Rob Pegoraro, a tech reporter for The Washington Post says he's sending back his HD Radio. In a pretty scathing goodbye to his HD set, Pegoraro says the local stations in his area let their HD2 signals go silent.

"Each time, I'd tuned the Recepter to the "HD2" channel of a local radio station -- but the station had allowed this second, digital-only broadcast to go silent for no apparent reason. The first offender was WTOP; instead of its HD2 feed's usual pleasant classical music, I heard silence. Rather, I heard nothing -- with no music to awake me, I enjoyed an extra hour of blissful shut-eye.

WAMU pulled the same stunt a couple of weeks later, silencing its second channel."

Harkening back to the early days of TV, it seems many HD broadcasters are only filling the HD2 airwaves when they have something special to offer. According to WAMU's website, Pegoraro has it all wrong.

"At the moment, WAMU is only broadcasting programming content on one channel - 88.5 FM. During special events, we will use the second channel to bring you programming without interrupting our regular broadcast. After the event, we will continue to broadcast program content only on our main channel."

The other station mentioned in the story, WTOP, barely gives mention to HD Radio on its website, instead burying some HD Radio feelgood marketing deep within the site's structure.

If a tech reporter from The Washington Post finds it too difficult to understand when and what is suppoed to be on HD2 feeds of his local stations, and if the stations themselves barely bother to publish information on what they are making available, what hope does the average listener have? And, just how is anyone ever supposed to start salivating over HD Radio in the U.S.?

[via Washington Post]