All parties agree the long-range future is HD radio. The promise of multiple channels delivering a range of programming remains out of reach. Dana Davis Rehm, NPR senior vice president who oversees program services and audience research, said multicasting on various channels is the eventual answer. “There’s been slower progress on HD adoption than any of us would have hoped.”

The Internet is the answer for the short-term future.

Just how “long-range” is this future where HD Radio is the answer? And, how’s the adoption rate of the “short-term” Internet?

But this wouldn’t necessarily be the end of analog FM – the interim report says the legacy band would still be home to small local or community radio broadcasters.

The unresolved issues will sound familiar: automobile manufacturers aren’t including digital radios standard in all new cars; DAB service doesn’t reach the entire country (although it’s now at 90% penetration and will reach 93% by the end of 2008); whether the government might help those who can’t afford a new radio.

Digital radio has a higher penetration in Britain than in the US. The latest research shows 22% of individuals in England own a digital radio (lower in Scotland and Wales), and 34% have listened to digital radio on their televisions (Freeview and Sky). These higher numbers when compared with the US result from a number of factors – including, most likely, more effective marketing, as well as the considerable investment the BBC and other broadcasters have made in developing new content for DAB.

Robin Gehl of Cincinnati Public Radio, talked about the station’s recent expansion of service through HD Radio – 2 new channels of service: Jazz and a partnership with WOXY.com. Jennifer Ferro of KCRW detailed some of KCRW’s internet strategy, from the web platform to its streaming and on-demand options. And Jon McTaggart of Minnesota Public Radio/American Public Media spoke about APM’s strategic approach to broadcast and non-broadcast channels.

McTaggart talked briefly about the three legs of a tripod that will support APM and help it sustain itself: broadcasting – anything related to radio; new media – any service delivered to an IP-enabled device; and face-to-face engagement with the audience. Each has to be treated differently: new media can’t be treated like it’s a broadcast channel. McTaggart says APM takes a generational view when planning and developing its services.

He also offered a list of seven questions that he says he asks when APM is faced with an opportunity, whether it’s a new platform or a new station.

McTaggart’s Seven Questions of Effective Audience Planning

• Who do you want to serve?
• Why do you want to serve this audience? What’s your motivation? strategy?
• What do you know about them? – describe the target individual, give them a name
• What do they know about you?
• How many ways do you reach and serve them?
• What response do you want or expect from them? Do you want them to consume the product? What revenue do you expect from them?
• How will you know that you are succeeding with this audience?

Speaking only for myself, I’ve looked at a number of opportunities in the past few years, and have asked – at best – only one of those questions. This is one of the big take-aways from the conference.

Now strictly speaking it’s not fair to compare a tech phenomenon to the many that are not (okay, to the almost all that are not). Then again, very few tech gadgets have hundreds of millions of dollars of complimentary on-air support and the power of the radio industry behind them.

The consumer is speaking volumes with numbers like these. Are you listening to what he’s telling you?

I’ve had an HD Radio for a few months now, and even though it’s my own industry, I don’t get the value proposition. The commercial stations are offering additional channels of the same crappy music, and many of the public stations (with notable exceptions like KUOW/KXOT and KUT) are offering unoriginal, turnkey content. Gee, that’s compelling. I think I’ll go stand in line for 25 hours to get me one of those.

The internet shows us that, assuming a minimum level of quality, consumers will choose quantity over quality. NPR’s audience testing shows that listeners can’t tell much difference between CD-quality digital music and a 48kb/s stream of the same music on an HD stream. Perhaps the more correct way to say this is that listeners might hear a difference, but for them, it’s a completely acceptable trade-off for having more choices.

I bet you can think of several ways that you’ve made this compromise. I spend several hours a day listening to soma.fm’s Groove Salad internet stream while I work. I’ve pruned my CD collection as I’ve ripped the CD’s into my iTunes library. I listen to my iPod in the car using an FM transmitter, rather than CD’s. We’re about to sell the big Klipsch speakers in the living room; the likely replacement for our stereo and TV – the Apple Hifi.

As broacasters and programmers, we need to consider carefully what consumers are telling us about how the listen to music and the kinds of compromises they’re willing to make in return for other perceived benefits. This should guide our multicasting strategies for radio.

And I’m beginning to wonder how this might play out on TV. Consumers appear to be sending a very clear message about HDTV; they’re buying giant HD screens by the thousands. But I think if you look deeper, you’ll find that most of them are taking their sets home, hooking up the DVD player, plugging in analog cable, or SD digital satellite, and are watching the 4:3 signals stretched across their 16:9 screens. In other words, most of what they’re watching now actually looks worse than it did on their old TV’s – it’s flattened and stretched and more grainy; but it’s on a brighter, bigger screen.

It’s too early to draw many conclusions from this. If more of the popular cable networks were in HD, for instance, it might be easier to judge viewing patterns. But I do find myself wondering if, ultimately, viewers will seek out HD where the content demands it – movies, drama, nature docs, etc – and will be happy will SD quality for much of the rest of what they see. (Will viewers care if you spend half a million dollars to convert your local news to HD?) That compromise ultimately means more choices in the available bandwidth and if there’s anything that consumers seem to be saying clearly so far in this vast transformation of broadcasting, choice is important.