This is not the first time iBiquity has had outside innovators over for a chat. Radio World reports that "The company frequently vets ideas to improve the system, both from inside and outside the company....Typically what's proposed is not cost-effective, won't work with its technology or both."

In a nutshell, that explains the lack of consistent and sustained innovation in the HD Radio space. You've gotta pay to play, and even then the system developer has final say about whether or not your innovation is "viable." That determination pretty much comes down to how easily iBiquity can assimilate your intellectual property into its own. Since its business model depends on keeping full control over HD Radio's source code, outsiders like DPR represent the worst kind of trouble.

In many cases like these, when an outside innovator's work seems really promising, they'll be acquired outright by a system's proprietor. That's unlikely in the case of DPR. iBiquity doesn't have the financial wherewithal to acquire other companies, and DPR's technology has multiple potential uses across different wireless networks; why limit its market to radio broadcasting by assimilation into iBiquity?

At this point, iBiquity is committed to seeing DPR's claims through. That's the reason for the meeting at company HQ: loath to disclose any of HD Radio's source code, iBiquity will administer DPR's testing regime. If the results are positive, that puts iBiquity in a difficult position where the "black box" around HD technology may need to be breached in order to make a substantive improvement in it. That may be especially problematic for iBiquity because it involves the receiver-side of its business – the licensing of which right now accounts for nearly all of the company's revenue.

Given the tenuous state of HD Radio's proliferation, it seems silly to dally on such potential. But it's pretty much par for the course for a technology born of fear and hubris.

Radio Survivor was there in force, and has provided some in-depth coverage of specific panels and plenaries: check Matthew Lasar's reports on the keynote event and the state of classical radio in NYC as well as Jennifer Waits' reportback on the world of prison radio. Both also presented their own research: Lasar offered perhaps the closest thing to a definition for "radio" to be found all weekend, while Waits detailed the ~90-year history of her alma mater's radio station. (She was also there on assignment for Radio World, so expect some coverage there as well.)

In addition, the conference organizers recorded short interviews with several participants, which allowed many to give an overview of what they brought to the event. Some of my favorites include Michael Marcotte's near-plea for public radio to invest more in local news; the work that Monica de la Torre has done to illustrate the DIY-roots of Spanish-language radio in the U.S.; Ivy Glennon's scathing indictment of the state of women in radio; and Jeff Jacoby's perspective on what it means to "teach radio" in the 21st century.

They were also nice enough also gave me the opportunity to riff a bit on the troubles of radio's digital transition in the United States. What is Radio? was the first opportunity I had to give a bona-fide book-talk – the room was packed for our panel, which delved into the future of radio in a digital media environment.

The feedback I've received from the conference has been uplifting, providing some much-needed inspiration to finish the manuscript. David Ossman, a founder of the Firesign Theatre, joined our panel via Skype (sans video, which was perfect for a gathering like this) and repeatedly called my research "terrifying" – which I hope to use as a future blurb, because that's pretty much what the story of HD Radio is.

There's more to come, too. Conference organizers are planning an edited volume with companion web site.

An 11-page report, co-authored primarily by representatives of iBiquity, the NAB, and CBS, provides an overview of the methodology and preliminary results of a set of experimental all-digital HD broadcasts on WBCN-AM in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was the first test of the all-digital AM-HD system in more than ten years.

The tests took place over "three weekends in late November and December 2012," encompassing about 30 total hours of broadcasts. Reception was measured in both mobile and indoor environments: eight test-drive routes were plotted and indoor reception was measured on an Insignia Narrator receiver in 15 locations encompassing "a variety of building types."

In the car, WBCN's all-digital signal could be heard relatively clearly during the day anywhere between 25 to 45 miles from the transmitter, and at night for 10 to 15 miles. Indoors, all-digital reception was possible at two-thirds of the test locations, all of which were within 13 miles (daytime) and 7 miles (nighttime) of the transmitter.

Inside Radio's report on the tests touts the results as promising, but it's important to note that WBCN represents a best-case experimental platform. Expanded-band AM stations are less susceptible to interference from other stations (because there are fewer stations located on expanded-band channels), and WBCN's antenna system is a straightforward design already optimized for HD broadcasts.

Under "Future Activities," it is noted that NAB Labs will coordinate further testing of the all-digital AM-HD protocol to "fully develop a performance record of operation in this mode." How extensive this record will be remains to be seen; in the interim, hopefully a more detailed analysis of the 2012 tests is forthcoming.

This kicks off two full days of plenaries and panel discussions covering a wide range of radio-related issues. I'm particularly looking forward to Christopher Terry's overview of changes in media ownership regulations since the passage of the Telecommunications Act; Lawrie Hallett's presentation on pirate radio enforcement issues in the United Kingdom; Ivy Glennon's examination of "canned" radio; Marko Ala-Fossi, Per Jauert, and Stephen Lax's update on the status of Europe's digital radio transition; and the variety of presentations addressing the morphing identity of "radio" from on-air to online and points in-between, just to name a few.

Radio Survivor's Matt Lasar and Jennifer Waits will also be in attendance, making presentations on the new ways DJs communicate with listeners and the "secret history" of Haverford College's radio station, respectively.

I'll be presenting my first-ever book talk (forthcoming from Routledge) during the last round of panels on Saturday, providing a comprehensive and critical overview of radio's digital transition in the United States. It's hard to boil down ~250 pages covering >20 years into 20 minutes, and in a very real sense, this is the coming-out party for Radio's Digital Dilemma, so I'm both excited and terrified of this coming weekend.

Some of the events will be streamed live, and you can also follow along at the Twitter hashtag #whatisradio.

Fowler told Radio World that their projected improvement looks promising in computer simulations, and now they're ready to try some real-world experiments.

However, iBiquity Digital Corporation – the company that controls all of HD Radio's intellectual property – is dismissing the potential innovation outright. According to iBiquity chief scientist Brian Kroeger, DigitalPower Radio's experiments were based on "faulty assumptions" about HD's current working characteristics. In effect, Kroeger submits that DPR made its analysis using an outdated version of HD technology, and the most current one already utilizes many of DPR's proposed reception tweaks.

At the recently-concluded annual conference of the National Association of Broadcasters, both sides met with trade industry reps for further discussion. The dispute could be easily settled if iBiquity would allow an examination of its HD receiver source code, to make independent verification or debunking of DPR's claims possible. However, iBiquity is apparently not willing to consider this.

This is very demonstrative of the tyranny of closed technological systems, where innovation is constrained to the whims of the primary developer. It's the old Microsoft model, which iBiquity has been dedicated to pursuing since it was founded more than 12 years ago. The proprietary nature of the HD Radio system is its most glaring fundamental detriment.

It's also why innovation in the HD Radio space comes in fits and starts. The primary developer doesn't have the financial wherewithal to innovate on its own, and the only other parties allowed to innovate must either have direct buy-in to HD Radio or are willing to pretty much give away their work to iBiquity.

CBS and the NAB have been the primary facilitators of technical improvements to the HD standard. Multicasting, arguably the technology's most notable feature, was developed by National Public Radio. Clear Channel handled the early efforts to market and promote the technology. And Emmis Communications is spearheading the Broadcaster Traffic Consortium as well as the industry's primary efforts to get both analog and digital radio into mobile devices.

It is also not the first time that a digital radio innovator may get stymied by the nature of a closed HD system. Around the turn of the century, a company called Digital Radio Express unveiled a technology that allowed the transmission of digital FM signals as subcarriers to – not sidebands of – existing analog FM signals. This was initially perceived as a direct competitor to HD Radio.

In a turn of events that's not completely clear, iBiquity acquired a share of Digital Radio Express and suddenly the company stopped marketing its technology as a bona-fide digital radio standard. Instead, it now positions itself as a supplementary datacasting system named VuCast.

Any end-game to the DigitalPower Radio dispute must involve iBiquity's participation. If DPR's technology does demonstrate some advantage, you can expect iBiquity to try and acquire it somehow, as that's absolutely necessary to keep a firm lock on the entirety of HD's fundamental intellectual property.

It's a hell of a way to run a railroad.

The implications of this proposition resonate far beyond the AM dial: it is an audacious gamble to secure HD Radio a strong foundation on which to become the undisputed and permanent standard for all radio broadcasters. Between the AM and FM bands, AM has the fewest stations and suffers from the most technical and fiscal distress. Forcing all AM stations to go digital is being cast as a move to deal with a crisis – but the strategic significance of such a move will make it easier to force FM stations (of which there are more, and more money at stake) to adopt HD eventually.

This is how fundamental transformations to media policy are made. First, the proponents of change launch a test-balloon to see if the initial reaction is positive or negative. If positive, then research is conducted to justify the change (this has been dubbed "the creation of facts on the ground"), and in many cases where the impetus for change comes from industry this work is not peer-reviewed or independently verified. Then the formal process of crafting and implementing the new policy begins. Once step 3 is reached, the inertia for making the change is already well-established.

I've been covering the process of walking through steps 1 and 2 for the past year, and broadcast engineer Paul Thurst recently wrote an illuminating four-part series about the NAB et al.'s creation of facts on the ground involving the all-digital AM-HD tests carried out so far (more are in the works).

Glynn Walden's declaration that the FCC needs to make AM digital conversion mandatory means that step 3 will shortly begin. The fact that it happened during Commissioner Pai's panel on "AM's revitalization" at the broadcast industry's largest gathering signals in no uncertain terms that the FCC will take such a proposal very seriously. And because regulators remain willfully ignorant about HD Radio's inherent viability (coupled with the fact that they have a history of giving its proponents nearly everything they want), they are already predisposed to do the same here.

(By the way, this formula for change works across various media systems and policies: step 1 is currently underway on the notion of fundamentally revising copyright law.)

The kicker will be how HD Radio's proponents address the proprietary nature of iBiquity's system. When the FCC authorized HD's rollout in 2002, it did not make radio's digital transition mandatory for this very reason. "[T]he endorsement of [HD Radio] does not compel any broadcaster to initiate digital transmissions....Those broadcasters choosing not to initiate such digital operations will not be materially affected," claimed the Commission back then.

In 2007, the FCC reaffirmed this stance. "Commenters generally support a marketplace transition to digital audio broadcasting," said the agency. "Stations may decide if, and when, they will provide digital service to the public....Moreover, there is no evidence in the record that marketplace forces cannot propel the [digital radio] conversion forward, and effective markets tend to provide better solutions than regulatory schemes.

"When [HD] receiver penetration has reached a critical mass and most, if not all, radio stations broadcast in a hybrid digital format, we will begin to explore the technical and policy issues germane to an all-digital radio environment."

Letting the marketplace decide digital radio's fate explains the push to force the issue now, because the marketplace is not working in favor of HD proponents. Only 15% of all broadcast stations use HD (among AM stations, just 4% do, of which only 1% use the hybrid HD system 24 hours a day). Just 2% of U.S. radio receivers are HD-compatible. And HD broadcasts account for just 2% of all radio listening.

To fix this state of affairs, you force government intervention. In a U.S. media policy environment steeped in the tenets of neoliberalism, it reeks of hypocrisy. Start small, on the dial where it will involve the "least disruption" and the "most opportunity," and use that as precedent to mandate a wholesale conversion.

The FCC could make moves on this front by as early as next year, and if the impending AM campaign succeeds there's no reason why a full-on digital radio transition deadline couldn't be set before the end of the decade.

There are a lot of moving parts to this story. But the likelihood of meaningfully intervening in the process while there's still time is short, and any meaningful intervention will require the work of a diverse constituency of independent broadcasters, honest broadcast engineers, and an activated public. The end game is all the marbles: will those who seek a better digital future for radio come out to play?

An initial proposal to the FCC from ZoneCasting's proprietor, Geo-Broadcast Solutions, asking for a rule-change governing FM boosters (to allow them to originate programming) attracted hardly any comment from within the radio industry. Many broadcast engineers initially seemed skeptical that ZoneCasting could work in a real-world environment.

Things have changed significantly over the course of a year. Transmitter-manufacturer Harris (who developed the means to use FM boosters in sync) has signed onto the ZoneCasting system, and NPR Labs has endorsed it – so much so that it's committed to further testing of the technology.

In an interview with Radio World in February, Geo-Broadcast's CEO Peter Handy emphasized the advertising windfall its system might provide broadcasters. "FM radio stations will have more inventory to sell while delivering the same amount of non-commercial content," said Handy. "The potential for the overall radio industry is exceptional. Stations that implement the ZoneCasting system could grow their top line revenue by 20 percent or more per year."

Rich Redmond, Harris' VP of strategy and product management, says ZoneCasting works by using "a combination of advanced technology for transmission of a signal and careful network design to ensure the desired area of coverage is achieved while at the same time mitigating any undesired interference to the primary station or others." Redmond also noted that not all booster-stations in a ZoneCasting setup will broadcast full-time: some "only operate during the times of local content insertion to cover a certain area with the local content, and then turn off once that content is completed."

NPR Labs' senior technologist John Kean says they're bringing their extensive experience in signal propagation-modeling to the table, as well as conducting listener experiments to investigate just how much potential interference there might be between a full-power FM station's primary transmitter and its fleet of booster-nodes.

These won't be tiny stations, though: Kean expects boosters employed for ZoneCasting to operate at an effective radiated power between 500 to 5000 watts. Booster antennas may be "highly directive," and will be sited "typically only 25 to 40 meters above ground, to control the coverage of each node and avoid spilling signal across distant nodes or into areas to be served by the primary transmitter." Spacing between nodes "may range from one to five kilometers, depending on terrain and building density," and each zone within a station's subdivided coverage area "may require from five to 20 nodes" to provide adequate service.

GBS' attorney, Aaron Shainis, hopes that the FCC will convene a rulemaking on modifying FM booster rules to allow them to originate programming "sometime during the first half of 2013."

Ultimately, the big questions remaining to be resolved revolve around radio-frequency physics and economics – with the money-angle perhaps being the deciding factor. Provided that the ZoneCasting system can be proven to work reliably in a variety of terrain and networked configurations, it's going to come down to return-on-investment.

Harris' Redmond estimates that it would cost between $39,000 to $55,000 to set up each booster-node. Considering that each "zone" in a ZoneCasting system will require between five and 20 nodes, that's an estimated capital cost of $195,000 to $1.1 million per zone. Multiply that figure-range for each additional zone that a broadcaster may want to create.

These costs do not include "an upfront licensing fee that will vary by market size" which broadcasters will need to pay to use the ZoneCasting system, nor does it include residual costs to run each booster-node, such as tower rental, power, and the data-network necessary to program each node. It also doesn't take into consideration the additional labor necessary to produce the commercial inventory that each zone will require.

The radio industry as a whole is suffering from a revenue-plateau, with little significant growth expected in the near future. Capital expenditures by broadcasters have been slashed in recent years. Subdividing a station's coverage area in order to increase the amount of advertising it can offer feels like an attempt to squeeze every possible penny out of a market afflicted by malaise. But is the effort worth the expense, both from a financial perspective and with regard to spectrum-integrity?

The bottom line may very well be the bottom line – provided the FCC eventually allows the use of FM boosters to be transformed in a manner eerily similar to what has happened with FM translators over the last two decades.

Each Fest also features a pirate radio forum, where shortwave scenesters provide an overview of the state of the band. This year's forum was moderated by George Zeller, a long-time pirate radio enthusiast who's written several columns on the subject for a variety of radio publications.

Zeller got the 40-minute discussion going by calling the FCC a "malicious organization" (boos and hisses abounded), and ran through some of the most popular shortwave frequencies on which to find pirates. He categorized the scene as quite vibrant: "If I wanted to list all the pirates that were active last year, I would've had to bring a book!"

Greg Majewski, the editor of the shortwave-centric Free Radio Weekly, told attendees that there's been a "reduction of activity" in the number of listener reception reports to his publication, but he thinks the downturn is a function of migration to the Internet for reception reports and acknowledgements.

The online environment, said Majewski, has "revolutionized" the audience for shortwave pirate radio: listeners can share reception conditions and reports in real-time, and with streaming shortwave receivers positioned around the world, it's possible for listeners to hear broadcasts that they can't pull out of the ionospheric muck at their physical locations.

Majewski characterizes shortwave piracy as "a steady stream of activity," where most pirates "stay on for about an hour," limiting their time on air in hopes of complicating the FCC's impressive capabilities to triangulate shortwave transmissions.

Since the Fest, Chris Smolinski, the founder of HFUnderground.com, has conducted his own impressive analysis of shortwave piracy. Also based on listener reports, Smolinski found that dozens of stations were active over the course of 2012, making more than 130 transmissions every month.

The weekends are the most active time to find shortwave pirates on the air, though every day of the week there's something to listen to. The "busiest" month for shortwave piracy in 2012 was December, and the "slowest" month was May.

Ultimately, Smolinski believes there is "a very high level of activity" today, "as compared to what I remember from the 1980s and even the 1990s." Considering the FCC's relative lack of interest in shortwave pirate enforcement, it would seem that there's no better time than the present to scope the band and perhaps hike a mast.

AM/FM’s beleaguered attempt to draw people back to radio through HD did worse than ever. For the first time since 2004, when HD radio receivers became available for retail sale, more radio stations dropped their HD signal [in 2012] than adopted the technology.

The technology's proprietor, iBiquity Digital Corporation, was quick to pounce on the "error" of Pew's analysis. iBiquity CEO Bob Struble claims there was a "net gain" of 16 HD stations in 2012.

As if this correction paints the state of HD adoption in a brighter light: with more than 15,000 AM and FM stations currently on the air, HD's penetration rate leaped forward an astounding .12% last year. That's progress?

Both Pew and Struble claim that 2,048 stations were broadcasting in HD at the end of 2012. This is at odds with the FCC's own database, which returns a total of 2,038 HD stations. This includes 1,733 full-power FM stations, 299 AM stations, one LPFM station, two FM translators, and 3 FM boosters.

Of course, even these numbers don't accurately reflect the number of HD stations actually on the air. Although the FCC requires stations to notify when they commence HD broadcasts, they don't have to notify when they shut it off. Barry McLarnon has well-documented nearly 100 AM stations that have abandoned the protocol, and there's no way to quantify the number of FM stations that have ceased digital broadcasts.

Thus the number of HD stations on the air is actually lower than what the "conventional wisdom" suggests – fewer than 2,000 stations in all.

Struble provides unconfirmable figures about the number of FM-HD multicast streams available. He says that there are 1,446 HD-2, -3, and -4 streams on the air. This works out to about two-thirds of all FM-HD stations actually engaged in multicasting – by far the technology's most-adopted feature, but in the context of overall uptake not particularly impressive.

Furthermore, Struble suggests the growth in HD receiver sales demonstrates a "50% annual growth rate" in the adoption of HD by listeners. However, it's easy to claim explosive growth when you're starting from nothing. And this number doesn't quite add up, either.

In 2010, Struble told Radio World that just 200,000 HD receivers had been sold through mid-2008 (in the first six years of the technology's life in the wild). Between that point in time and June of 2010, the number of receivers sold rose to 2.5 million. In the rebuttal to Pew, iBiquity claims that 1.8 million receivers were sold in 2010, 2.2 million in 2011, and 3.9 million in 2012.

Adding these numbers up in the most generous light to iBiquity produces a total of 10.4 million receivers sold through last year – 1.6 million fewer than iBiquity's claim of 12 million sales in all.

Finally, Radio World's Leslie Stimson presumes to catch the Pew report in a contradiction when it claims that HD adoption in vehicles lags behind the adoption of streaming audio apps such as Pandora. Stimson notes that HD is available in some form across 29 automotive makes and models, while Pandora is available on just 20.

I suspect that Pew intended to use Pandora as an example of the inroads streaming audio is making in vehicles. For many other streaming apps (such as iHeartRadio and Spotify) also come pre-installed in automobiles; were one to add those in, how much larger might streaming's adoption actually be?

HD Radio (launched in 2002) had a three-year head start over Pandora (launched in 2005). Effectively, the two are neck-and-neck as far as adoptive penetration goes, but the rate of growth of streaming apps in vehicles is outpacing the adoptive trajectory of HD Radio.

It's interesting that a two-paragraph "analysis" in a much larger study was found worthy enough to merit a two-page rebuttal in the radio industry's leading trade publication. It's illustrative the tenuous and sensitive state of radio's digital transition in the United States.

Sidenote: Radio Ink publisher Eric Rhoads has issued a mea culpa about his recent article warning that radio was about to become extinct in automobiles. "My mistake is that I put something in quotes from my recollections...and my quote was inaccurate," he writes. "My editorial has caused many within the radio industry much grief and therefore, I feel it best to rescind my original quote and issue an official apology....I truly regret any confusion or misinformation that resulted, and I sincerely apologize for the error."

On the stage were three representatives of the automotive industry: one from Gartner Research...one from the Silicon Valley offices of General Motors...and one who represents an industry association for the connected car. They were on a panel moderated by Buzz Knight of Greater Media, and they talked about the direction of in-car experiences, the digital dashboard, and what will be coming next to the dash of the car....Then, suddenly, this statement was heard:

"AM and FM are being eliminated from the dash of two car companies within two years and will be eliminated from the dash of all cars within five years."

I asked for verification from Buzz Knight, Greater Media's Vice President for Program Development, via Twitter. He's the only person Rhoads mentions by name in his story.

Rhoads insinuates that General Motors (and Chevrolet in particular) are on the ditch-radio frontier – a statement Knight says is "not true." Although Radio Ink has posted conference highlights to its YouTube channel, there's nothing in those clips to substantiate this report.

So what do we really have here?

Radio Ink's worries about radio's loss of relevancy, especially in the car, are valid. It's a fact that streaming broadband is coming to vehicles – though it's really been there for as long as people could tether smartphones to the dashboard. That is fundamentally changing media consumption practices on the road. It is also true that automakers work on a multi-year development cycle, so decisions on what to include in new vehicles have already been made.

But just what do automakers gain by removing radio as an infotainment option? Relative to the cost of development and construction, radio is a cheap feature to add and does have some utility, especially in emergencies when wireless broadband networks fail and radio stations remain on the air.

Rhoads also suggests that if radio remains in the car, it will only be via HD: "Whether these same companies will still offer HD Radio needs to be addressed -- it may or may not be part of their plans. If it is, you'll be forced to upgrade to HD to reach people in new cars."

This won't happen. HD technology doesn't work that way. The HD receiver system is designed to work with both analog and digital radio signals. There's no margin – and no reason – to separate one from the other in the receiver system.

That said, it's not like HD is catching fire, in vehicles or elsewhere. Arbitron recently reported that FM-HD multicasts reach a whopping 3.6 million people per week, or 1.5% of the overall U.S. radio audience. If automakers were to ditch radio because they consider it unpopular, they wouldn't keep just HD.

Radio is likely to remain in the dashboard for the foreseeable future, though it's certainly not out of the realm of possibility for specific automotive models with specific option levels to go without. Whether radio remains a regularly-used infotainment option among the growing plethora of choices that now exist is a whole other matter.

Following the FCC action, Clemons walked from Boston to Washington, D.C. to lobby for the Local Community Radio Act, which opened the door to an expansion of LPFM (though it still bars pirate broadcasters from a path to legality).

Despite the fine, Touch FM remains on the air today. There is no indication that Clemons has appealed or paid the fine...nor any evidence that the FCC is pursuing collection.

Clemons doesn't have much of a platform as of yet, and by all accounts he's a long-shot candidate. It will be interesting to see whether Touch FM takes a position in the race: FCC rules prohibit broadcasters from officially endorsing a particular candidate, but considering that Touch operates without a license, there's no reason for it to abide by such content-based regulation.

In exchange, broadcasters will pay Sprint 30% of any "interactive" advertising revenue generated via the app on those phones. Emmis sweetened the deal by pledging Sprint $45 million in advertising inventory over three years ($15 million per year, allocated quarterly).

What, exactly, are broadcasters paying for? There are about 50 million customers on Sprint's network. Taking into consideration that many customers have multiple devices, and an average smartphone "upgrade" cycle of two years, radio's actual penetration into Sprint's customer base will be marginal.

From a broader perspective, Sprint claims less than a quarter of the U.S. wireless market. When you factor in the projected growth of smartphones over the life of the deal, Sprint's commitment to 30 million devices is relative peanuts.

Emmis negotiated the deal directly with Sprint over the course of 2012, though Radio World reports that Emmis "is busy rounding up commitments" from other broadcasters to help shoulder its costs. CEO Jeff Smulyan casually suggested that "[i]f every broadcaster gives up $10,000 worth of inventory per year per station, [the Sprint deal] will easily take care of itself." He also says Emmis is attempting to strike similar deals with the larger carriers (like AT&T and Verizon), which may carry larger commitments.

Note that the Sprint deal requires no upfront cash outlay and promises the sharing of unquantifiable future revenue. It's the same template the broadcast industry used to promote HD Radio over the last decade. In that case, a coalition of broadcast conglomerates pledged more than a billion dollars' worth of advertising inventory to promote the technology; the fruits of that effort are a broadcaster adoption rate of ~15% and listener uptake in the single digits.

Emmis will also administer the NextRadio app and collect Sprint's revenue share. As its developer, Emmis plans to license the app to other broadcasters, who will also pay the company "a small management fee" for its back-end systems management.

The quality of NextRadio will determine its success– and there's not a lot of firm info on just what the app brings to the table beyond interactive advertising opportunities. Content and actual utility drive the use of apps, and sketchy details on that front leave one to wonder. Yet Emmis' Chief Technology Officer Paul Brenner sees dollar signs: "Mobile ad spending is the growth business for technology right now," he told Radio World.

iBiquity Digital Corporation President/CEO Bob Struble is similarly "thrilled" with the Sprint deal, because analog FM smartphone penetration lays the groundwork for an eventual "upgrade" to HD Radio, advancing one aspect of the four-pronged strategy the technology's proponents have to resuscitate interest in it.

Emmis and NAB Labs have already developed a prototype smartphone with FM-HD reception capability, but it's likely to be a while before they actually exist. It's another function of money: iBiquity estimates that adding HD to a phone will cost between $2-4 per device. As a rule, device-makers don't like to spend more than 40 cents to add a feature; in comparison, the analog FM chipset and firmware costs just pennies per unit.

Radio's migration into other devices is part of the medium's future, but the Sprint deal has more value as a symbolic commitment than in its potential for transformative return. All paths of transition must start somewhere...but is this deal meaningful or sustainable enough?

Called Radiogram, the service uses digital encoding to transmit text and images via analog shortwave broadcasts. The transmissions themselves sound much like old dial-up modems (at root the technologies are identical, in that both involve the conversion of data to audio), but when decoded on an equipped receiver or computer the text and images appear.

Not a new concept, but it's the first instance of its deployment on shortwave. Amateur and pirate broadcasters use it regularly; for example, many shortwave pirates end their transmissions with slow-scan TV images.

The idea behind Radiogram is to facilitate the spread of vital information in areas of the world where communications are restricted. Shortwave provides massive range – and the technology works remarkably well even in conditions where reception of regular programs are degraded, including jamming.

The software needed to decode the transmissions remains to be consolidated and simplified for mass use, but that work is underway.

The Voice of America is currently producing a lengthy program to further explain and promote Radiogram, which will include sample transmissions. They hope to recruit shortwave listeners from around the world to decode the broadcast and report the results – a crowdsourced listening test of the new system.

This program will originate from the VOA's Edward R. Murrow Transmitting Station in Greenville, North Carolina with an airdate TBA. At present, test Radiogram broadcasts are taking place on Bulgarian shortwave station KBC, though they will be moving to a facility in Nauen, Germany next month.

Today, we learned that this EAS hack was not a localized event. Public and commercial television stations in Michigan apparently broadcast the same warning; Radio World reported that other television and radio stations around the country also discovered the message in their EAS systems and some were able to prevent it from airing.

The National Association of Broadcasters, in passing along an advisory from the FCC about the EAS hack, suggests the event played out in "several states." The FCC and FBI are reportedly investigating.

The Emergency Alert System is a complicated network with many parts. Originally just a daisy-chain of broadcast stations throughout the country, the system now interfaces with internet servers, which makes station-level EAS systems accessible outside the station. The system is designed to promulgate such messages far beyond radio and television, to smartphones, tablets, road signs, and other info-outlets.

From what we know presently, hackers penetrated the EAS systems at the individual station-level and inserted the bogus zombie alert there. The fact that stations across the country were affected suggests that they were systematically probed. Those vulnerable hadn't changed the passwords on their EAS interfaces from the factory default. Thus, as far as hacks go, this one was pretty simple and straightforward.

Even so, it demonstrates that information-security vulnerabilities exist within the U.S. broadcasting system. A zombie-warning is infinitely less disruptive than, say, an Emergency Action Notification message, which would be carried by every single broadcast, cable, and phone provider nationwide. (It would also require hackers to penetrate much further up the EAS network chain.) While the potential of this might be disturbing, it'd be transitory – EAS messages give a hacker mere seconds of control over a radio or television station.

But radio and television stations are automated and networked in many different ways. Those who now operate and program broadcast outlets can be hundreds of miles away from the actual station. Regular maintenance of our broadcast infrastructure occurs almost wholly via remote control. Engineers have been using such systems to monitor and regulate transmitter operation for decades (first via touch-tone phone, now via internet connection).

On the programming front in radio alone, Clear Channel employs regional and format-specific program directors who each maintain the playlists of several stations from wherever they may be based, including the corporate HQ in San Antonio, Texas. For more than a decade now, program hosts have used voicetracking – uploading pre-recorded breaks into station computers, which makes the station sound live and local when it's not. And some stations have outsourced their advertising traffic management responsibilities to freelancers.

Long gone are the days when the folks you hear and see on your local broadcast outlets actually have to be there. These also present many other possible remote access vulnerabilities, and they suggest a variety of potential outcomes: fake commercials, news/weather reports, and public service announcements; the replacement or deletion of programming on a wholesale scale; and, yes, even the possible hijacking of a station's actual transmitter.

The scale of these potential vulnerabilities is wholly unknown. Broadcasters admittedly are not keen to talk about it, and there's been no formal audit of network security in the industry as a whole. The chance of a nationwide broadcast hijacking is infinitesimal, but nothing's impossible.

That said, there's also been a growing dilemma within broadcasting over the aging of its engineering workforce, many of whom are better-qualified to mess with RF than IT. Some broadcast engineers predict that the future of the profession will more resemble a network manager than a transmitter-caretaker. Today, the job already calls for maintaining multiple station facilities. Does the personnel and expertise exist to promote best practices of network security in broadcasting?

The FCC itself is not exactly a poster-child for this: in 2011 it discovered that its own computer systems had been heavily breached...and a $10 million project to harden them didn't fix all the problems.

The EAS hacks should be a wake-up call not only about the fundamental security of our system of broadcasting, but also about the deleterious structural changes in the industry which have exacerbated the likelihood of these problems actually manifesting themselves.