Interesting HD Radio article

[goobenet]

http://www.rwonline.com/reference-room/iboc/2006.05.10-01_rw_hd_receiver_buy_3.shtml

The sad, but gory honest truth about HD Radio. :confused:

[barbie845]

Very good article... About a month or so ago I went shopping(mostly online) for an aftermarket HD car radio.. I had the same experiance,there's very little out there.. It's kind of funny,lots of articles about HD radio,plenty of advertising by the media companies,but no equipment.. Weird!!

[RCbridge]

My experience in the search for HD radio hardware is exactly as explained in that article, the only place to have anything was my local Tweeter, they had the Boston Acoustics, but like in the article getting a good signal inside the building was difficult, the Yamaha home receiver was on display but no antenna for reception.

No other stores in my area had anything and most of the sales people didn't know much about it other than that it exist!!

[hphase]

A year or so ago I went to a demo of HD Radio. They were broadcasting their digitalm signal, and I asked how many radios had been sold to listen to it. Their frank answer was zip. 'Gots. Nada. And the only radio I saw was a car radio sitting on the bench with a 12 volt power supply wired into it. No home radios at all, as of then.

Today, you can get a $400 adapter, or a really expensive home theatre receiver with HD radio in it. I like the programming potential, but not at those rates.

[scowl]

You can still go into electronics stores and have salesman tell you that HDTV is only available via cable or satellite even when they have ATSC STBs sitting on their shelves and HDTVs that have ATSC receivers built-in! HDTV been OTA for years around here and many of these sales dopes still haven't heard about it. If they don't know how the $2,000-$4,000 appliances they're selling work, good luck finding one that knows how little HD radios work.

[goobenet]

scowl: Case and point. :)

Educated sales goons are a rare commodity, unfortunately they also know what they're worth and it's an A$$load more than Best Buy/Tweeter/etc can pay them.

[kenglish]

Retail Sales 101 says:
"If you can't sell some sort of a lifelong subscription to it and get a commission on it, why bother to sell it?"

So, why would they hawk something that gets FREE programming? :eek:

[scowl]

And why bother educating your sales force on some fringe radio product that's only $300 a unit and falling and customers aren't demanding to know about it? It's marketing's job to create the interest and get people in the stores. Salesmen are supposed to "direct" them to certain products when they get there.

[LightBulb]

[QUOTE=scowl]And why bother educating your sales force on some fringe radio product that's only $300 a unit and falling and customers aren't demanding to know about it? It's marketing's job to create the interest and get people in the stores. Salesmen are supposed to "direct" them to certain products when they get there.[/QUOTE]

"Marketing" is everyone's job in an organization.

[scowl]

Salesmen would be surprised to hear they're responsible for advertising products in local media since that's usually done by the marketing department. Some organizations call this department "promotions" or "advertising".

This is like saying "sales" is everyone's job in an organization. It's everyone's goal but hardly their job.

[goobenet]

As an engineer i've had to go on many sales calls because the curious clients would want to know "how it happened" or "how it works", in technical jargon. Most sales people always just try to keep pushing the sale, without saying "Hi there steve, how's the wife and kids..." etc... Engineers tend to put a nice face on sales. I think i've made about $10k in sales commisions just because i said "hello" to the client when i went to their business and purchased items for the radio stations.

So yes, and no, sales is not everyone's job, but everyone does do it, even if they don't know they're doing it. :) (Similar to the philosophy that everyone's a consumer)

BTW, some of my best clients i dealt with i offered tours of the transmitter plant and studios and bought them lunch on the company tab... I got yelled at alot by the GM for the $30-50 lunch recipts, but then he realized that i spent $50 on lunch to make the company $3000/month for the next 12 months... He still bitched, but hey, he's an accountant. :) In the end though, when the radio station laid me off, those companies i dealt with stood in line to offer me jobs. It's not what you know, it's who you know.

[teamgoon]

Oddly enough, my search was NOT as fruitless as the ones mentioned above.
I walked in a Fry's car audio department, looked at the display and there was a JVC KD-HDR1. It was on, and tuned to an HD-2 station! $299. Ready to use, No tuner boxes needed. It's also a VERY feature loaded radio, even with surround.
Fortunately I did a little research. I found them on eBay for nearly $100 LESS.

The Kenwood folks must be consuming some yellow chalky street narcotics.
The want $399 for the ADD ON box PLUS the cost of a new 'HD Ready' headunit.
And the Alpine unit is nearly as expensive, with more bugs than Windows ME.
HD-2 doesn't even WORK on Alpine's headunits. It's a software bug in the headunit, not the tuner box. Anyone with an Alpine will have to buy a 2007 headunit to get HD-2 channels to work!

Quite honestly, what has piqued my interest in HD Radio is the fact that XM's programming has declined to top 40 mush. Back when satellite radio was a niche product, the programming was fresh and unique. Now, they have dropped the channels like Special X, Music Lab, On the rocks in favor of top 40 ilk and dozens of channels of sports crap that has already made AM unlistenable on the weekends for decades. At least XM responded to subscriber outrage and brought back XMLM.
The ONLY thing that is keeping me subscribing AT ALL is Fungus 53.
It it ever goes away, or becomes the JOKE that Sirius' punk station The Faction 28 is. I'll IMMEDIATELY unsubscribe all 4 of my tuners.
Sorry about the Sat Rad side rant, but the generification of satellite radio is what got me interested in HD Radio. Why PAY to listen to the same stuff in Sat Rad's AM stereo sound quality?

[scowl]

[QUOTE=teamgoon]Quite honestly, what has piqued my interest in HD Radio is the fact that XM's programming has declined to top 40 mush. Back when satellite radio was a niche product, the programming was fresh and unique. Now, they have dropped the channels like Special X, Music Lab, On the rocks in favor of top 40 ilk and dozens of channels of sports crap that has already made AM unlistenable on the weekends for decades. At least XM responded to subscriber outrage and brought back XMLM.[/QUOTE]
So far the HD2 stations in my area haven't impressed me too much. Instead of taking risks with their new stations, they've instead created safe conservative spinoffs of other formats in town and are careful to not surprise the audience with anything:

We now have two more alternative rock stations with very limited playlists. I assume they'll be adding more songs someday so they won't all sound alike. Until then you're better off listening to the DJed alternative station.

We have a station that plays lots of 70's disco hits which is cute. They have a large playlist and don't mind adding some 80's songs that might as well been released in the 70's.

Our classic rock station broadcasts live versions of the songs they play on their main channel. This is a neat idea for augmenting their main format but they still need to add a lot more songs.

Another station added a "blues" channel. Of course blues these days means recently recorded medium-tempo guitar and harmonica rock tunes with lots of solos. There is no pre-60's blues at all.

Another recent addition is an "urban adult contempory" station. Neither I nor the station seem to know what that means at this point. They'll play a rap song followed by a 70's Eagles ballad.

Also added was "Dance". Yes, that's the best name they could come up with. It's all fun technoish thumpa thumpa pop songs with some rap. This could compete very well with the one hip-hop station in town if it had more than thirty songs.

The only HD2 station that's really interesting to me is the jazz station. It tries to play a wide variety of stuff but it plays way too much smooth mellow modern jazzzzz by artists I've never heard of while only playing a token song or two by the greatest musicians in the history of the genre. I've heard exactly two Count Basie songs, maybe three Duke Ellington songs, two Louie Armstrong songs (both weepy ballads) and absolutely no Benny Goodman at all. They'll never play any wild (i.e. fun) jazz and will play a dozen sleepy muzak tunes for every slightly upbeat tune. At least they are mostly avoiding fusion and other crossover genres.

There are no punk stations! No ska stations! This music would be too risky!

[mattdp]

No punk stations? No, the music is not to risky to keep a station on air. In the Twin Cities, there's a heavy (screamo) meatal station, 93X which has been around since the 80's (I think). They have a good listener base, and I've seen quite a few "93X Rocks" bumper stickers here in Rochester, 75 miles from the station.

89.3 The Current will play just about anything from folk to ska to techno to alternative to inde. ...and they have a giant listener base. Since they are an MPR station, they rely on listener support - which they have an abundance of (even though their target audience is young people with no money).

[scowl]

There are more radio listeners in the Twin Cities than my entire state. That makes a difference!

We have a community station too but you'll get an hour or two of one style of music followed by an hour of news in Spanish followed by an hour of local public affairs programming, followed by an hour of bluegrass, and so on. We have a very low power mono college station that will play punk, rap, and anything they want but 90% of the time it's a dead carrier since the student DJ's have other things to do.

[mattdp]

oh. Uh..... that's a good point.


I guess what I'm trying to say is that such stations can exist with a listener base.

[scowl]

[QUOTE=mattdp]I guess what I'm trying to say is that such stations can exist with a listener base.[/QUOTE]
I can't argue with that. :D

[goobenet]

[QUOTE=mattdp]No punk stations? No, the music is not to risky to keep a station on air. In the Twin Cities, there's a heavy (screamo) meatal station, 93X which has been around since the 80's (I think). They have a good listener base, and I've seen quite a few "93X Rocks" bumper stickers here in Rochester, 75 miles from the station.
[/QUOTE]

93X has been on the air in many forms since about 92... In i think 94 it was flipped to the edge, then in 96/97 it flipped back to 93X, now owned by Disney.

[QUOTE=mattdp]
89.3 The Current will play just about anything from folk to ska to techno to alternative to inde. ...and they have a giant listener base. Since they are an MPR station, they rely on listener support - which they have an abundance of (even though their target audience is young people with no money).[/QUOTE]

The current is the bastard child of MPR. They make all their money from KSJN/KNOW. Classical and news/info stations. The classical which also hosts "A prarie home companion" has like a 2 MILLION DOLLAR pledge drive goal... just for one show! MPR has money, and money they can blow... The current is the former WCAL St. Olaf College station that the school just didn't want to fund anymore (even though they were pulling down $40k/yr in pledge drives), so they sold it to the Klingdom (the founder of MPRs name is Bill Kling). The school really biffed it though, lots of eandowments and alumni contributions dissapeared when they did this, and it actually ended up costing St. Olaf almost double what they sold the station for...

For those who are wondering the size of MPR, they have over 50 stations in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, Montana, Michigan, Iowa, and California(!!). MPR's founder is a major shareholder in PRI, and the owner of PRI also has a large stake in NPR... Get the idea? MPR is the second largest public radio network in the US, short of National Public Radio (NPR).

And if you want your dose of punk from day to day, listen to 770 Radio K. Support something other than the Evil "MPR". :) Radio K got screwed by the MPR too... They had an FM signal assigned to them, but MPR wanted it and sniped it away from the UofM board of trustees who oversee the radio station. (one greedy dick ruins everyones fun)

Also try KFAI 90.3/106.7FM, "Fresh Air" ... good stuff. And in the northern metro try for KVSC out of St. Cloud. The original Current format station, cept the station is run entirely by volunteers. And requests are always honored (They have a 90,000 CD library, and about 40,000 LP's, YES LP'S!)

I think i've forgotten more about Minnesota radio than most people learn. :/

[mattdp]

Lol.... thanks, Goobnet..

I've tried a couple of times before, and there are three college/inde stations that I can get in Rochester - 88.7/89.3, 89.5 - KQAL from Winonna (real...uh...college..hold on a sec... radio), and 770 (I'm not a fan of music on AM, unless it's in IBOC)

I Like the music the Current plays, but I would give MPR/NPR a penny. I'm a stunch conservative with zero apreciation for their talk radio and I could care less about the classical music stations. [Note: I'm not a Limbaugh/Savage yay-sayer - I like The Radio Factor with Bill O' Rilley, Garage Logic, the Sean Hannity program and Matt Drudge.]

[goobenet]

mattdp -

Garage logician are you?

The 3 rules of pricing...

The price you did pay
The price your wife thinks you paid
and
The price you'll pay when the wife finds out what you really paid.

I love the mayor... HAIL THE FLASHLIGHT KING.

[mattbyrnes]

I think the reason I want HD Radio so bad is the lack of stations I like. I currently live in Orlando and there are 3 stations I like. They have a 40 song playlist it seems and even at 29 I know that their was a ton of bands from the 60's, 70's, 80's that they seem to have forgotten. When you here The Who and think man I haven't heard this song on the radio in years there is something wrong.

I am moving back to Phildelphia and in the past 3 years they have killed off another station I liked. I miss the Alternative station that popped up in the early nineties that played the obvious Nirvana, Pearl Jam stuff but they would play new bands before the CD was available. I heard Weezer, Rage against the Machine, Live a week before they were available (LP released earlier), all the way through with no commercials. The best part was that they played the old Alternative music (Clash, Talking Heads, etc) that made their song lists remarkably long.

Maybe stations will get more risky. If they play rock they might do a 60s/70s channel and a, 80s/90s/new channel. If they use the third they might get risky and play to a smaller but lacking market. I guess I can dream right.

[supraman215]

[QUOTE=kenglish]Retail Sales 101 says:
"If you can't sell some sort of a lifelong subscription to it and get a commission on it, why bother to sell it?"

So, why would they hawk something that gets FREE programming? :eek:[/QUOTE]

This is EXACTLY why HD radios of any style are hard to come by.

Today we live in a subscription based world. You used to have Phone and Cable bills Now there's a subscription for everything, HD programming is a seperate subscription, movies (netflix), high speed internet, radio, etc.

So if you're XM or sirus and you want to sell a lot of subscriptions you're going to give bonuses to companies like BB and CC to sell more subscriptions and those bonuses probably trickle down to Joe salesman. Money is a good motivator. Thinking as the sales person and the company they work for I'm not going to try to sell you a radio that doesn't require a subscription to save you money, what's my motivation to do that?

However you look at the local high end shop that doesn't sell 10,000 XM subscriptions a month to get a bonus they would be more likely to atleast educate and inform you about HD radio, as well as sell you one.

Just my $.02