[EAS] HD developer proposal for EAS

[Richard Rudman]

As one of the people who participated in writing the reports that eventually became what we call IPAWS, I certainly agree that an "all available means" strategy is prudent. The question is, can the entire radio industry afford the cost to make HD participate in warning improvement in all markets? In the last paragraph of this post, I posit a future where that might happen. 

My original point was that the path to greater HD penetration in medium and small markets is blocked by costs made prohibitive by Licensees not being able to pay for them, or if they could pay for them, Licensees never able to get their investment back over a period of time investors look at for a ROI (return on Investment) analysis. 

The current HD business model appears to make the best sense for large markets where ad rates, new services income, and hosting several content streams can create a path to better ROI for the HD investment.

Now for my view of what COULD happen: Maybe down the road if the FCC does an FM band repack as they have done for TV we can get those benefiting from availability of a portion of the 88-108 mHz. band to pay for a massive HD conversion?  That strategy of having other spectrum users pay seems to be working so far for the TV repack model. 

Finally, and this might sting a bit, some of us believe the radio industry is long overdue for a "thinning of the herd" path that some might call "survival of the fittest (formats)". Those who survive would be able to do so with larger shares of the finite advertising pie.

Richard

>On Mar 18, 2019, at 9:02 PM, Clay Freinwald <k7cr at blarg.net> wrote:

>One of the early foundations of IPAWS was ' By All Available Means'
>(Perhaps many have forgotten this one?)