Technology360

HD Radio's critics

Kurt Hanson and Mark Ramsey -- others, too -- continue to take shots at HD Radio (see Black Friday for HD Radio in hear2.0).  At its present state of deployment by iBiquity, the CE world and us broadcasters, those shots are probably deserved.  Multicasting was an improvement and there are some neat enhancements in development.  But the HD Radio vision needs revitalizing even before it's reached a single digit percentage of market share.

Revitalizing means rethinking radio along lines that are making its non-transmitter competitors so attractive to so many (or maybe I should say too attractive to too many).  We need to retool HD Radio as an open platform, something that its SMIL mark-up language encourages.  I've written here in the past about one way to do it (apparently to zero effect) that I was calling a many-to-many radio, but I'm sure there are others.  Give each radio station program channels limited only by how much of both kinds of IP they can buy.  Then give each listener the ability to customize channels to his or her preferences and listening habits.  This isn't brain surgery, folks.

Great minds think alike update.  I'd just posted the above when I ran across John Proffitt's very good post, iBiquity: How a closed-source model is killing HD Radio.  Covers much of the same ground as mine, but more thoughtfully.  Link:  Gravity Medium.  --Dennis

The end for digital radio - or the start of a listening revolution?

And we thought that the Brits were doing digital radio right.

Owen Gibson and Katie Allen write:

Millions of people who have invested in new digital radios were yesterday wondering whether they would be left with little more than expensive ornaments after Britain's biggest commercial radio group all but abandoned the medium.  ¶  The owner of Capital Radio, Classic FM and Xfm was an enthusiastic champion of digital audio broadcasting (DAB) under its previous management, spending an estimated £80m on new transmitters and stations. ...

... Claiming the medium was "not economically viable", GCap will concentrate instead on its existing FM services and innovations in online listening such as technology allowing iPhone users to hear its stations. It hopes the moves will save £8.8m a year and help fend off a takeover approach from a rival group, Global Radio. ...

... With commercial players coming under pressure from the internet and the dominance of the BBC, some also claim they have failed to invest in creative new formats. The provision of digital radio in cars has been undermined by a lack of support for the medium in other European countries. And a vocal minority of listeners has complained about sound quality, claiming an early decision to compress the signal to allow for more stations has left it worse than FM. Coverage outside the main cities can also be patchy. The technology reaches 80% of the population but only covers 65% of the UK. ...

Link:  The Guardian.  --Dennis

On the continuing end of broadcasting as usual

Doc Searls writes:

... PORS (my new initialism for Plain Old Radio Service: AM/MW, FM, shortwave) is growing ever more anachronistic — and so are efforts either to A) give it with a digital gloss (as do the IBOC digital enhancements to AM and FM, which have made listening worse on old radios while reaching too damn few new ones), or B) replace it with something new developed decades ago (such as DAB), while still sounding like regular old radio stations (while listeners are moving by the millions to iPods and other alternatives over which they are the ones in control). ...

Link: Doc Searls Weblog.  If you're attending the Public Media 2008 conference in L.A. this week, you can ask Doc about this.  He's going to be joining Rafat Ali and Diane Mermigas on a "Technology and Trends" panel I'm moderating on Thursday.  --Dennis

Nationalizing the HD Radio stations

Larry Rosin of Edison Media Research writes:

... What can the radio industry do to get people to "want their HD?" ...

... I have a more radical proposal: Instead of marketing the local HD options, we should be nationalizing the HD radio stations.  ¶  Think about it. Right now, the overwhelming majority of HD stations are barely-produced, barely-tended jukeboxes. The HD Alliance worked to create a system to put formats on that were additive instead of duplicative, in most places. And that's great. But if there is no Alternative station in your market, what would be more compelling? A no-DJ Alternative jukebox? Or KROQ in Los Angeles? Yes, with the traffic updates, Lakers scores, and everything else. My instincts say: KROQ in a landslide. ...

Link:  The Infinite Dial (originally published in Radio & Records).  --Dennis

Radio has picture perfect future

Spencer Kelly has an article that talks about what radio broadcasters in the UK are doing using their digital capacity to enhance radio broadcasting.  He writes:

... As a station for the UK's fashion conscious, up-to-the-minute, MySpace-ing youth, Radio 1 is already trying to fulfil its audience's visual expectations by providing pictures for the digital TV screen, even filming the concerts they broadcast.  ¶  They and other broadcasters are trying find the right pictures to accompany the sound, anything from comedian Russell Brand's rants to a YouTube camera during his radio show to information like the station logo and track data.  ¶  For commercial broadcasters they now have the opportunity to show adverts on the screen with click-throughs to the advertisers' websites. ...

Link:  BBC News.  --Dennis

Is Terrestrial Radio Destined to Die?

... asks Celeste Headlee for National Public Radio's Day to Day program.  Here's the set-up:

The Federal Communications Commission is expected to decide next week whether satellite radio companies Sirius and X-M can merge. Satellite radio has roughly 20 million listeners, but new technologies are posing a challenge to market shares.  ¶  Celeste Headlee reports on the development of portable Internet radio. Then NPR's Alex Cohen gets a primer from Wilson Rothman, an editor at Gizmodo.com on the difference between leading radio technologies and Madeleine Brand talks with Mark Ramsey, president of Mercury Radio Research, about why the emergence of new technologies won't spell the end for terrestrial radio.

And you can listen to the audio at this NPR link (0:12:24).  The interview with Ramsey is particularly good.  Thanks to Roger Johnson for the heads up.  --Dennis

Wired tests four HD Radio models

The October issue of Wired tests four HD Radio models, the Cambridge SoundWorks 820HD (8 of 10 dots), the Polk Audio Designs HDX3 (7 dots), the Sangean HDR-1 (6 dots), and the Radiosophy HD100 (4 dots).  Note that the tests seem to have been for usability and sound only, not how well the radios actually pick up the HD Radio signal and, with HD Radio, that's important.  The inexpensive Radiosophy unit and the two I mention below all test well in that area.  Link:  Wired.

Note that there are many other HD Radio models on the market.  For example, at the lower price range there is the Boston Acoustics Receptor Radio HD that I have on my desk at the office and the Accurian Tabletop HD Radio sold by RadioShack.  --Dennis

Digital broadcasting set to transform communication landscape by 2015

  In the U.S., virtually all writing about the digital broadcasting transition is framed in marketplace terms.  Often, this commentary has a pessimistic spin as did an article in the Charlotte Observer from the NAB Radio Show that I posted on Thursday, Bad times ahead for terrestrial radio.  However, in Europe and some other parts of the world, the benefits of the transition are seen in more social democratic terms, as in this press release from the International Telecommunications Union in Geneva:

A treaty agreement was signed today at the conclusion of ITU’s Regional Radiocommunication Conference (RRC-06) in Geneva, heralding the development of ‘all-digital’ terrestrial broadcast services for sound and television. The digitalization of broadcasting in Europe, Africa, Middle East and the Islamic Republic of Iran by 2015 represents a major landmark towards establishing a more equitable, just and people-centred Information Society. The digital switchover will leapfrog existing technologies to connect the unconnected in underserved and remote communities and close the digital divide. ...

Link:  ITU.  Thanks to David Liroff for the link.  --Dennis

The impact of wireless Internet on radio listening

Bridge Ratings is out with another interesting report, this one on the impact of emerging wireless Internet services (WiMax, et al.) on traditional radio listening.  It caught my eye because I've been advocating, so far without much success, marrying these devices with HD Radio to expand channels available to listeners via terrestrial radio.  This report suggests it will impact TSL of both terrestrial and satellite stations:

... By year 5 of in-car Wi-Fi acceptance, traditional radio can expect to see the amount of time spent listening to fall below 19 hours a week and by year 8 when we project that more than 23% of the U.S. public will have adopted wireless Internet technology in-car, weekly time spent listening to traditional radio will fall below 18 hours per week.  ¶  What about satellite radio? ¶  Satellite radio has found its greatest audience in-car but has the most to lose with wireless Internet radio reception. This study as well as previous Bridge Ratings studies conducted for the satellite radio industry, show that satellite radio subscribers consumer satellite radio at a far greater weekly rate than do listeners to traditional radio.  ¶  As wireless in-car becomes more accepted, weekly time-spent-listening to satellite radio will also be impacted. ...

Link:  Bridge Ratings.  --Dennis

Tagging and HD Radio

No, this isn't tagging in the Web sense, as in "folksonomy" (del.icio.us, et al.), but rather new capabilities built into certain HD Radio receivers that will enable listeners who are using those receivers to listen to stations that are encoding their music in a certain way to tag songs as they hear them and have those data sent to iTunes for purchase of the songs.

Two recent articles in Radio World describe the process:

From Polk, JBL Radios Combine HD-R, iPod & iTunes Tagging:

... Using Apple iTunes tagging, users can buy songs they hear on HD Radio stations. The radio stores information about the tagged songs to its memory and transfers the tags to an iPod when docked. When the consumer connects the iPod to his/her computer, iTunes automatically presents the songs in a new Tagged play-list for the consumer to preview, buy, and download. ...

Link:  Radio World.

And from ‘Go Commerce’ Available for iTunes HD-R Tagging and Analog RDS:

... Jump2Go Founder/CTO Allen Hartle told Radio World that with its proprietary technology, the company is the sole provider of the behind-the-scenes service that synchronizes a staion’s programming with the iTunes unique song identifiers that make RDS and HD Radio “tagging” possible. This is in addition to iTunes-based e-commerce fulfillment on station Web sites.  ¶  The tagging service for Apple iTunes and HD Radio begins with a station’s automation system, using BE’s The Radio Experience software relaying on-air events to the Jump2Go data center for “tagging.” The Jump2Go service assigns the unique iTunes identifier to each song and then the tag data is inserted into the IBOC bitstream. (For RDS tagging, songs get two identifying numbers, one for iTunes and another Jump2Go number that the company could use for other MP3 player song services such as the Microsoft Zune in the future, Hartle said.) ...

Link:  Radio World.

Mark Ramsey, an HD Radio skeptic, seems to think they're nuts in a post, And the good ideas keep on coming...  Link:  hear 2.0.

This does have a sort of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" feel to it, though it does provide an interesting new avenue for revenue and another incentive for people to buy HD Radio receivers.  I'm inclined to support it, though, since I'm attracted to the idea of marrying HD Radio and Internet radio in one box and we need all the incentives for people to get started in HDR that we can find.  --Dennis