Digital Radio in Ireland

Slideshow Demo

Dusty — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:37:21 +0000

The increased choice of radio station you get with DAB is nice but what really makes it sexy is Slideshow.

This is a simple jpg or series of jpg images broadcast along with the audio and displayed on your DAB receiver. It can be as simple as a static station logo or a bit more advanced with several sides showing album artwork for the currently playing song, a studio webcam or something really useful like a graphic weather display or latest traffic information.

Because it’s a simple jpg you can expand it to other platforms such as your iPhone app.

The video below is a demonstration of the Heart (London) iPhone app which does all of what was mentioned above. Look at it and imagine this displaying on your radio.

Sexy ? Damn right!

DAB+ Sells

Dusty — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:10:50 +0000

The Australian is reporting that more than 100,000 digital radios have been sold Down Under in the six months since DAB+ launched there.

The figure, twice as many as expected, was revealed by Frontier Silicon the company which supplies the chips and software for the majority of receivers in the market. Chief Executive of Frontier Silicon, Anthony Sethill, says they expect a further 250,000 sales this year meaning Australia will have 400,000 units in the market by Christmas.

Joan Warner of Commercial Radio Australia said they will “have official figures in March as well as some information on listening and independent research on consumer awareness and attitudes to digital radio”.

Another country rolling out DAB+, Malta, is also reporting very successful take up. Findings published by the Malta Broadcasting Authority show that in just two years digital radio listenership has increased to 10.1%.

Meanwhile in the UK digital radio listening has dipped very slightly. RAJAR figures released last week show a quarterly drop of just 0.2%. Considering Bauer took their two most popular digital stations (The Hits and Smash Hits) off Freeview and Sky, such a small drop is actually a positive sign of the strength of digital.

However most media have jumped on this screaming it’s the beginning of the end. We must remember two things though. First, this is well within the statistical margin of error and secondly, like the economy, we should wait for the results of two consecutive quarters before claiming a “recession” of digital listening.

Radio Scrappage

Dusty — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:52:36 +0000

The Guardian reported yesterday on plans by the UK industry to introduce a radio scrappage scheme similar to the car industry. The plan suggests that people will receive a 20% subsidy on a new DAB set when they hand in their old analogue radio.

This idea is actually quite commonplace. As mentioned the motor industry has its own scrappage/subsidy scheme in place right now. Most times when you buy a mobile phone the real cost is subsidised by the network operator. Sky have almost always subsidised their boxes and if I’m not mistake the same happened with the launch of Freeview in the UK.

Going one better are DBC (Digital Broadcast Corporation) in Hong Kong who are considering manufacturing half a million $20 DAB radios and just give them away! When you consider every business has a cost for acquiring new customers maybe $20 is not so much in the grand scheme of things?

See DAB+

Dusty — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 07:27:46 +0000

Another big advantage of DAB+ is the Slideshow feature which allows broadcasters to display colour images on the listeners radio.

This brings radio kicking and screaming into the multimedia age allowing stations to show useful information such as now playing, weather, news etc as well as station promotions and, yes, even advertising!

Slideshow is a great way of constantly making available information you don’t want repeating over and over and over on-air. One of the biggest listener complaints on music radio is that the DJ’s don’t say the names of the songs. It might be a bit repetitive to do this for every single song on-air but as a Slideshow feature, brilliant! Equally you don’t need to call the weather every 10 minutes on-air but it makes a brilliant Slideshow feature. Station promotions, much as we plug them on-air, doing so every 10 minutes is annoyingly repetitive. On Slideshow, it’s there every 30 seconds. Brilliant!

My good radio friend James Cridland is currently travelling the world finding out more about radio around the globe. This week he is in Sydney and has posted pictures of Slideshow in action in Australia. Though I think the stations could be doing more with Slideshow, it’s a bloody great start.

Check out James’ pictures on Flickr.

Sweden+

Dusty — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:53:43 +0000

The Swedes have become the latest nation to support DAB+ as the future of radio broadcasting.

Teracom, the company which operates the transmission network for public broadcasters in Sweden, is actively pushing for DAB+ to be launched there in the next 12 to 18 months.

Currently they are trialling a DAB+ service in three cities featuring public, commercial and community broadcasters. Like Ireland, they have supplied a panel of listeners with DAB+ receivers, and will include feedback from this panel in their trial results.

The results will then feed back into a review of radio licencing by the Swedish regulator who’ve already received statements from all major broadcasters saying they want digital platforms to be part of future licences.

Teracom pilot project manager Per Werner says the main advantage of DAB+ for Sweden is that it is possible to transmit twice as many stations at half the cost of the analogue network. One of the aims of this DAB+ trial is to show decision makers that the industry is ready for digital radio and that there is demand on government to allow the industry to enter the digital era.

Radio is hugely popular in Sweden where the medium is more widely used on a daily basis than even television or the internet. In a recent survey 45% of Swedes said they would like even more stations on their radios.

FM Decision

Dusty — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 08:01:52 +0000

Good old FM has been knocking around since the 40’s and RTE have been broadcasting on it since the 60’s, However it didn’t become popular in Ireland for another 20 years.

That’s when, in 1981, an entrepreneur called Chris Carey made a decision to base pirate station Radio Nova firmly on FM. He sold the advantages of “clutter free” stereo FM and it was a huge success. So much so that in 1988 the government, when establishing the new legal independent radio sector, made a very big decision to go FM only. Such was the impact of this decision that RTE pre-emtively re-branded its pop music station from Radio 2 to 2FM.

In just seven years Irelands radio industry moved from AM to FM.

Now we are well into the new millennium with a new medium capable of advancing radio as much as FM did all those years ago. Question is: who will have the balls to make the big decision?

Is there hope?

Dusty — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:41:00 +0000

In reply to my last post Is Radio Screwed? my answer is a resounding NO.

The world is changing but it’s changed before. Marconi himself never envisaged radio as a medium for speech or music. It was other inventors who changed radio to the more human friendly sound medium we know today.

In the 50s and 60s television took much of radios golden content and radio once again adapted to the changing times. Now as the internet threatens our advertising lifeblood, radio must adapt once more.

Radio has some evergreen advantages over television and the internet. It’s simple, portable and free. You only need ears to enjoy it, and with a hundred year heritage, radio is an accepted part of everyday life.

It’s not without its faults. Irish station formats are largely based on age profile rather than actual interest. DJ’s still never announce the name of the song that’s just pricked your interest. Radio receivers themselves just aren’t “sexy”.

New digital radios and DAB offer a very bright new future. Building on all the advantages we’ve loved for years digital radios can give you stations based on your interest be it news, jazz, oldies and so on. Most digital radios display the name of the song playing now on the station. Newer digital radios feature a very sexy colour touchscreen. Broadcasters are beginning to use “Slideshow” to display a full colour representation of what’s on air now. That can be anything from artist pictures, station logos, weather maps or God forbid the DJ photo!

Radio as a medium is strong. Digital radio like DAB makes it stronger. It brings our medium into the 21st century with features that people are beginning to expect on electronic devices from televisons to telephones.

Growing and adapting to changing times is a cornerstone of any long-term business. If radio does this we have a future. If we don’t …

Station Guide

Dusty — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 11:41:13 +0000

A neat idea is being floated by the UK government where new radios would display a listing of stations receivable by the radio regardless of whether they’re on FM or DAB.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Mr. Siôn Simon outlined the idea during this weeks debate about the UK governments plans for the future of local radio;

“We are committed to ensuring the implementation of a combined station guide, which is similar to an electronic programme guide, which will simply have a list of station names. The listener will not distinguish between FM and digital stations, but will simply select the station by name. We are already working with the industry on that system and encouraging its development and introduction as quickly as possible.”

While listeners have for decades moved between FM, MW and even LW there is a fear that the move to DAB will create an FM ghetto.

Though not as advanced as DAB, FM is still a very capable system and I believe here to stay for the foreseeable future. 95% of DAB radios also receive FM so the idea of a common station listing across all available bands is brilliantly simple.

Screwed?

Dusty — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:44:49 +0000

The new year got me thinking about how radically things have changed in just one decade.

Ten years ago there was no online music business. Broadband was fantasy. Your mobile phone was for calls and (maybe) text. A tv was a big bulkly box and cable gave you a whole 17 stations (wow!).

Today people have nearly a hundred tv stations to choose from. With Sky+ and DVD box sets they choose what to watch and when to watch it. Today people carry around their entire music collections on their mobile phone. The explosion of laptops and 3G broadband gives high-speed broadband almost anywhere.

Here is the bit that scares me. In a decade of great change radio has stood. Entirely. Still.

Physically it is still just a box with a speaker that does what it did ten years ago. It’s advantage as a source of music has been overtaken by mp3 players and streaming services like Spotify. It’s advantage as a cheap mass-market advertising medium has been taken over by the internet. It’s this that scares me more.

Our whole radio industry is built on selling mass audience cheaply to advertisers. The internet beats us hands down at that game. Money previously going to radio is now starting to go online.

We can’t fight it. This is just the way it is. What we need to do is adapt. This is the bit that scares me the most. We’re not adapting.

If we don’t … we’re screwed.

Euro DAB 2010

Dusty — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 05:52:20 +0000

The beginning of a new year is a good time to look at what’s in store for DAB over the coming months.

The downturn in the economy has unsurprisingly put the brakes on investment in DAB across Europe. However it has not prevented many countries from considering how they will implement digital broadcasting as the economy picks up again.

Ireland
The BAI are due to publish a white paper on how digital broadcasting will progress in Ireland. It’s widely expected they will establish DAB in line with new FM licences due for renewal beginning in 2011.

Meanwhile our company Digital Radio Ltd intend to carry out a new digital radio trial which will test DAB+, Slideshow and signal tests involving new aerial array systems and increased power.

Germany
DAB is more than a new platform in Germany as it will also allow commercial broadcasters to operate nationally for the very first time.

Currently the media authorities in each local state are calling for applications from those who want to provide such a service on DAB. If sufficient qualified commercial applicants come forward they plan to re-launch DAB in early 2011. Two-thirds of the German national multiplex has been allocated to commercial radio with the remainder being taken by the state broadcaster Deutschland Radio.

France
Another interesting case in that the French were adopting a flavour of digital broadcasting known as DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting).

Based on the same standard as DAB (Eureka 147) the French were focusing on the multimedia aspects of digital broadcasting. Such was their enthusiasm that, despite they’re being one of the only countries to adopt the format, DMB was included in the most basic Digital Radio Receiver Profile. This means any radio bought in France will work anywhere in Europe with stations using DAB and vice versa.

However, with the economic downturn, the French are now considering dropping DMB to go with the more common DAB/DAB+ standard.

Despite the French media regulator, CSA, receiving over 300 applications for new digital radio services it’s unlikely they will roll-out until year-end 2010. Michel Boyon, president of the CSA has said “if radio does not go digital, It will slowly decline. Internet radio is very good but it is totally inadequate to meet the demands of listeners.”

Norway
National radio broadcaster NRK needs to completely upgrade it’s FM transmission network in the near future or replace it with digital broadcasting.

Their preference is for the latter and they are strongly campaigning to government to drop FM altogether in favour of digital. In the meantime two national DAB multiplexes are in operation in Norway covering 80% of the population.

United Kingdom
The UK continue to work toward achieving the criteria for analogue switch-off which will see all their national and local radio stations (commercial and BBC) more entirely to DAB. The target date is somewhere between 2015 and 2020.

As always we’ll keep you posted with developments throughout the year and invite you to subscribe to our RSS and Twitter feeds so you can keep up-to-date.