[cma-l] Eddie on DAB v FM

Fri Sep 4 12:46:22 BST 2015

Good points… my six pence worth…

There’s too much money and vested interest in DAB for the powers that be to contemplate replacing it with anything else when it's hardly ubiquitous.  

Ian you are right this is ridiculous when radio in the next few years will change significantly, inevitably going IP based and them becoming truly platform independent.  

However, I believe that commercial radio, including community radio will have difficult times (interesting opportunities) ahead because fundamentally the more choice people have the more diluted the revenue stream. A case in point is the radio player – a very useful but clear attempt to focus the listener’s choice to stop them drifting off elsewhere on the internet. 

At some point in the future the IP delivery bandwidth issue will be solved, at which time I think it’s a fair bet that almost all radio will be bespoke – News Ads, and Music will be adjusted to fit the listener’s profile. We’ve had this for a while on the internet with Spotify etc, but Absolute radio’s breakfast show is a good broadcast example and Sky's AdSmart (Ok for TV) is another. 

I also think RAJAR would change (if it existed at all) into a realtime analytics company consolidating radio demographic and IP data traffic into listener profiles for fully automated radio sales.   

Right, must crack on now with some steam radio!

Kind Regards

Alan

Let’s Talk Business 

Twitter - @LTBShow

Web - http://www.LetsTalkBusinessOnline.com

From:  <cma-l-bounces at mailman.commedia.org.uk> on behalf of "transplanfm at hotmail.com"
Reply-To:  "cma-l at mailman.commedia.org.uk"
Date:  Friday, 4 September 2015 09:45
To:  "cma-l at mailman.commedia.org.uk"
Subject:  [cma-l] Eddie on DAB v FM

As we've come to expect - Alex has injected a level of common sense and sanity.
Even the smallest and simplest FM stations have the capacity from a simple cheap RDS encoder to transmit data in their PS, PI, PT and MS codes to identify their programming and stance to receivers - but most either can't or don't use that information without a deal of input from the listener.
So he's right - there's only a lack of application by lethargic and uninspired manufacturers to prevent station selection now by name and also by  four other sorting criteria,.
At the risk of being branded an eternal Luddite, I'll restate my mantra that in the UK we have probably the best terrestrial digital radio infrastructure anywhere with lots of potential spectrum available for use.
We bravely jumped very early and adopted Eureka 147, branded as "DAB" - which is now accepted as archaic and expandable.
No-one else anywhere appears to be prepared to commit to a world-wide system in which manufacturers can have total confidence.
Are we not now in a position where we can make the next bold jump to convert our comprehensive but tired DTR system to a new format - and again show the world the way?

Ian Hickling
Partner

Office: 01635 578435  (7am-11pm UK time)
Carphone: 07530 980115 (only responds when driving)
6 Horn Street, Compton, NEWBURY, RG20 6QS

From: tlr at gairloch.co.uk
To: cma-l at mailman.commedia.org.uk
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 2015 18:34:12 +0100
Subject: Re: [cma-l] by the way - Eddie on DAB vs FM

Exactly Glyn, but that isn't the situation unfortunately.

When the '50% of all listening digital' and the DAB 'tick mark' criteria were being consulted on, I submitted that it should also be a requirement that all radios tune by default using the names of available stations, regardless of whether they were on FM or DAB, but this has not been done, so there will an increasingly tilted playing field.

As you know, there is no reason any FM radio shouldn't tune by name just like DAB (using RDS to get the names). My old car radio does this by default as well as showing current show titles. 

There's also no technical reason, and only a tiny financial one, why pause/rewind/programme info, even 'playing now', shouldn't be supported on FM reception just as well as on DAB. I have a 12 year old pocket MP3 player with FM radio that offers record/pause/rewind on FM and the whole thing cost only $10 even then.

Given the extra production costs would be tiny compared with the larger profit margins on DAB sets compared to commodity FM sets, an obvious reason for why DAB set manufacturers don't generally do these things is that it would take some of the shine of the supposed benefits of DAB! The government should have mandated it if it was serious about a level playing field for FM and DAB.

Alex

----- Original Message ----- 

From:  Associated Broadcast  Consultants 

To: The Community Media Association  Discussion List 

Sent: Thursday, September 03, 2015 11:16  AM

Subject: Re: [cma-l] by the way - Eddie  on DAB vs FM

Eddie,  In a true multi-platform future that James  envisages, the radios will tune independently of channel - ie: in theory all  DAB and FM (and possibly internet) stations in one list.  The listener  should not need to know about the underlying technology delivering the  services. 

Big "IF" - IF the manufacturers implement multi-platform properly.

Glyn

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