Anyway, and I’m no technician, but my understanding is that the opportunity to have completely different frequency designators was on the table, but NOOOoo. You first have to tune to the primary freq then go to the side bands. Which makes it difficult to establish a brand.

“Hey boys and girls, first go to your Fav 95.5, then push this button on your new $200 receiver and you can get our other station…” or something like that. Like I say - they start talking and my eyes just glaze over.

And nothing guarantees that HD will be commercial free. It is right now, of course, ’cause they can’t even sell out the primary signal in most markets in this economy. But how long is Bob Neil or “The Brothers,” or Smulyan, Mason et al going to spend money on royalties for no-revenue properties?

OK SIDE NOTE TO REGULAR YAHOO ANSWERS FOLK: you’ve run into a couple of actual real radio people here (and I expect Blu to chime in soon) so don’t feel bad if some of this isn’t making sense - and maybe we should take this over to Radio-Info.com, where I’m NamJock.

Let me shorten it up: HD will probably be moderately successful, but it’s going to take time. Satellite already has a several-year head start, so it’s a fact of life and will continue to be - especially if Mel gets his way (and he usually does).

Imagine if you will…. What? Three-four additional stations for every one currently available in terrestrial. That’s a lot of avails, man. And would take a lot of selling and price wars and branding and advertising (which is great for me - not so good for the local GM’s budget).

Enough? My email’s open to all.
-a guy named duh