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Radio's Digital Dilemma is the first comprehensive analysis of the United States' digital radio transition, chronicling the technological and policy development of the HD Radio broadcast standard. A story laced with anxiety, ignorance, and hubris, the evolution of HD Radio pitted the nation's largest commercial and public broadcasters against the rest of the radio industry and the listening public in a pitched battle over defining the digital future of the medium. The Federal Communications Commission has elected to put its faith in "marketplace forces" to govern radio's digital transition, but this has not been a winning strategy: a dozen years from its rollout, the state of HD Radio is one of dangerous malaise, especially as newer digital audio distribution technologies fundamentally redefine the public identity of "radio" itself.
Ultimately, Radio's Digital Dilemma is a cautionary tale about the overarching influence of economics on contemporary media policymaking, to the detriment of notions such as public ownership and access to the airwaves-and a call for media scholars and reformers to engage in the continuing struggle of radio's digital transition in hopes of reclaiming these important principles.
List of contents
1. Identifying Radio’s Digital Dilemma 2. The Developmental Trajectory of U.S. Digital Radio 3. The Fundamental Detriments of IBOC-DAB 4. FCC "Deliberation" of HD Radio 5. The Troubled Proliferation of HD Radio 6. Tweaking an Imperfect System 7. HD Radio’s Murky Future 8. Confronting Radio’s Digital Dilemma
About the author
John Nathan Anderson is an Assistant Professor and the Director of Broadcast Journalism in the Department of Television and Radio at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. Formerly a radio journalist, he's been working in the fields of media policy and activism for nearly two decades.
Summary
Radio’s Digital Dilemma chronicles the development of digital radio broadcasting, which has been fraught with difficulty as evidenced by the fact that what we have come to understand as "radio" in the twentieth century still has no feasible digital broadcast component.
