Last week I was a guest speaker at the 2009 National Assoc of Broadcasters radio conference. The conference took place in Philadelphia at the Convention Center and had a variety of radio types in attendance. From executives to sales to programmers and star talent! Some of the recurring themes over the course of the few days at the conference were MOSTLY about new technologies. I heard the words Twitter, Facebook & Digital Strategy more than I heard the word radio. The radio industry really, really, really (ok 1 more time—REALLY) needs to embrace new technologies to help reach more listeners, especially those listeners that are using new devices and platforms to tune in! One advancement on display at the show that was like the light at the end of the tunnel was HD Radio! Many stations have been embracing this technology and at the conference there was a buzz about the new Microsoft Zune HD! This is MAJOR news, because for the 1st time a .mp3 player has an HD receiver built-in. This is HUGE, I tell ya! The radio industry needs this! This basically means you can go mobile with HD Radio; walk, jog, bike or drive around and catch your fav HD radio programming on a portable device. I mean lets face it Apple just finally put in an FM radio tuner. Meanwhile Microsoft went much further and embraced HD Radio (Apple, what are you waiting for?)!

HD Radio is big for stations (over 2000 stations offer HD Radio) because it enables 1 station to deliver multiple channels of content. For example let’s say your fav channel is 98.6 (with an HD Radio you could see 98.6 HD1, HD2 or HD3, this means that the 98.6 station is actually broadcasting content on those 3 HD signals. For example, 98.6 HD1 could be the content you’ve always got in the past BUT HD2 could be something totally different, like nonstop traffic and weather updates meanwhile HD3 could be a talk radio channel – all being broadcast by the same station. This expansion of programming choices could mean more listeners can find content better tailored to them. 

But many of you still may not have yet experienced HD Radio. Once you experience it you really begin to understand the benefits. If you haven’t had a chance to discover HD Radio log on to: http://www.hdradio.com/ On the site you can learn more about how it works and even hear the difference. Which will blow you away! Imagine AM radio sounding like FM and FM sounding like CD-quality! Yep, that’s what HD Radio sounds like – pretty incredible! Now get to a local store and test it out!