You’ve probably heard them. The commercials touting something called “HD Radio.” You may just be getting used to the little “HD” logo in the corner of your local television station, or perhaps you recently bought an HD TV and ordered the HD package from your cable provider. Sitting in your living room, watching “Planet Earth” in HD is truly amazing. But what’s that got to do with radio?

Media, whether it’s audio, visual or data, can come to us in basically two different ways. Analog and digital. The audio you hear when you play a vinyl record is analog. It’s the product of the transmission of the sound recorded as grooves pressed into the disc. Much like what you hear when you strum a guitar string, what you’re hearing is the disruption of the air between you and the source of the sound.

Digital data, however, is a recreation of the original, made up of bits of data that are either “on” or “off.” Think of one of those pictures that when seen from a distance are easily identified, but on closer inspection are just made up of individual black dots. The music on a CD is a series of bits (again, either “on” or “off”) that when combined into larger groups of bits (bytes) are then organized by a software algorithm (formula) to describe different sounds. When the recreation of the music comes out of your speakers or headphones though, they are turned into analog so our ears can supply something (disruptions in the air between the speaker and you) the brain can understand.

The important thing here, is that when data is transferred digitally, there can be no damage or “distortion” introduced. When you’re listening to a traditional AM or FM radio station, anything from weather to buildings to sunspots can degrade the quality of what you’re hearing. With digital radio, you either hear a perfect reproduction of the station’s programming, or you hear nothing. The HD Radio perfectly plays the string of bits the station’s digital transmitter sends, or in the absence of enough data, plays nothing at all. Digitally, anyway. Most radios revert to the analog signal if a station’s digital stream is missing too much data.

Because each dial position or “channel” on traditional AM and FM radio has more bandwidth available than the stations use, there’s room for a number of HD “side channels.” Right now, HD stations for the most part are using part of that bandwidth for the digital presentation of their primary analog programming, and a separately programmed “HD-2″ channel. Sometimes the HD-2 channel is complimentary to their analog programming, and sometimes is dramatically different.

In the UK, this form of broadcasting has been around for a number of years, but they call it what it truly is: “Digital Radio,” which is much easier to grasp. But, we Americans apparently feel the need for bigger, better and more futuristic, and iBiquity, the HD Radio standard bearer decided to needlessly muddy the waters by using a television term to describe the new radio process. It was stupid, but we’re stuck with it now.

The big American broadcasters like Clear Channel, CBS, Entercomm, Emmis and others have banded together to promote and manage the adoption (hopefully) of HD Radio by Americans. They’ve provided a huge amount of free advertising on AM and FM stations to manufacturers and retailers of HD Radio equipment to try and get the American Public to adopt the technology. Unfortunately, the commercials produced have been some of the worst the industry has seen. Over the past 18 months or so, listeners have been bombarded by confusing ads that amazingly, completely denigrate and disrespect the very stations the commercials play on, offering programming that the ads promise is much better than the old AM and FM stations. The stupidity of this approach is staggering.

The whole thing is stupid for two reasons:

First, why trash yourself for something new and unproven?

Second, the companies gave the HD Radio Alliance enough free airtime to make the Alliance the biggest national advertiser in 2007. And how many radios did that sell? It showed that bad advertising simply doesn’t work.

Right now, the HD Radio Alliance companies agree not to monetize the HD radio channels. They’re basically saying “look, here’s a bunch of better radio programming that’s commercial-free for you to listen to. You only have to buy this special kind of radio.”

Of course in the next couple years, ads will begin to show up on HD-2 channels, but you’ve already bought your radio by then. Many people call that a “bait and switch,” but that’s another story.

Should you buy an HD Radio? Well, if the broadcasters in your area are broadcasting a channel you like, sure! Right now, it’s a great deal. You get a very specialized format without commercials or annoying disc jockeys. On the other hand, if your town doesn’t have a broadcaster offering the format you want, you’ll be buying an overpriced radio that offers you nothing worth the money you’re spending.

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