The secret to achieve a growing radio industry could be as simple as this…
16 September 2018 · News · Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland
Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland
I’m writing this in London, where the doors are (as I type) just about to open for Next Radio, the radio conference that I run here with my friend Matt Deegan...
You've reached our premium or archival content
To access this page, and more great content just like it, you need to become a paid subscriber.
If you already have an account, please login.
Otherwise, registration is quick and you'll have access instantly after payment.
While I need to research more about new technologies, I must make a remark about the new kinds of broadcasting technology that have been introduced in the last 20 years. In radio broadcasting, AM as a modulation method for broadcasting has existed for nearly 90+ years, FM for nearly 70 years and 60 years mono-compatible subcarrier (stereo, acs, rds (later on)). That is relative stability. In the last 20 years we've seen DAB with MPII, DAB+ with MPIII and HE-AAC lossy compression, HD and DRM. Similarly for TV, (I'm skipping the history of 30-line, 405-line and 819-line transmissions) we had NTSC (65 years), PAL (55 years) and SECAM (50 years). In the short time of DVB-T in Australia, 18 years, there were issues of TVs made before 2010 not being able to decode H-264 HD transmissions used by all Australian DVB-T TV stations.
Sure there are more efficient compression algorithms delivering higher quality pictures in the same spectrum for a given analogue or digital spectrum. However with constant changes to broadcasting technology in shorter period of time, will the consumer be willing to change every few years to keep up-to-date with the latest modulation method of HD radio, DRM. Same question could be asked whether we will want to change TV receivers to DVB-T2 (Yes there are UHD tvs, but they only have HD tuners).
On the other hand, implementation of changes in technology may well have to be implemented in software as alluded to by Mr Thompson's Linkedin article. At the moment software implementations of the latest algorithms are implemented on PCs with a USB-dongle, typically one with an RL2832 chip. There doesn't appear to be affordable consumer TV and RADIO receivers which have hardware to compute any algorithm 'thrust' upon it,
Though as an aside, SDR radio can be used to significantly reduce noise and increase in bandwidth for AM-reception!
The question becomes, given the introduction of new modulation and compression algorithms over the last 20 years, could we see the introduction of SDR television and radio such that our receivers are future-poroofed against obsolete and less efficient algorithms without the need to buy a new radio or TV using the current technology?
Another thought on Mr Cridland's article. I would like to know the breakdown of breakdown of technologies used in UK given that less than 50% of listeners use AM or FM. Is it DAB, satellite radio, IP streaming services such as Spotify, iTunes, podcasts to name a few?
Regards
Anthony of exciting Belfield
The demise of the US radio industry would no doubt have a LOT to do with the resource stripping carried out by large radio owners like Clear Channel which has converted vibrant regional radio business units into irrelevant, sad, and locally-resented outposts of L.A. & N.Y. radio.
Australian owners of regional radio would do well to take note.