Exploding Radio (continued)

Mark Ramsey wrote an excellent post about the challenges of rolling out HD Radio.

I don’t take offense to any of what Mark wrote and if its a call to action, then its a good one.

But with all the hand wringing about the "death of radio" and the issues with converting an entire industry to digital, I think people are missing a fundamental point.

Radio needs to convert its spectrum to digital so it can offer digital services over the air.

There are many other ways for radio to go digital, including podcasting, streaming, and possibly wifi and wimax.

Radio needs to do those things too.

But the radio industry owns spectrum, and many of its leading brands are tied into that spectrum.  And it can broadcast over that spectrum very cost effectively.

So it needs to get that part of its business digital.

And the industry will get it done because the executives at the largest station groups are strongly committed to making it happen. 

It won’t be easy for all the reasons Mark points out and more, but its going to happen, and once it does, Radio will be better off because of it.