Digital Radio - Free vs. Paid?

I've blogged so much about HD Radio that most readers have probably tuned me out by now.

Most longtime readers know that I am an investor in and a board member of iBiquity, the developer of the HD Radio standard that the broadcast radio industry is using to convert their industry from analog to digital.

I pay a lot of attention to the comments I get on my blog posts. It's my way of getting an education from all of you.  And I've heard plenty say that broadcast radio is dead and satellite is the future.

But I've always felt that paid radio can't beat free radio and last week we got some data substantiating that.

JD Powers, a leading market research firm in the automotive sector, published their 2005 study on U.S. Automotive Emerging Technologies last week.

They found some interesting things in surveying consumer's views on HD Radio and satellite radio.

Here is the headline:

Premium surround sound systems and high-definition (HD) radio are highly attractive features consumers would like to see in their new vehicles based on their estimated market prices, and consumers prefer to pay a one-time fee over a monthly subscription for satellite radio.

Apparently consumers don't like monthly fees for radio.  Here is another quote:

"Even though satellite radio is at an advantage over HD radio by offering commercial-free content and coast-to-coast coverage, interest in HD radio is higher than satellite radio after the introduction of price," said Wu. "In general, consumers would rather pay once for a feature and have been reluctant to embrace subscription fees. This is evident in the trade-off exercise in this year’s study in which almost twice as many consumers chose lifetime (life of vehicle) satellite radio with a one-time $499 subscription fee compared to a one-year option."

Maybe this survey will prompt Detroit to wake up and start offering HD radio as a standard option on new models, like they do with satellite radio.

At least I sure hope so.

Comments

[jackson]

I thought Podcasting was the future of radio.

[Hank Williams]

I think all this digital radio stuff is great, and there will clearly be a market for both. There are two problems that hd radio has.

1. There is no single heavily financed company that is really pushing it. XM's stock has increased by a factor of 10 in the last 3 years, and they have lots of capital.

2. What is an advantage to the consumer (no monthly fee) is not an advantage to detroit, where XM and Sirius are able to cut the manufactuers in on the upside. There are no available revenue streams to cut detroit in on.

I know you know all of this already but I just thought I would clarify that this is not a product issue, but an economic issue for the players. Somehow robert may need to figure out how to turn ibiquity's stock into a tool in order to really blow this thing up. Of course the problem there, I would imagine, is the broacast partners that I believe still own a substantial percentage of the equity.

[Tony Alva]

I for one never get tired of talking about this, so don't shy away from sharing your thoughts on broadcast radio's future.

I think the JD Powers report is only stating what most already understood to be the case. Tivo has run down this same pricing challenge.

I've been skeptical of sat radio success at the same time cheering them on, but have seen signs that maybe they can make it work. I think offering a download service might make the monthly fee more tolerable (they may already offer this, I’m not a subscriber as of yet). The other aspect of sat radio that seems to be appealing is the HBO effect whereby programming can be a lot more cutting edge, experimental, pioneering, radical, etc... without FCC interference. Although H. Stern will be a big benefactor of this aspect of sat radio, there are many benefits on the musical side as well (editing songs for swear words, subject matter, and run time). I’m sort of waiting to see what XM and Sirius’s next service enhancement move is.

HD will offer consumers the premium sound attraction to be sure, but the challenge will still be for radio to discard their old payola, poled market research programming model in order for listeners to avoid getting the same ole crap only with superior sound quality. I hope they’re up for the challenge. Even if it doesn’t cost me anything, listening to 30 commercials for every tired and worn out song just doesn’t move me, even if it’s in 5:1 high def.

I’m also interested in what RF benefits (SQE) current license holders will get from the conversion to digital. If it’s anything like what we wireless telephony carriers got, I’d bet it’s high on the list of motive for station owners to convert, second only to the channel subdivision aspect.

Skeptics might go so far as to say that the better audio quality is only a pleasant byproduct of better coverage and multiplexed channel space:-)

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