Research: Radio Has Digital Dilemma

John Nathan Anderson, author of a research paper on HD Radio, U.S. radio broadcasters are encountering significant problems with their digital transition, according to Tom Taylor's NOW Newsletter.

Television moved from analog to digital transmission in the '00s, after spending more than two decades developing a suitable technology and working with lawmakers and regulators to find spectrum on which to deploy their new HDTV signals.

Anderson says radio's digital transition was not so well-planned: the industry basically hacked together a system that does more harm than good for the medium, as they were more worried about blocking new competition from the digital radio world than they were about meaningfully expanding the communicative potential of radio itself.

The system the U.S. has adopted, called HD Radio, is also the product of the nation's largest broadcast conglomerates, and embodies their corporate values—which puts them in opposition to the majority of station-owners, who are not part of the conglomerates.

Now U.S. broadcasters are saddled with a hackneyed, underwhelming technology, and the digital transition has effectively stalled as a result. Meanwhile, new forms of "radio," such as streaming services and satellite broadcasts, are siphoning listeners away from traditional broadcasters, who just now seem to be waking up to the fact that they no longer have a monopoly on radio.