I can tell you this; I am definitely going to reduce or eliminate my financial support for NPR. If they have money to waste on this stuff, they don't need my hard earned dollars. Money is the only thing that matters in this country, so you have to vote with your wallet.
You don't financially support NPR, at least not directly.
You support a local radio station that, in most cases, is a member station of NPR, using a portion of your membership dollars to pay its annual dues in order to carry NPR programming. And before you decide to reduce your support for that local station, give them a call and talk to them about their relationship with NPR, and about how they fund projects such as HD radio.
It's pretty safe to say that not every NPR member station agrees with the compromise that was reached this week. Perhaps the highest-profile example is WRNI in Rhode Island, which has raised some pretty loud questions about the high-powered testing that was done by Greater Media and Ibiquity on WKLB in Boston, which is on 102.5, first-adjacent to WRNI-FM on 102.7, a class A signal that draws much of its audience from Providence, just outside its officially-protected contour, but nevertheless an area where it was fairly listenable...until WKLB powered up. One can reasonably assume that WRNI is not on the same page as NPR where the power increase is concerned.
Other NPR member stations are indeed eager to power up. I do some work for WXXI in Rochester (but speak here only for myself). As I've discussed here before, WXXI runs an all-classical format on a full class B FM, WXXI-FM 91.5, and programs news and talk (much of it from NPR) on a signal-challenged 5 kW DA-N AM signal, WXXI 1370. Over the AM station's 25-year history, there's been constant demand from members for a better news-talk signal in areas east and west of downtown Rochester where the AM is nulled after dark. Adding an AM simulcast on 91.5-HD2 has been one of several ways WXXI has tried to answer that problem - and there's now a significant listener base tuning in on the HD signal. (The most popular premium in WXXI's most recent pledge drive was the Insignia portable HD radio.)
"Money to waste on this stuff"? Compared to the 8 million dollars or so that it would cost to buy another full-coverage FM signal, were one to come on the market today, the addition of HD to the WXXI-FM signal has been a bargain - the costs involved have amounted to a new antenna, which was needed anyway to replace the original (1974-vintage) FM antenna, and a new digital transmitter. And because of the way the installation was designed (separate transmitters, separate transmission line, interleaved analog/digital antennas), a power increase will not be an expensive proposition, as it will be for the many stations using low-level combining.
It also bears noting that most of the public radio stations that have added HD have done so with the help of CPB grant money that was specifically designated for the digital conversion - so the money spent on HD would not have been available for other purposes if it hadn't been used for digital radio.
WXXI's experience is certainly not typical - but the interesting thing about the American public radio system, at least to me, is that there
is no "typical" station. There are some that have no compelling reason to go digital, and others doing exciting things with their digital signals. (DC's WAMU, for instance, with its 24-hour bluegrass channel, Philly's WRTI, which uses its HD-2 to provide jazz when its main channel is classical by day and classical when its main channel is jazz at night, and Vermont Public Radio, which uses HD-2 to fill in gaps in its relatively new all-classical network, are a few that come to mind.)
Each station makes those decisions at the local level, which is why I'd urge you to at least talk to your local station about its funding and its views on HD radio before pulling your support.
