Mandated U.S. Digital Radio Switch Seen Unlikely Anytime Soon

The U.S. is unlikely to have a government-required radio transition to digital from the analog broadcasts that still predominate -- or at least at no time in the foreseeable future, some FCC and industry-engineer panelists said Thursday. One reason there hasn’t been a rapid switch by stations to HD Radio and away from analog transmissions is that, unlike with last year’s digital transition for full-power TV stations, there’s never been a “date-certain” for radio to go digital-only, said Senior Vice President Glynn Walden of CBS Radio, with about 130 stations. “These things don’t happen overnight” as occurred for TV, he said at the NAB Radio Show in Washington.

A voluntary transition of sorts will happen whenever stations find running in both analog and HD isn’t profitable, Walden said. “The transition to digital would be at whatever point” that occurs, he said. “That’s why we never called for a date-certain to say we're all going to go digital,” Walden continued. “But that’s not to say we can continue on forever as the only analog media in the digital world."

"With a penetration rate at only 2 or 3 percent” for HD Radio, “we don’t have to worry about this at the commission and I personally never will worry about this transition” in his career, said FCC veteran Peter Doyle. “It did take FM 40 years to overtake AM in popularity,” said the chief of the Media Bureau’s Audio Division. “From a regulatory perspective, this can be a very elegant shift to all-digital operations,” he added: “All we have to do from our side is merely announce we are no longer protecting analog transmissions” from interference “and leave it to broadcasters to decide” whether and when they want to transition. That’s not something the commission is considering and Doyle wasn’t speaking for the FCC, he said. With HD Radio’s low penetration rate among Americans, “it’s obviously a completely different set of policy issues than the digital transition presented” for TV, Doyle said.

"On the receiver side, I've been disappointed” with HD Radio, said Walden. Things are looking up this year with more automakers including digital radios in more cars, he said: Further movement in that direction is “key” for any transition to occur, which would only take place “when we turn the analog off.” Lawyer Gregg Skall of Womble Carlyle, with radio-station clients, wondered about prospects for putting HD Radio chips in USB devices. “I can’t understand why we can’t get an HD Radio there,” he said: “We could be giving them away and immediately expanding the universe” of digital radios.

Manufacturers “have really gotten to work” on the equipment side so radio stations can use a single transmitter to broadcast in both analog and digital, said Vice President Milford Smith of Greater Media, with about 25 stations. There’s not now a USB device along the lines of what Skall suggested, but NAB’s Fastroad technology project is “substantially” funded and working on “an in-computer antenna for radio reception, particularly for FM and television reception,” Smith said. “It now appears there is a good design out there for an antenna that is embedded in a computer.”