When I saw the recent article about “quiet locations” for the FM band, it reminded me of 1980s field testing we conducted on prototype vehicles to examine the real-world impact of vehicle-generated RF noise on FM radio reception.
Our goal was to start from a location somewhere in the U.S. while listening to an FM station and to drive away until the signal was unlistenable without first- or second-adjacent interference or another co-channel signal captured the receiver before its usable sensitivity limit was reached. We also strived for a low or no multipath environment.
Once at that point, we would kill the vehicle electronics with the exception of the radio to see how much better, if any, reception was. We did this with multiple stations over a period of several days.
Our starting point was North Platte, Neb., driving north toward Valentine. I chose that route for our experiments in the early 1980s based on a manual analysis of FCC databases long before Longley-Rice was available.
The test vehicles had been measured for radiated and conducted emissions in the lab before the trip, so we knew what the vehicle generated RF interference levels were in advance.
The testing was part of an early electronic control module effort by one of the major U.S. automotive OEMs and their car radio supplier to determine realistic limits for radiated and conducted emissions for vehicle electronic components.
Very few owners would ever experience these weak signal areas but they provided some real world limits of receiver performance, both in the presence and absence of interference.
When I saw Valentine, Neb., on the map in your article, it refreshed the memory of that trip. That was back in the days when car radios were king of the center stack.
LG introduced its Wallpaper TV, described as the world’s thinnest (9 mm), true wireless, OLED TV. This brought to mind my reading long ago of the classic dystopian Ray Bradbury novel “Fahrenheit 451” in which home walls were all covered with video screens. This possibly is not the image LG wanted to convey with its branding.
LG OLED evo W6, “True Wireless Wallpaper TV”
As smart TVs populate homes and offices, LG points out that radio is now included through such apps as LG’s myTuner Radio, pitched as “all you need to listen to more than 50,000 free radio stations and podcasts from more than 200 countries and territories … including the local AM and FM radio stations you can’t live without.”
While actual radio receivers were far and few at CES 2026, a Blaupunkt-branded “jobsite” radio was on display at the Star Glory Limited booth (LVCC, Central Hall — 15813). Star Glory Limited is a licensed developer of products for global brands such as Westinghouse, Kodak, Polaroid, Head, Blaupunkt and Daewoo. There are a number of radios on the market like this intended for use outdoors and in workshops, garages and the like, typically equipped with Bluetooth, an LED light and other nifty features.
Found tucked away in the South Hall was a true domestic radio company. Fuse, headquartered in the City of Industry, Calif., offered retro radio receivers along with vertical turntables that incorporate AM/FM receivers and Bluetooth.
Fuse Vint Radio
Multimedia in the car
I spent a good part of the day thinking about Xperi, given that it is the CES exhibitor most actively talking about anything to do with radio.
Joe D’Angelo of Xperi (LVCC West Hall — 4041) spent time with me discussing DTS AutoStage and HD Radio. Joe has been with Xperi for many years and was one of the founders of its predecessor iBiquity Digital Corp., the company behind HD Radio technology.
Joe and I had a long conversation about radio’s future with the DTS AutoStage dashboard now a reality, and with HD Radio offered by most auto manufacturers. He pointed out that Xperi was promoting radio to the Las Vegas skyline with an LED billboard on the entire side of the new Resorts World hotel.
Courtesy Xperi
DTS AutoStage is an Xperi product aims to unify the connected car in-dash experience, bringing together radio, audio, video and gaming content. DTS AutoStage is global, now with 14 car companies supporting the platform and DTS AutoStage now in 14 million active cars around the world. Nine million of those are in the United States.
In November 2025, DTS AutoStage expanded the capabilities of the analytics Xperi makes available to stations based on approximately 1.5 billion radio measurement events a day.
Asked if DTS AutoStage will be a competitor to Nielsen, Joe demurs, saying “No, we are not. We are a compliment to Nielsen. We are another view into the audience.”
Nielsen, he said, does statistical sampling it extrapolates to represent an entire market. “DTS AutoStage rather gives a very specific actual data set, but for only the car and only the cars that have our technology.”
Joe’s explanation raises the question of whether Xperi would consider selling that data for audience measurement purposes to a third party, say to a competitor to Nielsen, or to Nielsen itself.
Here Joe was less reticent. He pointed out that Xperi has TV viewership data that it gets from its own platforms as well as third parties, and it has a whole business in selling TV viewership data to companies. So with respect to DTS AutoStage data, Joe says “Absolutely, we will. We will enable other aggregators to take advantage of our radio data.”
Video is playing a growing role in the car, and at this show, Xperi is highlighting that Mercedes-Benz is a new DTS AutoStage client and has adopted the nascent DTS AutoStage Video, an in-car video extension of Xperi’s in-home TiVo video service.
DTS AutoStage Video aggregates a number of streaming providers and provides a discovery layer on top, using the metadata surrounding video programming, in a way similar to what a Roku or smart TV does, but for automobiles. For Xperi, TiVo is their aggregator product. In the auto manufacturer realm, BMW adopted DTS AutoStage Video three years ago.
Xperi signage emphasizes the DTS AutoStage Video Service
Does this approach leave radio behind? Joe said that in Xperi’s view, the foundation of DTS AutoStage is broadcast radio. “We support 50, 000 radio stations around the world … OEMs are adopting DTS AutoStage for a better radio experience.”
As I mentioned yesterday, more broadcasters are integrating local video streams into their operations. The incoming Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters President Will Payne stated that he “sees a time where there will be no difference between live video streaming and live radio.”
DTS AutoStage is an integrated platform that supports audio, including broadcast radio, video and gaming. A mom or dad waiting in the carpool line at their local school in Will’s radio markets may be able to view a video replay of their son’s weekend football game.
“Tthere’s no one doing what we are doing for broadcast radio anywhere in the world,” Joe said. Xperi is “taking a broadcast radio signal, creating a live program guide around all that content in the local market and enriching it in a real-time basis with meaningful and accurate metadata.”
Video is a bleeding edge for car companies. For now it is intended for use when the car is parked or for the use of passengers. But Joe observes, “We are getting ready for the day of autonomy,” meaning driverless cars.
Looking at the future data collection capabilities of DTS AutoStage, Xperi has defined over 950 radio markets based upon listening patterns and signal coverage. In its current version offered now to radio broadcasters, Xperi has only published data for the first 250 markets. Its launch metric goal was to get at least 1,000 equipped cars in each of the first markets.
At first, DTS AutoStage only released a broadcaster’s own data to the broadcaster, and did not give comparative data, because broadcasters themselves told Xperi that they did not want anyone else to see the data.
But Joe says that in response to broadcaster requests, Xperi has now started to loosen that limitation. Now DTS AutoStage has a ranker so a broadcaster can see competitive market information.
There are still limitations to the released DTS AutoStage data, however, such as detail for dayparts and audience flow, which currently cannot be seen by competitors.
But broadcasters using the portal will see share, cume, rankers and even TSL, for all the stations in the market. Further, he said, “That could change … at the direction of the radio industry.”
Joe closed on the subject of DTS AutoStage with an admittedly self-serving comment of imagining if there was no DTS AutoStage — which gives car owners graphic and meta-data even for non-HD stations — and HD Radio.
Xperi believes it is making radio competitive with the experience of other platforms. Without DTS Auto and HD Radio, stations would display only with frequency and RDS, which is no competition with the data and images on the Spotify and Sirius/XM screens among others.
This led to a discussion about making some of the HD Radio attributes, such as radio-with-pictures graphics and metadata, available for smaller stations such as FM translators and LPFMs.
Joe pointed out that FM translators and LPFMs can now sign up for DTS AutoStage and have both graphic and metadata displayed irrespective of whether the station has signed up for HD Radio.
He acknowledged that in automobiles that have yet to implement DTS AutoStage, that solution does not yet yield benefits.
Joe pointed out that transmitter manufacturer Nautel has instituted an HD Radio Digital Test Drive that utilizes Nautel’s software-based air chain, resulting in a far lower equipment cost for HD Radio implementation.
I remarked that the software-based air chain only appears to be available on high-power GV2 line of transmitters, which are far outside the power range used by FM translators and LPFMs (and likely not FCC-compliant for low-wattage operations). Joe promised to see what could be done in Xperi’s role as the developer of HD Radio.
“We’re doing everything that we can with the supply chain to make it affordable. We’ve taken our royalties down almost zero. We’ve done software implementations; we’ve done hardware implementations with Nautel,” he said.
Joe said that if lower-power stations, FM translators and LPFMs speak as an industry voice on HD Radio to manufacturers and tell them what the needs are, “we would absolutely support that.”
After my conversation with Joe, Xperi VP of Automotive Engineering Jason Carlock showed me the video implementation of DTS AutoStage in the Xperi BMW X3 M50.
Jason stressed that, to the extent that he and Xperi can influence auto manufacturers in their implementation of DTS AutoStage, there will always be a “radio” icon on the main menu.
Heading out
CES 2026 is now over for me, with a flight back to Washington Thursday morning. But the exhibits remain open through late Friday afternoon.
At CES 2026, artificial intelligence is claimed to be incorporated into almost every new product. Whether the consumer will see AI integration as a selling point or as a personal intrusion is yet to be seen.
As we know, AI at its most robust implementation sucks up personal data in such wide swaths that it makes previous privacy concerns about browsers and credit card use at grocery stores almost laughable.
Data upon which AI functions will live forever. Even Xperi’s DTS AutoStage is collecting dashboard that buses data to function, a collection that Xperi says is anonymously collected.
CES is an industry show in which entities show off their latest to other entities, but the entire exercise is designed to get new products into consumer hands.
In the future, if the consumer wants radio, either as the current linear audio experience or in a product with an expanded definition of audio content, then manufacturers will continue to provide radios.
If the consumer determines that everything currently offered by radio is otherwise available through a more convenient, more exciting or more expansive device, the paucity of actual radios at future CES shows may continue.
For myself, I am far from convinced that any other medium can replicate or supplant the friend that radio stations have been for over 100 years.
For years it has seemed to me that roughly a third of our nation’s radio stations are stars that print money. A third are in a mediocre middle where each day is a business struggle. And a third of radio stations are miserable failures.
Through the years, the radio call signs and radio band in each category have changed dramatically, but I am not at all sure that the basic ratio today is significantly altered.
There are still many stations for which programming, and associated audio and video content, is a success story. It may be up to those radio station stars comprising the top third to continually remind the public, our government, manufacturers, merchants, automobile companies and advertisers, that radio remains vibrant in our expansive CES 2026 multimedia world.
Find more CES coverage of consumer electronics products at the website of our sister brand Twice.
The dashboard of a Mercedes-Benz CLA 250+ model in a promotional image from the carmaker’s website.
In-car video streaming that uses Xperi technology will be highlighted in a new Mercedes-Benz electric hybrid car model at the CES show this week.
The CLA model will be in the Xperi booth, equipped with that company’s DTS AutoStage Video system, based on its TiVo platform.
Xperi says five OEMs have now adopted its video platform. “DTS AutoStage Video is rapidly emerging as a premier video solution for connected cars worldwide,” it said in a press release. Mercedes-Benz also supports Xperi’s HD Radio, DTS AutoStage Audio and DTS:X immersive audio offerings. Xperi says Mercedes-Benz was the first to support DTS AutoStage radio functionality.
The CLA car model will also offer RideVu by Sony Pictures Entertainment, which provides IMAX Enhanced content and DTS:X sound. The CLA uses the company’s MB.Drive technology, developed with Nvidia.
The Xperi booth will be in the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Separately Mercedes‑Benz also will show the latest version of its GLC model; this will include the AI-based MB.OS platform and an optional MBUX Hyperscreen almost 40 inches wide.
The company said the version of the MBUX system in the GLC is the first to integrate AI from both Microsoft and Google. The car also has music streaming through native integrations and Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos in Apple CarPlay.
Connexion
