The Future: All Digital, All the Time
Remember when you clicked the buttons on the radio in your old ’65 Mustang and the choices were limited to the AM radio stations you could pull in?
Oh, right. You weren’t around in ’65.
Well, FM radio was something futuristic in those days. Maybe the Jetsons had FM radio, but most of us had never heard of it.
Anyway, FM radio burst on the scene in the early 1970s and within a decade most AM stations had abandoned music in favor of news or talk format because music sounded so much better on FM and in stereo.
Here we are in late 2007 and the world has discovered another format that seems even more promising than FM radio. It is satellite radio, and it brings us uninterrupted radio programming in just about any format we want.
The only drawback is that we have to pay a monthly subscription.
Meanwhile, local radio is fighting back with what it calls “HD” or digital radio that packs more programming into less space on the dial, opening up new programming options.
The only drawback is that digital radios are more expensive than their analog counterparts and not as widely marketed, at least today.
In Oklahoma, there are 23 stations broadcasting 38 HD radio channels with six more coming soon, according to the HD Digital radio coalition Web site www.hdradio.com. Click on this link to see a list of all the Oklahoma stations that broadcast in HD.
And the iBiquity Digital Corp., the developer of digital HD Radio technology, recently said that the 1,500th HD Radio station has gone on the air: Clear Channel’s rock station WROV-FM 96.3 in Roanoke, Va.
Maybe HD radio has finally reached the tipping point.
Jim Stafford
Business news reporter
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