Bonneville has pulled the plug on its iChannel Music HD Network and streaming. For the most part, it has replaced the HD multicast with WorldBand Media content (brokered ethnic programming). iChannel allowed indie bands to upload their music online for consideration. The network included Chicago at 101.9 HD2;
Washington D.C. at 103.5 HD2; Salt Lake City at 102.7 HD2; St. Louis at 101.1 HD2 and Phoenix at 92.3 HD2. The stream is dead, but the site remains: www.ichannelmusic.com.
From the site: “Well today is iChannel’s last day. It’s hard to believe that it’s been 3 years since we started. And I think I speak for everyone here when I say no matter how disappointed I am at the moment, I wouldn’t trade my time here for anything in the world. I’ve had the opportunity to work with some extremely cool and talented people over the past few years and made some life-long friends.
So I just want to say thanks to everyone that’s been a part of making my time at iChannel so special…Ken, Kane, Rider, Virg, JK, Huck, Big Red, Dante, Aimster, Presly, Sky, Julie, Logan, AC, Matt, Eric, Sammy, Jamie, Zip, Christy, Josh, the other interns whose names I never bothered to learn, and the corporate folks who made it all possible. It was a pleasure working with all of you. And also thanks to all of the bands. (Don’t worry…not going to mention all of them by name). And finally, thanks to everyone who tuned in to iChannel, checked out the website, or came to our events. Without you, we would have just been talking to ourselves.”
RBR/TVBR observation: If it isn’t making money, the plug will get pulled. That’s what most likely happened here. WorldBand Media brings in the dollars instead. We commend Bonneville for giving it a shot—it allowed radio to expose a lot of new, unsigned indie bands from around the world. CC Radio’s eRockster HD2 format is still around at a good handful of stations and still outstanding. If that gets shuttered, a good bunch of us just might be done with HD Radio listening altoghether.
