This week radioinfo takes an international viewpoint on technical support services for the radio industry in this feature interview.

2004 will be a year where new technology will be required to help the radio industry counter challenges from competitors who think they can do it better, cheaper and smarter. Stations will need all the help they can get from companies which understand how radio works.

radioinfo spoke with the Chief Executive of international radio technology company RCS, Philippe Generali about the effect of technology in the radio industry and the way one of the world’s leading international technology companies is keeping up with the pace of progress in this industry.

He covered many topics from the new developments in his own company, to the impact of digital services worldwide. Generali is based in the RCS headquarters in New York.

radioinfo: Your new product, Music point seems to have taken off quickly in Australia. Are we the first country to get this service?

Generali: Yes. Australia has always been keen to take up new offerings from RCS, it was one of the first countries outside the US to introduce Selector on a large scale when we first put that out years ago. Musicpoint seems to be taken up with the same enthusiasm.

It has been received well as a method where record companies can deliver songs electronically to stations around the country quickly and cheaply, and the fact that the song data is also delivered means that it is easy for the music director to input the song to Selector.

radioinfo: Will it be introduced in the US next?

Generali: We will roll it out in smaller countries first and it will be in the UK soon. The US will take more time, because format is more important here and the number of labels being offered by the record companies is also a factor. Each label here wants its own identity, so we will have to organise Musicpoint by format and label in this country, rather than the way we are doing it for other markets.

Our philosophy is that we want to develop products which help stations manage the whole lifecycle of their content. When we introduced Selector that improved the scheduling functions for music directors once they had received a song. Since then we have developed Master Control to flow from scheduling to air-play. Musicpoint allows us to go back to the stage before scheduling and offer help there too, by facilitating the flow of product from the record company to the station. We also are developing other products which also slot into that chain.

radioinfo: This philosophy is not just limited to music, you also have some products which manage the flow of information content on talk stations.

Generali: You mean ‘Talkback’ our caller management product for talk radio stations (pictured in operation at WOR FM New York).

Yes, that allows producers to track callers and store data about the caller’s last interaction with the station. Did they make sense, were they good talent, did they talk too long, and so on. With this system, which is linked to caller ID on telephones, it puts a lot more power in the hands of the producer and talk show host to be able to make the best use of their callers.

It gives the producer a way to filter and build a database of callers by characteristics, and manage them in a similar way to scheduling music – choosing a mix of funny, serious and controversial callers just like you would mix a range of songs across an hour (closeup below).

radioinfo: What do you think of internet radio. Is it a long term viable option for broadcasters?

Generali: With internet radio there are two models – subscription and advertising.

Subscription is difficult because, as a rule, internet users are in the habit of getting things for free, so it is a complex issue to make them pay. We have seen, from our contact with radio stations, that it has worked for specific content such as news radio stations during disasters like Iraq and September 11. There is also a niche market for sports content. It seems to be viable to get people to pay for that sort of content.

With the advertising model, ads are coming out of some rough years, so it will take time for internet radio websites to get a hold of this segment of the market. There is also not much profit in this business model because the cost per listener is high compared with other media.

It’s going to come, but it won’t be easy. Here in the US there are restaurants and coffee shops like Starbucks which give free wireless broadband connections to people who come in with their laptops and their smart phones, so it will come.

The internet is leaving the desktop PC and going on the road through laptop innovations like this and things like portable organizers and digital assistants. Internet radio might, in the long term, be more viable than satellite radio once you can use it just as you can traditional radio. At that point it will gain a massive audience. Clear Channel can see that and two out of three Clear Channel stations are now turning back on their internet streaming because they can see a way of making a profit from it.

radioinfo: You mentioned Satellite Radio, which brings me to the question of digital radio in the USA, which is being marketed as High Definition Radio. Australia is getting into digital radio and the US digital radio services might provide some lessons for what is possible. What are your observations of digital radio in the USA?

Generali: HD [digital terrestrial] Radio will be a value added service for listeners who want extra data, but I have to warn you that even now, after many years of RDS [a digital text service for conventional radio receivers], only half of radio listeners in this country have an RDS receiver, so they are not likely to go to digital radio very quickly.

radioinfo: So if digital radio is further off than internet audio services, what are you doing to help radio stations take advantage of the internet?

Generali: At RCS we want to push the concept of scheduling to the extreme, it’s our passion.

We have more stations on this planet using our scheduling system, so it is logical we should think about taking this further. We are now getting excited about driving scheduling down to the individual level using the internet.

We have introduced ‘iSelector’ (pictured below), which gives the individual listener a chance to craft their own music program via a website. It is being used by some radio stations already, and also it is being used by record companies and other websites who want to provide programming to their clients in this way to sell their product. We knew it had to have a fast response time and now we can provide that with our technology.

We are now proposing the concept more widely to the broadcast industry, and it is also being taken up by newspapers, corporate sites and specialist internet audio providers such as Blue Note Radio www.bluenote.com.

radioinfo: But wouldn’t a ‘program you own’ internet radio station take listeners away from a station’s main service?

Generali: Not really. The concept is to let audiences listen to the ‘best of my station’ in their personal opinion. When ‘iSelector’ is on a station’s website it uses the station’s own playlist to offer listeners more of what they like about that station. It builds listener loyalty and increases goodwill to the station. It can also provide reports to the Music Director and Program Director about the songs from their core playlist that are being most requested.

When a listener logs on to the service they can customize the songs they hear, but the station can mandate which ads and which station IDs that they hear as a compulsory component of their listening experience.

radioinfo: You are also bringing to the market a monitoring service you call ‘Aircheck.’ Can you explain that?

Generali: Aircheck is another solution which grew out of our thinking about providing start-to-finish services for the broadcast industry.

We provide a service to record companies to get their product to the station. We provide a service to the station to help them schedule and play out that music to consumers. Aircheck completes the cycle by monitoring the output of the station and reporting back to advertisers or record companies where and when their product was played.

Aircheck and MusicPoint are part of our service branch to radio stations and other customers who interact with those stations. This brings RCS into the data selling business, moving us further than our traditional radio software businesses. The unique selling point for this product is music and spots monitoring where you can go on line in and view a report and ranking of when something was played, and monitor the actual audio as it was played. You can do this from anywhere in the world via the internet.

This service is currently being offered in the USA and India, and will possibly come next to Australia
www.aircheck.net.

radioinfo: Can radio broadcasters survive without adopting new technology?

Generali: I guess so, but those which do explore new ways of servicing their audiences better will in the long term make more profit.

Philippe Generali is the President of RCS worldwide, a role he assumed in January 2000. He joined RCS U.S. in 1996 as Product Manager and served as Vice President of Operations in 1997. Prior to joining RCS in the United States, Generali was the head of RCS Europe, where he spearheaded the company’s growth for more than a decade.

Generali is an established leader in computer technology and management, stemming from his early school days in radio, a technical engineering background, and 12 years of experience at marketing and running high-tech businesses. He earned a B.Sc. in Math/Physics at the University of Orleans, and later graduated with a Masters of Engineering degree from Ecole Nationale d’Aviation Civile in France in 1983.