I believe if they shut it off, they don’t have to pay the license fee. I believe they also have to pay for each additional sub channel, which is probably why iHeart has been turning them off all over the country. Not making any money to justify the cost. In Hubbard’s case, they turned them back on here because they are being leased out. They did leave Deep Tracks on The Drive’s HD2 although it seems to be missing from 96.9-2 since their HD transmitter went off the air in February. 96.9 tends to have problems with randomly losing it’s HD for a few weeks until they get up here to fix it. When it went back on, they never put the HD2 back.

It’s never been standard practice for the suburban signals to run HD. They never did up here with WIIL or in Waukegan with WXLC. The River did for a few years when the technology was new and somewhat exciting. WZSR also had HD for a minute around that time. Not worth the cost to keep it going long term.

Some HD equipment also supposedly runs really hot. If it gets too hot and there’s not enough cooling in the transmitter room, there can be a problem.