HD Radio

The other day at work, one of my colleagues asked me if I had ever heard of high-definition radio. And I had a prepared response: I had already investigated the subject and discovered that the “HD” in HD radio apparently didn’t stand for for high definition, or for that matter, anything else. “HD’ is part of the brand name chosen by the company that our government rewarded the exclusive contract to for developing and implementing this technology.

In HD radio, an equipped station can broadcast more than one signal at a time. An HD-equipped radio can then separate these signals into different stations. So you can see the great possibilities in this. In Gainesville, not a very big radio market, we have only two stations already broadcasting in HD so far. 89.1-WUFT, the Public Radio station here, has three “channels” on its HD signal: music, news/talk, and “other”, including old-time radio shows. The other station, 97.3-WSKY “The Sky”, broadcasts its HD on two channels. The first is its original right-wing talk show format. The second, which intrigues me, has an album rock format reminiscent of the old 103.5 WSHE and 94.9 Zeta-4 stations I used to listen to in south Florida.

There are more stations than this in Gainesville, though. I am waiting until more get into the HD picture and I have more programming choices. I’d also like to see at least one of these stations put out a channel that features independent/alternative music of the type that 100.5-WHHZ used to play until this year. That type of channel would fit like a glove in this big college town.

Broadcast radio needs to do something radical to give listeners more choices. The current situation does not serve the public’s interests. There are many genres of popular music, and we have the technology to provide them for people to enjoy. And with “opinion” radio, I’m all for conservatives having their voices heard. But more liberal viewpoints are difficult to find on the radio. Hopefully, HD radio will provide an outlet for this expression as well. Well, we’ll see how it all turns out. I’m optimistic but cautious.