Not So Fast

Last week we learned that Norway would be pulling the plug on what we know as good old FM radio by January 2016 in favor of DAB - digital audio broadcasting, where one broadcast signal can carry multiple stations with higher quality.    Wait, isn't that the same technology that's been tried on a limited number of FM and even AM stations in the USA with less than stellar results?   How could a failed technology "left for free market forces to decide on" in this country be the wave of the future someplace else?   In the United States, the new so-called "HD radio" channels have not been used for their original purpose.   People have not snapped up radios equipped with the HD receivers.   While the main HD station program is available in FM quality sound on AM and offers two or three additional CD quality channels on HD FM, the net effect has been a proliferation of analog low-powered "translator" FM stations fed by an HD-2, HD-3, etc.    Some station operators have taken advantage of this loophole to expand ethnic, religious or other specialty programming previously unavailable from small market broadcasters.   In the process, the FM dial has become crammed with signals that overlap while AM HD disappears as that band faces the bigger problems of a dwindling and aging audience.   

Will digital audio broadcasting be the new force in radio?    The way our communications regulators decide things here, I doubt things will change very rapidly.   So many technologies have been touted as the "savior" of radio.   Remember FM quadrophonic, the addition of more FM signals in the 80s/90s, competing (and failing) AM stereo technologies and allowing more AM stations to stay on at night?    

Instead of approving hundreds of new low power FM applicants that fail to truly serve local communities, why didn't more longtime AM stations get preference on FM positions?  In Canada, most AM stations have gone off completely as many established AM broadcasters were allowed to get preference in a transition to FM.    When there was room, a struggling AM had a better shot for survival.    In the crowded Northeast, it's a shame we didn't have a wider FM frequency range allocated to the local operators who own (or owned) some of the most iconic and distinctive heritage radio stations now facing extinction in AM static and nighttime interference.   

As with digital TV, over the air reception of HD radio doesn't just gradually fade; it cuts out completely.   This is especially a problem because these digital signals don't have the radius of regular analog terrestrial stations.   This issue needs to be addressed.   Will we then have less free access to radio the way we need to subscribe to over-the-air local TV 25 miles from the transmitter?     Noway is a simpler place; the American transition to digital radio will not be as short and sweet.