Simple and robust methods and apparatus for switching between different types of combining in a receiver in a communication system are disclosed that minimize Layer 1 processing overhead and power consumption. A method of selecting among a plurality of types of combining for received replicas of an information bitstream in a communication system includes the steps of determining a time offset between received replicas; determining a selection threshold; comparing the time offset with the selection threshold; and selecting one of the plurality of combining types based on the comparing step. The system may be a wideband code division multiple access system and the replicas may be included in a multimedia broadcast/multicast service.