Columbia, MD - Jul 25, 2008 - Bob Struble, president and CEO of Ibiquity Digital, has penned his first online column. In his introduction, Struble notes that his intent "is to fairly regularly put fingers to keyboard and give you all a candid inside view of what we at Ibiquity are thinking and doing to speed AM/FM's conversion to digital."

Struble starts with a status report of HD Radio to date. Not surprisingly, he says that the rollout is going fantastic. He notes the statistics that 80 percent of the population can hear an HD Radio station, 50 percent of radio listening is on stations that have converted to digital, and several of the largest markets are saturated with digital at 20 to 30 stations.

After the happy progress report, Struble outlined ideas for HD Radio going forward. He urges the ongoing conversion, the need to add multicast channels and promoting the technology to listeners. He also notes that a complete upgrade of a 100-year-old medium will take time, although HD Radio is on a comparable track compared to the transitions for black-and-white TV to color, AM to FM and analog TV to digital TV.

While much of what Struble writes may be considered hype, one thought is unquestionable: "Every other consumer medium is digital already or on a strong path to get there, and radio cannot be stuck in the analog world of the last century. Our future is digital -- online and over the air. I'm encouraged by our progress and hope you are too. We will get there together."

Read Stuble's column.