Dale Sharp, IT Admin at River949 (covering SE Queensland), is very proud of the Radio Data System (RDS) software he has written with the help and support of network Chief Engineer Andrew Chapman. And for good reason.

Sharp told radioinfo: “There are no similar systems. I designed the system myself with the use of Linux using the perl programming language. It’s the first of its kind in Australia”

RDS is data that is carried on a sub-carrier alongside the audio information on a radio signal. Information about the station transmitting on that frequency as well as other information is sent on the RDS sub-carrier.

“For example I have the ‘now playing’ with song title and artist scrolling, in a commercial break it displays ‘RIVER949 PLAYS ALL THE HITS… *TEMPS* BNE=xx IPSW=xx TWBA=xx’”(explanation for non-locals: ‘temperatures for Brisbane, Ipswich, Toowoomba’.)

“When you have a home tuner/amp it has a RT (radio text) button and you press it you will receive the top 35 news headlines from around Australia and the world as an RSS feed from news.com.au.”

“The way it works is when Nexgen plays a new song the Linux server notices the change and sends the name of the song up to the RDS encoder at the transmitter. Nexgen is our playout system and it’s one of the few playout programs that allows ‘now playing’ to be done live in real time.”

To appreciate this technology listeners have to have RDS compatible radios.

If they have a BMW Mercedes or one of several other euro cars they have RDS as standard. Also most new head units come with RDS built in. Most home receivers/amps also have RDS.

By the way RDS has no relationship with internet streaming.