My suggestion on how to “resurrect” HD Radio from the doldrums is for iBiquity to allow all its HD customers to use their HD2 and HD3 for free.
That’s right, no royalties on HD2 or HD3. They would give incentive to the stations to go out of their way to use the extra streams for new and untested waters.
They could serve the public interest by putting a low-bitrate simulcast of their local NOAA Weather radio station on the HD3 and let the local college kids play with formats on the HD2. This would give some college “youngsters” a reason to listen to radio when they can’t get the Internet stream of the innovative HD2 audio.
Worst case, at least put the audio of their AM sister station on an HD2 or HD3 feed — another bonus for the listener.
It’s time to break free on the royalties from iBiquity and let the stations run with it now that they’ve spent all the money on the hardware. They need to offer the HD2 and HD3 channels to get more people talking about what is better, as most stations aren’t using their HD on FM to its full potential.
John Pavlica
Toledo, Ohio
