[BC] The usefulness of digital radio

[Robert Meuser]

I changed the subject line to prevent someone mis-editing the previous 
discussion and possibly misquoting me as all too often happens with 
mandated editing.

Over the past years many have wondered what problem a new transmission 
system solves. As is often the case, things do not always end up 
accomplishing what was originally intended The evolution of the original 
AM systems evolved from experimenters and the rules were written on the 
fly as the system evolved.

The development of a digital radio broadcast system in the US was to 
some extent fall out from AM stereo. Nobody I know in this business at 
the time was talking about digital broadcasting until Canadian 
broadcasters announced they were going to deploy the Eureka system. Part 
of the logic was that they at the mercy of the US AM stereo wars and 
wanted no part of something similar in the future. Subsequently the NAB 
got behind that system briefly as well. This prompted a group of 
influential broadcasters to become determined to develop something, 
anything that was not Eureka. This unto itself along with some other 
political maneuvers kept Eureka out of the US and that was already a 
good enough result. That it took 10 years to have a complete system was 
less important. The original intended purpose was to block Eureka and 
there was not much thought put into what else to do with it until later 
when NPR pushed multicasting. Later certain groups set up a 'skunk 
works' style development team to find ways to better leverage the 
technology. Some of those projects are with us today while others are 
still in the works.

At the NAB this year I saw and heard several things that to me is a 
glimpse into what may evolve. At the technology luncheon CNET's Editor 
at Large, Brian Cooley, spoke in general about the convergence products. 
He spoke about how manufacturers are moving more and more in the 
direction of providing consumers with a single device that satisfies all 
their needs. The smartphone platform is one good example while the 
consoles that occupies so much dashboard real estate in the current crop 
of cars is another. His talk dovetailed well with the demo of the Emmis, 
Intel and Ibiquity joint effort to develop a receiver chip for 
smartphones. The work on the user interface was pretty impressive. The 
smart phone could receive off air stations (I tried some not part of the 
demo) and be interactive via the phones' data back channel. There was 
also a limited video capability and the ability to display subtitled 
information. There was also an integration with social media as well as 
the ability to target advertising based on demographic and geographic 
information collected.  With smart phones having approximately a 2 year 
turn over, those equipped to receive digital radio signals with value 
added content could grow much more rapidly in the marketplace than 
depending on consumers making a conscious decision to purchase just a 
radio. Consumers tend to purchase complete solutions rather than 
individual items these days so radio receiver sales are ultimately doomed.

The same capabilities will ultimately end up in the dashboard or at 
least in the rear seat. So this is the logical direction broadcasting 
has to take, integration into a listener's total experience by being a 
bidirectional interactive medium. If this comes to pass it is a major 
game changer. Programmers will have the ability to not only measure each 
individual user listening habits but due to linkage to social media they 
will have more demographic information than was ever possible in the 
past. This is a game changer programming, advertising and the collection 
of ratings information.

Is all this going to happen tomorrow? I think not as the first mountain 
to climb is getting chips in phones. A lot of this is way under cover so 
the very smart people actually working on this are the ones who do not 
appear in press releases and trade magazine articles. When might we know 
more about what is happening? Probably on line the same day all the 
deals are done and a product released, similar to an Apple launch.

What does this mean for the average broadcaster? It means a few things - 
one being to stay abreast of how the technology evolves even if one has 
no intention of adopting it yet. Another is to use the tools available 
to integrate as best as is feasible for station resources with social 
media. For an FM station this could be a simple as using RDS as a tool. 
BE had an interesting demo of that. It also means that those stations 
that have converted to digital should keep it running for as long as 
possible and do what they can with multicast. Fortunately this is not 
like back when FM was evolving where those who waited too long 
discovered there were no more frequencies available. It is more like an 
FM station watching the evolution of stereo since it was simple to 
install a stereo generator at any time.

On the technical side of things the most important technology needed 
right now is a better means of maintaining perfect time alignment 
between analog and digital program streams at all times. I spoke to some 
manufacturers about this and a few are thinking about it. The reason 
this is critically important is that beyond any potential smartphone 
integration, the automatic inclusion in the dashboard environment is 
also very important. This is where perfect time alignment is critical. 
The average listener tends to be much more sensitive to blend than those 
of us in the industry. If the radio jumps back and forth, the car is 
returned. When too many cars get returned, the digital capability will 
not no longer be included.

Another interesting point to consider is the the future of AM being part 
of the evolution is murky. One major technical problem is that 
development of an antenna that can fit in a smartphone is difficult. 
Most manufacturers have other priorities like developing effective 
reception solutions for the myriad of frequencies for voice and 4G data 
on the phone. Those frequencies now span a range from 850 MHz to over 2 
GHz. The bottom line is fewer and fewer devices will have AM capability 
in the future. I am seeing early signs of broadcasters preparing for 
this. In many markets which now include NYC all news and all sports 
stations and AM simulcasts are appearing on FM while the major AM news 
and sports stations have replaced alternate music programming on some 
secondary digital channels. In either case, that puts their content in 
any future smart phones and digital dashboards that may evolve.

I think that now more than ever as people go about their normal routines 
at their stations, which may easily still be all analog end to end, it 
is important to keep the eye on the ball and watch what may be evolving. 
Ultimately it will affect everyone.