High-definition radio gears up for reality

[Victor Healey]

High-definition radio gears up for reality
By Michael Kanellos, CNET News.com
Published on ZDNet News: May 26, 2005, 6:10 PM PT


The 1,000-mile journey toward high-definition radio will begin with a
few giveaways.

The radio conglomerates, chipmakers and other companies behind HD
radio--a digital form of broadcasting that essentially fits into the
same spectrum as current analog channel--say their campaign to promote
the technology is about to begin.

Boston Acoustics and other companies are expected to show off HD
radios next week at the Computex trade show in Taipei. While $400 HD
radios are now available in limited quantities, tabletop HD radios
selling for $150 to $250 will start to appear in stores later this
year.

HD radios are also heading for car dashboards. Alpine plans to come
out with a car model in August.

BMW will include HD radios in its fall 2006 car lineup, said Patrick
Walsh, chief financial officer of Ibiquity Digital, which licenses HD
radio intellectual property to manufacturers. MP3 players and cell
phones will also eventually come with HD radio embedded.

Consumers can expect to see that old radio promo--free stuff for
callers--to be part of the plan. Rewards are likely to come in the
form of free radios during pledge drives this fall at National Public
Radio affiliates, Walsh said.

The push on HD radio is a combination of opportunity and desperation,
Walsh and others concede. In HD radio, up to eight separate stations
can be squeezed into the same spectrum currently allotted for a single
station. As a result, broadcasters can offer multiple channels of
related programming; a classical station, for instance, could dedicate
channels to chamber music or opera. Ideally, this will lead to more
listeners and advertisers.

"Multicasting is the killer app," said Chuck Tweedle, senior regional
vice president of Bonneville's San Francisco stations. These new
stations can be broadcast for free, or delivered for a nominal
subscription, such as $1 a month, that would undercut satellite radio
services.

As an added bonus, broadcasters don't have to terminate analog
broadcasts while adding digital channels, so listeners aren't
compelled to upgrade.

Texas Instruments plans to get in on the act by selling chips to power
radios for the new standards, but they aren't acting out of the good
of their heart.

While the average house in the United States has seven radios,
traditional radio is under attack. The two major satellite services,
Sirius and XM Satellite, have seen their subscriber rolls grow. XM
added more than 500,000 subscribers in its recent quarter and expects
to have 5.5 million by the end of the year.

"XM and Sirius are the best thing that ever happened to our company,"
Walsh said.

Many, meanwhile, have turned to MP3 players and Internet downloads as
their source of music. Peer-to-peer radio services such as Mercora
also threaten to grab listeners.

Those declining numbers can also be partly attributed to sclerotic
programming too. "We took the consumer for granted more than we should
have," Tweedle said.

In a rare example of cooperation, the major radio broadcasters
announced support for HD radio at the Consumer Electronics Show
earlier this year. The plan is to invest $250 million to upgrade 2,500
stations across North America for HD. NPR is seeking grants to allow
it to upgrade 800 stations. So far, more than 300 stations have
upgraded.