HD Radio was, and is a great idea, that has suffered through lack of promotion, and indifference by the Radio industry. Now it appears that HD Radio is taking another big hit -- it may not be available in some GM vehicles in the near future. If this pulling the plug on HD Radio is followed by other automakers, it won't bode well for Radio.
Broadcasters, especially AM Radio station owners, took a hit when some automakers decided to install auto, dashboard soundsystems without AM radio capability. And that caused a bill to be written in US Congress to mandate AM radio in cars.
That bipartisan bill is still in never-ending limbo in Congress.
Well, now it looks like Radio is taking another hit from the auto industry: GM has announced it will stop installing HD Radio capable radios in its dashboard soundsystems. It is not presently known if any other US carmaker is thinking of doing the same thing.
Here is an InsideRadio article on it.:
https://www.insideradio.com/free/gm-s-hd-radio-retreat-highlights-growing-dashboard-challenge-for-radio/article_8a249ed3-3b56-417b-a30e-0c63898d17b6.html
Being that one third (or more) of all Radio listening is in the vehicle, this is worrisome news for Radio companies and Radio fans. Not all Radio people are gung-ho about HD Radio technology, but it does sound good, both on AM and FM, and on FM you get the extra channels (that is -- if the station has HD2's and HD3's).
The issue isn't really just HD. It's worrisome for Radio in general, because who knows when FM and AM radio will be removed from car soundsystems? After all, the modern car is turning gradually into an AI bot. I'm not exaggerating by much -- there have been reports online about new vehicles having surveillance capabilities, where they will monitor the drivers, including tracking your eye movements.
You can read about that here.:
And don't forget that some automakers have reportedly shared driving data and other data with who knows?
And GM apparently has already pulled the plug on Apple CarPlay and the Android Auto app, forcing GM owners to use a GM app that comes with the dash system.
You can read about that here.:
Many in the media believe that this is just the beginning of the era of your car being yet another AI bot-driven, data mining operation and pay-to-play content provider. In other words, the auto industry, knowing that the dash system is up front and center in cars and trucks, is slowly switching all in-vehicle entertainment to a subscription model.
They -- like everyone else, it seems -- want you to subscribe to get content.
I tell ya. I get sick of reading those increasingly annoying words "content" and "subscription model". They're so last decade. Unfortunately, those words and phrases are becoming an all-encompassing reality.
What's more disturbing, however, is moves by some in government to mandate that your vehicle spies on you, to where it possibly could even pull you over to the side of the road and switch off your vehicle -- if the AI bot determines you're not driving "safely" enough. Now, some of these reports may contain a certain amount of paranoia. But just look at the world around you -- and see how much that everyone of us is under surveillance, be it our phone use, devices with cameras and microphones, and even 'smart cars' tracking our data.
I don't have a new vehicle, personally. But would I want a car or truck that spies on me, and then sells my data to other people? Not on your life.
I'm not personally surprised that these surveillance and peeping-tom like moves are taking place in many industries. Spyware is power. That's why the hackers and malware creators came up with spyware back in the 90's and 00's. Now legitimate businesses and industries are going in that direction. Your phone probably can spy on you. Your smart TV can probably spy on you. Many apps you use can probably spy on you. So now your car will be able to spy on you also.
As one 'expert' I saw interviewed on a YouTube channel stated about a month and a half ago, we are entering a world where the dominant economic model is 'surveillance capitalism'.
BACK TO THE SUBJECT AT HAND: HD RADIO
HD Radio was a terrific idea. I still think it has a lot of potential. It wasn't released effectively, the technology was under patent, and a lot of broadcasters don't want to pay the subscription fees to go HD. But most of the big FMs in my city, Seattle, have HD1's (the main channel in HD mode). And it sounds good.
HD's peak seemed to be the 2010's. When I got my first HD Radio in 2017 there were two HD AM's and nearly every commercial and large non-commercial FM had HD, as well as an HD2 or HD3. By 2018 the number started to dwindle (that's the year Radio Disney yanked all their HD2's from stations all over the US). And after the Pandemic hit, the number dwindled even further (local station KISW pulled the plug on their Metal Militia HD2 channal, and local country station KKWF pulled the plug on their Delta Blues HD2, and the local NPR station pulled their BBC HD2 or 3).
So, what is the future of HD Radio? If GM indeed pulls the plug on HD Radio in GM cars and trucks, that's not the end of the world. They may be the biggest US automaker, but they do not sell most of the new cars in the US. Here we have many different carmakers selling vehicles -- Toyota, Subaru, Honda, Hyundai, Ford, Mercedes, BMW, Tesla -- there are many brands of vehicles for sale in the US.
GM has about 17% of the US new car market. So this new move affects only 17% or so of new cars in the US.
But GM's dropping HD is probably the shot across the bow. Soon after that it may be AM radio (which has already been dropped by some carmakers), FM radio, and other soundsystem features that get the chopping block. There may come a time you won't be able to Bluetooth your phone into the car system. And GM may only be the first company to implement these sorts of changes in dashboard soundsystem access.
Think about it: if you Bluetooth your phone into the car soundsystem, no one is getting paid for the use of that service. That could be seen as leaving money on the table for a company that put a fancy looking soundsystem and screen on your dashboard.
This is mentioned in the Cars.com story I have linked earlier in this article. Under the heading "What's This Really About?" the writer mentions that automakers can make more money off of forcing you to use their own proprietary music and entertainment playing systems, and they also can make money off of the user data.
Remember, we are entering an age where everything is "content", everything has a subscription price attached to it, it all may spy on you, and -- as the 'expert' on YouTube said -- we're in an era of 'surveillance capitalism'.
All this said, this move is bad for HD Radio, and it's bad for Radio in general. Radio is in the midst of a struggle to survive in a world where "legacy" media's revenues, listener numbers, viewer numbers -- and in the case of newspapers, readership numbers -- are all dropping. It's tough to be in Radio these days.
So any chipping away of Radio from the place where one third of listening takes place -- i.e. the car -- is bad for Radio. Such a move shows how little importance Radio is seen to have these days, when everything audio is increasingly online and streaming-based. And streaming, my friends, that is where the money is anymore.
As for my own use of HD Radio, I don't listen to it much anymore, ever since the Metal Militia channel was yanked from KISW's HD2. Local Classical FM station KING has a Christmas Classical Music HD3, and I sometimes listen to that -- it's a wide mix of choral, symphonic, and chamber music, all Christmas hymns, some of them dating back to the baroque era.
But HD Radio seems to have been this awesome idea whose time has come and gone.
I remember when it was being rolled out, in the mid 2000's. I was still working in the Radio industry, and the people running the company I worked for were excited about the idea of digital radio delivery, and the idea of stations having multiple channels -- HD2's and HD3's. It would make for more variety and service to the Radio listener -- and, naturally, more channels for the programmers (at the format factory I worked at) to program.
But it never took off, really. The radios were expensive, you couldn't really hear the HD that well inside the box stores where the radios were sold, and apparently some radio stations never could figure out a way to monetize HD Radio very well.
And it seemed that the stations didn't really promote the HD2's and HD3's very well, either. KISW never really pushed their Metal Militia channel on their website, for example. And the Metal Militia channel was great -- it was an awesome mix of heavy metal from Gojira to Mudvayne to GNR to System Of A Down toSlipknot to Disturbed to Arch Enemy to a lot of other metal bands in different metal genres.
Then the plug was pulled.
It seems to be yet another instance of American Radio holding out a technology that has a lot of promise, and then dropping the ball.
Such is the case of the industry I worked in for 20 years.
And with that, my friends,
Peace.
C.C., May 16th, 2026.
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