In a typically rambling and incoherent editorial on the iBiquity site, tirelessly and tiresomely myopic Bob Struble trots out the latest excuse for why HD Radio has essentially stalled in the marketplace, comparing the hybrid-digital rollout's lengthening time line to the long implementation period for Color TV and FM.
Consider it your regular HD hogwash delivery - kind of like how you once got regular unsolicited visits from insurance or Fuller Brush salesmen.
Of course, to anyone who has observed HD Radio for more than five minutes, the tortured logic and implausible-to-impossible arguments resound as "typical for HD."
I was there at Color TV's debut, admittedly as a young child, but my memories can be substantiated by those who were then adults. When Color TV arrived in 1954-55 most families were still watching their first TV - typically a mahogany small-screen box dating to the Korean War or earlier, with insensate front ends and sync circuits with all the stability of Jeanene Garofalo. (A neighbor actually had a TV old enough to have a "Channel 1" position on its tuner.) TV was the electronic state-of-the-art for home entertainment in the mid 1950s, yet we were all accustomed to flipping and rolling images on tiny, dim screens.
So when a single Westinghouse color set arrived at the local radio-TV store in my small Western New York town some time in early 1955 it was an event. There must have been 25 to 30 people crowded around this 15" set when it was powered up for some NBC special on a Friday night (the store stayed open late for the demonstration.) When the shop owner got the program tuned in, there was an audible gasp from the spectators. Given what we were used to watching on TV, the small yet vivid pictures were nothing short of a miracle.
Of course in this era when most household incomes were in the range of $3500 to $5000, the $1200 Westinghouse color set's price failed to motivate any purchaser. The TV remained to display color reception to dwindling crowds for about a month until the distributor came and hauled it off to be presented to presumably more affluent sales prospects. I didn't see an actual Color TV in somebody's home until the early 1960s.
As far as FM and FM stereo go - these innovations arrived on the scene when American consumers were being bombarded with other electronic entertainment devices they found more compelling. When modern-band FM was making its debut it had to compete with longplaying and 45rpm records (first mono, then stereo), stereo tape recording, miniature portable radios and TV (first monochrome and then color.) On the broadcasting side, most station operators were enjoying big profits from their AM facilities despite the demise of radio network programming. Rock n' roll was king, and everybody had one of those little transistor radios to listen to charismatic DJs spin the latest hits. There was little incentive to develop the FM side until the simulcast restrictions of 1966. That forced compelling programming onto FM, and at that point the FM band's march was on.
So: let's revisit iBiquity and other HD proponents' new talking point, which is to compare HD's current marketplace woes with the rollouts of Color and FM over 50 years ago. There is no valid comparison. The delays in acceptance of these products had nothing to do with their merits. Anyone not an idiot immediately appreciated the vast improvements Color afforded over B&W or FM sound's advance over AM, even on superior AM radios of the day. The reasons for the slow rollout were varied and generally economic and pragmatic in nature.
In short - Color TV and FM were NOT slow to be accepted because they caused unacceptable problems for existing services (that would be "interference") or incremental-at-best improvements over the status quo. These were desirable and desired innovations which came into their own without brute-force promotion or technical deck-stacking to achieve regulatory approval, and their acceptance was a natural progression in the order of proven innovation. You know: like HD Radio isn't.
Let's review.....once again, HOW can we tell iBiquity's lying??
Bear this in mind every time they try their latest ploy to get you to ignore common sense, integrity and professional instinct.
