"richllewis" wrote in message
oups.com...

One reason is there are several areas outside the big cities that HD
Radio is very sparse. Here in Central Mississippi where I am the only
HD station is a college station in Jackson, Ms. and no commercial
broadcasters have gotten on the bandwagon just yet. You have to live
in earshot of New Orleans, Mobile, or Memphis to enjoy HD radio. If
what you are telling me is right, the rural areas will suffer with HD
Radio. Now in Mississippi we have a lot of rural area where we here
conventional FM stations that carry a long way. I suspect there are a
lot of areas in the country that have a lot of rural areas that are
like this. By concentrating your marketing in the big cities, you
don't give the rest of the country a chance to make their own decision
on this topic. As far as rural America is concerned this may be the
future, but the mass market has not bloomed yet.


Any station in any market can license and install HD. However, since the
economics of small markets limit capital expenditures, I believe most such
markets are waiting for prices to come down and for more receivers to be
sold.

The average annual gross income of a US radio station is around a quarter
million dollars. Yet in LA, 25 or more stations bill over $20 million each.
The top 10 markets have 30% of all the revenue.

Half of all US radio stations are not profitable, so expect the smaller ones
to be very slow in adopting HD. Yet in the top 100 markets, we average 15
stations per market already in HD... and two thirds of the US population is
in those 100 markets.

In other words, it's about the priorities of commercial radio. It took 5
years to get the first 100 FM stereo stations going after stereo was
authorized, so look for a long wait in small markets.