HD Radio is trying to kill the wrong technology

From today’s news:

WASHINGTON — January 29, 2008: HD Radio developer iBiquity Digital asked in an earlier ex parte filing with the FCC that a merged XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio be required to include HD Radio technology in all satellite radio receivers, and now the HD Digital Radio Alliance has made a filing with the FCC in support of that request.

(Isn’t this old news?)

The FCC will never, ever do this, of course. You could file all day and in a rainbow of colors and it won’t make a difference.

When push comes to shove, this merger will be going through. And it will go through without a “tip of the hat” towards HD radio. But as symbolism goes, it’s symbolically symbolic.

Satellite radio is making it tough for HD to find a spot on the dashboard, the argument of the HD radio folks goes, which is probably true.

But what’s more true is that the presence of terrestrial radio is really what makes a spot for HD impossible on that same dash.

Get this straight: HD is viewed as redundant to radio. It is the current AM/FM bands that are hogging the spot in which a newfangled HD radio would otherwise sit.

The HD folks are trying to kill the wrong technology.