HD Radio: How Media Consolidation Killed It

HD radio was pitched as the FM upgrade that would save terrestrial radio from satellite and streaming, but two decades later most listeners have never heard of it. Broadcast engineer Tyler Woodward traces the FCC’s 2002 approval, iBiquity’s royalty driven business model, and how media consolidation left stations with no incentive to actually use their HD2 and HD3 channels. It is a story about broadcasting infrastructure and what happens when corporations stop investing in the tech they were handed.