From the Leslie Report:

My core position is negative on this movement. Seems to me, we have plenty of pay per play delivery means. I wrote about this being a possibility when researching the technology early on. At the time, I thought it might be a potential option, but really only seriously potent when combined with removable media capability of some kind.

Seems to me, it would be difficult to sell extended listening sessions, particularly when their quality aspects are not that compelling compared to those present for portable media players. If one pays for content, doing so on a portable media device seems to be the better investment overall. You've got conditional playback, repeated playback, portability, etc...

I'm actually fairly supportive of FM HD for the potential it carries on the secondary audio streams. We've not seen this really leveraged much yet, but it is early. Guess that explains the tech survey I got in the mail...

The need for revenue from the IBOC investment is understandable, but IMHO not yet a solid justification for this kind of move given the amount of time and effort currently applied to the content side of the problem.

It is, however, an interesting approach in that it does carry the potential for more appealing content to be delivered via radio. I'm not sure it would be "new" content so much as repurposed content.

Finally, this effort keeps the need for people largely out of the equation and that's discouraging. Industry trends appear to be totally consistant in this regard.

Thoughts?

I knew it, the agenda all along was "Pay Radio".
Now they are getting desperate.

I am not convinced the FM-HD2 is a good thing. If it actually catches on, wont it just dilute the market with more channels of content, forcing providers to reduce content quality on the regular channels, because the HD2 isnt going to bring in a large big flock of new listeners, but rather it would take listeners from the regular channels. I think there needs to be a certain mass of listeners for each channel, for there to be good quality, (and people making enough money to keep it going) over the long term. If each channel only has a few dozen or few hundred listeners, there isn't enough advertizer revenue to do anything except computer music jukebox programing.

Yup, I figgered it was doomed to come to this.
*shakes head in disgust*
So much for the ads so proudly proclaiming that "unlike Satellite radio, [IBAC] radio is 100% free." (Which itself is rather misleading as well because setting the XM and Sirus concepts aside for a moment, there's a LOT of free broadcasting to be heard via Sat.)

If there's a "death knell" for IBAC, it's got to be the pay-per-play idea. So much for free local radio being free.......

"I am not convinced the FM-HD2 is a good thing. If it actually catches on, wont it just dilute the market with more channels of content, forcing providers to reduce content quality on the regular channels, because the HD2 isnt going to bring in a large big flock of new listeners, but rather it would take listeners from the regular channels."

But just think, it would probably help drive sales of CD players and I-Pods up, so maybe there's one good thing that could potentially come out of this whole mess.

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Knowing the cartel and the current state of the FCC, tho, we can be almost certain that a number of stations will embrace the pay concept. Some might even become offered only on a pay basis. Think of the revenue to be had here, you know, pay absolutely no mind to the thousands, maybe even millions, of listeners who are beyond pissed off that they can't listen to rightfully free radio! It's the money we're after. Who cares what the public wants as long as OUR nice green pockets are getting lined?

And of course, there WILL be an intrepid, I would say 31337 h4x0r somewhere who will find a way to build and market a descrambler for this system! I can almost guarantee that.

Every known encryption system for DVDs, Videos and music has been broken, most scrambling forms for cable and sat have been broken. Heck, even SCA was supposedly "inaccessible" to the public and you know what? Demodulators can easily be built out of a PLL chip, some resistors and a coupla capacitors, for about $10!! (And they have been, too. I can confirm it personally as I have built and installed several said SCA demodulators before.) Who's to say an encryption system for digital radio won't be broken? I'd bet an almost criminal amount of money that it will be.

"Reclaim your right and ability to listen to FREE local radio! Do away with paying unfair fees to listen to your local radio stations with the Blasterbox 10000!"

Hey, why not? It's been done before with Cable TV, and even with Nagravision, or Motorola's self-proclaimed "uncompromised" Digicipher systems..............

If such a descrambler came into existance and enabled me to listen to otherwise "pay radio" for free, I'd purchase one in a heart's beat. Even if it means purchasing a black market device. It's in the name of free radio, f'rgodssake!! F---k the FCC, the Industry and the Cartel.

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How about calling it "Wireless Cable Radio Digital"? (WiCRD)

Forgot the darn link!

http://www.radioworld.com/pages/s.0121/t.2401.html

looks to me like this would be for specialty services rather than the entire program stream.

using the data capacity to deliver content that must be accessed through some sort of password which i assume one would have to pay for separately... at least until your HD radio is bidirectional.

i could see this for live performances, or as the article says, reading for the blind etc. value added stuff.

otherwise it would take someone like howard stern who already has pay per view TV to make pay per listen radio work... wait... he's already doing it...

as for the HD-2 channels diluting the radio pie, the dilution has already happened. a couple more places to get content don't really ammount to much dilution in todays media market.

I've a coupla data points from young people 14-25.

Kids have been asking about HD. When they find out it's a new and or special radio, they generally express dislike for that, largely surrounding the idea that these radios are not in enough places to make the effort worthwhile.

Having their own special radio helps, but they listen in a lot of places and clearly are worried about not being tuned in when they want to be.

The lack of multi-path is a clear point of interest though.

I'll do some casual asking about the pay per play bit. I've only one data point so far, from a 20 something: "Why bother?" essentially was the answer.

I've very little data, but my gut predictions are:

-success tied to extremely compelling content

(wonder if that isn't the motivation for the FCC thread 62 posted on the politics side?)

-will suffer from a lack of radios

-will be seen as a value add for those having HD radios, but will also require dead simple payment systems, or subscriptions.

-overall quality will not be a deciding factor, but will influence value add perception. Primary factor will remain content type.

-My timeline estimate will be 2-5 years from field test to deployment.

-somebody is gonna litigate this.

Guess we shall see.

Another "heads up" article on conditional access technology

http://www.radioworld.com/pages/s.0101/t.2493.html

I wrote a piece on this, on OpenGeek and the implications therein I took some heat for. I pulled it at the time, thinking it was excessive and perhaps out of line.

I strongly suspect many elements of it may well be realized in the next 3-5 years as the HD investment payback pressure continues to build.

Does anyone know when the agreement the large media companies made for HD and commercials finishes. They had planned to air the secondary channels without commercials for a period of time. As you can tell from the commercials about HD the plan was to combat Sat. Radio. As far as the business of radio, when I worked for Clear Channel they were talking about having some channels sponsored totally by a product, ex. "The Gatorade Channel....Rock for people on the run...."

It's supposed to be a couple of years. After that, I would think it depends on how long it takes for the technology to take off.

Thanks I thought it was about a couple of years also....