HD Digital Radio Alliance Renews Charter

Oct 16, 2007 9:45 AM

        

Orlando, FL - Oct 15, 2007 - The HD Digital Radio Alliance, the joint initiative of radio broadcasters to accelerate consumer adoption of HD Digital Radio, has renewed the group's charter for a third year. The group's effort promotes the HD Radio rollout and works with stations in a market to determine multicast station formats to reduce format duplication.

The group also announced that it has committed an additional $230 million in marketing funds for 2008 to bring the total group commitment to $680 million. The "investment" sounds impressive, but the funds appear to simply be unsold on-air inventory on HD Radio stations. Part of the annual commitment now includes a portion of the weekly advertising time is to be given back to local stations to promote multicast content, local partnerships, events and promotions for their HD Radio stations, which further lessens the actual monetary value of the ad campaign.

The new charter also revises the method that partner stations use to select multicast formats. While the Alliance recognizes that format diversity will help consumer interest in multicast, stations will be able to change their multicast formats without Alliance review provided that the new format is not currently on the air in the local market at all.

The HD Digital Radio Alliance has also revised its two-year ad-free policy to allow companies to accept name-in-title sponsorships and limited sponsor mentions per hour on multicast channels.

Current Alliance members include Beasley Broadcast Group, Bonneville International, CBS Radio, Citadel Broadcasting/ABC Radio, Clear Channel Radio, Emmis Communications, Entercom, Greater Media and WBEB Philadelphia.

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