D. Peter Maus wrote:

Reality paints a much different picture than the public perceives.

Your reality isn't reality at all.

First, there is only a 100 share in any market. New listeners are not
printed up like $100 bills in Washington. They have to be taken from
some pre-existing program source.

Nope. According to the NAB chairman, Apple will be adding an HD FM tuner
to an upcoming iPod Nano. Microsoft has already added it to the Zune
(though that may only bring in one or two new listeners!). The
additional market is not coming just from listeners that would otherwise
be listening to analog FM on their car radios. It's coming from
listeners that would otherwise be listening to their iPod, CDs, or
digital media (in the car or not in the car) because there's nothing on
analog AM or FM that they want to listen to. HD radio is much more
likely to be stealing customers from satellite radio than from analog FM.

Any new programming outlet steals it's
listeners from the existing 100 share. So, literally, stations are
hoping to steal their own listeners to put them on the HD streams.

Not true at all.

What's that, you say? They stay in the family? Really? Well, while a
listener shift from the baseband channel to the HD2 stream DOES keep
that listener within the company, it takes that listener from the
programs of high advertising rates, and puts them on the programs of LOW
advertising rates.

Versus putting them on the programs of another station.

So, what HD is really doing is robbing the analog channels of it's
revenues while putting the ratings points on HD streams that can't begin
to replace the lost revenue from the baseband.

You're not looking at the big picture.

How the hell the bean counters at these stations let that go is beyond
me.

It's because they have more information than you have.