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Why Digital Radio Succeeded in England

Washington Post's Marc Fisher explains HD Radio's failure to catch on: In the UK, digital radio has had the largest success of any market in the world with about 6m receivers sold. Fisher notes that only a few hundred thousand HD Radio capable receivers are in consumers' hands in the U.S. The reason? Broadcasters in the UK provided "new and live content on digital stations." He notes that WAMU-FM in Washington, D.C., will shift all its bluegrass and acoustic Americana music to a digital-only offering, plus give up to 1,000 HD Radio receivers free to previous station donors. They'll leave NPR news and talk on their main station, and put BBC news and additional NPR programming on a digital-only station, too.

Fisher thinks this kind of move could finally jumpstart HD Radio. I think that the real reason for its failure to gain a foothold is a combination of stale programming outside public radio and a lack of affordable receivers, as well as no integration into non-tabletop models. The fact is, until HD Radio is built into integrated receiver/amplifiers, found in most car radios as an almost-basic option, and available in portable form or as a plug-in to MP3 players like the iPod, it's unlikely to find a mass audience.

My local NPR station has been using the HD format for about as long as any station, and still has a very small listenership. They haven't particularly promoted the format because, I believe, the lack of receivers that average listeners might want to purchase. I've tried most HD Radio tabletop models on the market, and while I have complaints about this or that in each unit, the primary problem is that they solve a problem most people don't have: most people don't need a new radio. They buy a radio for a new home or to replace one that dies.

So far, HD Radio hasn't given people a reason to replace their sets as an upgrade, as the folks with satellite radio did, by convincing listeners that satellite radio had so much more variety than commercial. In the end, satellite radio's variety is more about range than actual variety. There's not that much different on satellite, there's just more of it in one place.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman on September 17, 2007 9:41 AM | Permalink