,
you will never find an HD Radio in the store. These were hanging on a
forlorn pegboard all the way in the back of the store, next to the
cassette and CD portables, which, sadly, is appropriate company. There
were no signs. There were no other models. There was no attempt to
educate consumers about the technology. They were just hanging there in
the Ghosts of Technology Past department, without even a price sticker
on the peg. I don't think the staff even knew they were there. All that
stuff from the NAB and the Grand Exalted HD Radio Alliance about major
marketing to get people to adopt, embrace, LOVE HD Radio? That's
happening in another universe. I think they bought ads on the sides of
unicorns. The first portable is out there, in the wild, and there's no
marketing for it at all. Nobody cares.
"I hooked the thing up to my car
radio, and I tried it out. That leads me to "Nobody Cares," Chapter 2:
You can't hold an HD signal very long, and that leads to two critical
problems. One, you know how the primary HD channel is supposed to cut
back to analog when you lose the HD, and cut back to HD when it's
available? On several stations in L.A. and San Diego, the analog and
digital are not in sync. You're listening to a show and it... stutters.
The switch from analog (underwater, bassy) to digital (bright, trebly)
is hard enough on the ears; if the two streams are a couple of seconds
off, it's impossible. You would think that the people at these stations
would notice the problem, but there it was. Nobody cares.
"A bigger "Nobody Cares" problem, and
one especially acute for talk radio, involves those "multicast"
channels. Here's what the HD Radio marketing doesn't tell you: Those
channels cut out all the time. You can't listen for very long. And it
happens under all conditions. Try this: Clear day, driving along the
freeway with line-of-sight to the Los Angeles antenna farm. We had one
of the HD-2 channels on, and it would drop out not only while driving
under bridges, but every few minutes without any apparent reason. It
turns out that HD-2 and HD-3 channels disappear behind any obstruction
-- hills, buildings, trees, other cars, Andrew Bynum -- and become
unlistenable. They also disappear when there's no obstruction. And the
next time I get a press release trumpeting how an AM station is now
available on an FM HD-2 channel, I'll know the truth -- you're not
adding a thing. The "multicast" channels are unlistenable. Nobody cares.
"While we're at it, a couple more
multicast complaints -- I heard at least one talk station on an HD3
channel with volume levels that fluctuated so widely that it was
impossible to listen for very long (the very lowest, hardest to hear
levels were during the actual talk programming; the commercials were
louder). Nobody at the station seems to notice. And another HD-2 music
channel played the same song every time I checked in, a couple of hours
apart; I was unaware of the existence of the All-Ting TIngs channel,
and even a fan of "That's Not My Name" could tell you that you probably
should throw in another song or two. Just sayin'. Someone should be
spending some time making sure that the rotations work, but, after all,
nobody's making any money on those channels, because nobody's
listening, which is because nobody's being given a compelling reason to
buy into the medium, which doesn't always work anyway. This could be
fixed, but, well, nobody cares.
"Oh, and here's another "Nobody
Cares": Proponents always promote the ability of stations to show title
and artist information on the receiver's screen, a selling point
against satellite radio. But when there's a syndicated show on, I've
seen the screen display something like "NWN_2009_07_26_SEG1" for 20
minutes. I've seen one station stuck on "NEW_LEGAL_ID_OCT2008" with the
name of the voice guy. Isn't someone at the station supposed to be
checking that? I guess nobody is. Nobody cares.
"Look, maybe HD Radio isn't fixable,
maybe radio has its problems, maybe you're not being paid what you want
or you're in fear for your job, but that shouldn't mean the people who
run and work in radio shouldn't take some pride in what they're
producing. I think a lot of you do take pride, and there's still a lot
of excellent information and entertainment being produced and
distributed by radio people every moment of every day. But when I hear
stations out of sync, dropping signal, changing volume levels, playing
the same song over and over, screwing up the song display... clearly,
somebody in charge is not listening to their own station. Someone
should, because someone else cares: the listeners. Listeners care. I
listen, and I care. And if you don't give me what I want, you're
telling me to find another station, or another medium.
"Please... care."