Radio World has awarded Paul Brenner its 2012 Excellence in Engineering award. Brenner, the senior VP and chief technology officer for Indianapolis-based Emmis Communications, has been the industry’s latest point-person regarding innovations involving HD Radio. He’s led the development of a prototype smartphone with FM-HD reception capability as well as an application that melds radio reception with “value-added” content delivered over the cellular network.
Brenner’s also president of the Broadcaster Traffic Consortium – an alliance of some two dozen radio companies who, along with NPR, are exploring ways to use digital radio signals to deliver real-time traffic information. Brenner estimates that there are about 12 million navigation devices in use that utilize radio to receive traffic data, and that figure’s growing by about 1-2 million per year. Continue reading “HD Radio's Latest "Killer App" Isn't Radio”
Category: Digital Radio
Beware Broadcasters' Post-Sandy Opportunism
One month ago today, those of us in NYC and the surrounding area were hunkering down and riding out a storm named Sandy. As conditions worsened and disruptions in communications technologies multiplied, people did something they don’t often do en masse anymore: they turned to radio to find out what was going on.
A few radio stations did provide an informational and emotional lifeline, demonstrating that the medium still has an important role to play in our modern media environment. The ubiquity of broadcasting, coupled with the ease of access to it (no device necessary save for a cheap receiver, no contracts, no terms of service) made radio the go-to medium after almost everything else stopped working. Continue reading “Beware Broadcasters' Post-Sandy Opportunism”
Future of AM: Decided in Secret?
There’ve been more developments regarding the radio industry’s potential plans for “modernizing” the AM band. Radio World reported last month that the NAB’s Radio Technology Committee and CBS have selected an unnamed AM station “in an area that could be characterized as a medium-sized market” to be a guinea pig for all-digital AM-HD Radio test broadcasts.
This is the first of “three or four” AM stations that may be tapped to test the all-digital protocol. The experiments are likely to be done by an “outside engineering contractor” and primarily financed by HD’s developer, iBiquity Digital Corporation. They could begin before the end of the year. Continue reading “Future of AM: Decided in Secret?”
Diverging Perspectives on the Future of AM
Nobody really quite knows what the National Association of Broadcasters’ AM Task Force is up to, but speculation surrounding their work has sparked some interesting discussion about the state and future of the oldest of the broadcast radio bands.
The Task Force seems to be considering two primary ideas for “revitalizing” AM broadcasting. One is to phase it out completely and migrate all AM stations to new spots on the FM dial. The other involves a wholesale conversion of AM broadcasting from analog to digital, using AM-HD as the mechanism. Continue reading “Diverging Perspectives on the Future of AM”
Radio Advertisers' Digital Dilemma
Broadcasters are touting the fact that, after a multi-year slump, advertising revenue is looking up. The Radio Advertising Bureau reports that advertisers dropped more than $3.7 billion (estimated) on spots in the second quarter of 2012 – representing a total investment of $6.8 billion for the year so far, and up 1% from 2011. The fastest-growing segment where advertisers are spending their money is in the digital realm: up 7% this year compared to last.
This does not, however, mean that those who are in charge of allocating radio advertising dollars are necessarily satisfied with what they get for their investment. An illuminating compendium of video interviews with media buyers, produced by Edison Research, suggests that radio lags far behind in its knowledge and exploitation of the digital media environment. Continue reading “Radio Advertisers' Digital Dilemma”
CEA Throws iBiquity a Bone?
One of the factors that’s hindering the proliferation of digital radio broadcasting in the United States is the reluctance of consumer electronics manufacturers to actually commit to making HD Radio-compatible receivers. Stand-alone receivers are nearly impossible to find in stores; only one portable model currently exists; and auto manufacturers are not exactly racing to embrace the technology.
This reluctance has been well-reflected in digital radio policy discourse. The Consumer Electronics Association, the trade group that represents receiver-manufacturers, has been critical of HD Radio for more than a decade now. Early on in the FCC’s deliberations over digital radio, CEA backed a standard that would have created a new-spectrum digital radio service; it was highly skeptical that HD would work as promised and was not happy with its wholly proprietary nature. Continue reading “CEA Throws iBiquity a Bone?”
ZoneCasting Prepares Further Field Trials, Eyes Official Launch
Radio World reports that GeoBroadcast Solutions, the company behind “ZoneCasting” technology, will commence long-term field trials on a station in southeast Florida this fall and is preparing for a “commercial launch” as of now left undefined.
[For those just tuning in, ZoneCasting uses FM booster stations to break up a full-power station’s primary coverage area into “zones,” each one covered by its own booster. This allows the parent station to program each zone separately, offering geo-targeted advertisements, news, community information, and emergency messages.] Continue reading “ZoneCasting Prepares Further Field Trials, Eyes Official Launch”
LPFM vs. HD Radio: The Curious Case of KGIG
At the turn of the twenty-first century, proponents of HD Radio sold the technology to the FCC by claiming that it used “no new spectrum.” Advocates of low-power FM (LPFM) radio made a spirited but ultimately unsuccessful challenge to this claim. They worried that the digital sidebands of FM-HD signals would interfere with the new wave of community stations the FCC was preparing to unleash. HD supporters dismissed these concerns.
Ten years after both HD and LPFM took to the air, the conflict between the two services is crystal clear.
Brad Johnson is a lot like me: a former participant in the corporate media who made the decision to step away from it following the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. One of the careers decimated by post-Telecom radio consolidation was broadcast engineering – Brad was the chief engineer at several Citadel and Clear Channel-owned stations in central California until he was let go in the repeated rounds of downsizing the companies conducted during their station-buying frenzy. Continue reading “LPFM vs. HD Radio: The Curious Case of KGIG”
All-Digital AM-HD Testing Planned
From the doubling-down department: the National Association of Broadcasters is recruiting candidates to test iBiquity Digital Corporation’s all-digital AM-HD Radio system.
So far, Beasley Broadcast Group has offered the use of one of its AM stations for the purposes of experimentation, and reportedly two other broadcast companies are also on board. When the tests will be conducted, and which specific stations will be involved, remains to be determined. Continue reading “All-Digital AM-HD Testing Planned”
Broadcasters Still Ambivalent About Streaming
Interesting news out of Saga Communications, a broadcast conglomerate with more than 100 stations in nearly 30 markets. Saga has decided to limit its online-streaming presence to the stations it owns in the top 100 markets.
For those stations that will stream, Saga plans to cap listening geographically, limiting online access to those who actually reside in the stations’ on-air coverage area. In addition, Saga may implement a 90-minute time limit for online listening: listeners will be prompted to click something to continue the stream after the initial session. If they don’t respond, they’re done.
Considering that the majority of Saga’s stations are outside the top 100 markets, this is a significant diminution of the company’s online streaming presence. Saga claims the cost of streaming is prohibitive, as it spends $800,000 per month to provide station streams, while the revenue it generates from them is paltry. Most of this money goes to pay performance royalties on the music it streams.
Contrast this with the actions of radio’s biggest player, Clear Channel, over the last year. Clear Channel’s building what it hopes to be the go-to portal for streaming broadcast radio stations in iHeartRadio.com. Not only has it repositioned its broadcast properties to act essentially as billboards for the company’s online presence, but it’s entered into several agreements with other broadcasters (both commercial and noncommercial) to aggregate their streams exclusively through its portal.
Clear Channel is also taking steps to attempt to control the cost of streaming royalties. Earlier this month, the company broke from the rest of the radio industry, striking a deal with the Big Machine Label Group to pay the first-ever performance royalties for broadcast airplay. In exchange, the company gets a discounted rate for streaming royalty payments to the label. Continue reading “Broadcasters Still Ambivalent About Streaming”