In Australia, the ABC isn’t the only game in town; SBS is also a public service broadcaster (and also needs to go cap-in-hand to the government for funding every few years).

The SBS runs two television services (launching SBS Two recently at the advent of digital television); and also runs a number of radio services.

Tune into SBS (TV or radio) during the day, and chances are, you’ll not understand what on earth is going on; because SBS carries a wonderful collection of foreign language radio and television programmes. Australia is a country full of immigrants, after all, and SBS is made for all Australians; from the Polish community, eager to discover what’s going on in Warsaw or Poznan, to the Portuguese community, more interested in Lisbon or Oporto. SBS caters for these communities, in a jarring collection of 68 languages. The radio services reach half a million people (not a bad figure for Australia), but you’d be pretty impressively multilingual if you listened for longer than half an hour at most times of the day.

After a chat and a lasagne in the SBS cafe with Dirk Anthony, Trevor Long – introduced as “our Nick Piggott” much to my chagrin – shows me round the studios in North Sydney. With the click of a mouse button, producers can publish their programmes to the web as well as to the playout system. I walk past a large amount of small studios, where much of the radio programming comes from, and descend into the bowels of the building, where I see a number of curiously deskless studios (where the entire output is controlled by a touchscreen Klotz system).

SBS broadcasts two channels in the major metropolitan areas of Australia, and one channel everywhere else. They’re using DAB+ to offer additional, time-shifted versions of their channels (and a full 24-hour relay of the BBC World Service), and a couple of days ago launched two new services: a world music channel and a channel filling a niche for chinese pop music. Preparations were underway for their launch when I was being shown round, with Trevor justifiably proud of the low-cost way they’d engineered them.

SBS provides genuinely appointment-to-listen radio. It’s clear that the output of SBS is stuff that an electronic programme guide was invented for; and while on-demand listening will make it easier for people to consume their content, the real benefit will be dependent on a great electronic programme guide and a way of recording the programme you want to listen to. In terms of the recording, EPG-capabilities of new platforms, there are clear benefits to SBS; the question is whether commercial radio is similarly keen.

I’m always happy to help students with their questions, as long as they don’t mind me printing their answers here. And so it is that a third year student, studying music at the University of Derby, contacts me with his questions – and my responses are here.

What are the main benefits of the digital switchover effecting the larger (BBC) radio stations?

For the larger broadcasters, whether BBC or commercial, the benefits of digital switchover will result in the audience having more choice of stations, finding it easier to tune in (since you tune into digital radio by name, not a frequency), and additional information on the screen of a digital radio.

For the BBC, this means that there’ll be radio which appeals to more licence-fee payers: BBC Asian Network and BBC 1Xtra, particularly, means that the BBC can cater for those audiences which it’s been unable to do before, and therefore offer better value for the licence fee.

For commercial radio, the digital switchover means a more even playing-field with the BBC (which currently has most of the frequencies available to the national radio spectrum), and a chance to launch new radio stations which have less regulation on their format.

For services on AM, an upgrade to Digital also means a significant increase in audio sound quality.

What are the main disadvantages of the digital switchover effecting the larger radio stations?

The digital switchover will go ahead two years after 50% of listening to radio is done on a digital platform. It’s therefore highly likely that the switchoff will mean that many people no longer get their favourite radio stations.

The additional choice on digital radio will result in fragmentation of audiences, and individual stations will get less audience. It’s important for commercial broadcasters, particularly, to add additional choice to digital radio to enable retention of their network reach.

What effect will the digital switchover have on the future of the smaller local commercial radio stations?

Some smaller local radio stations (whether commercial or community) will be unable to get onto DAB Digital Radio, either for reasons of capacity or cost. These will continue on FM, as I understand it. Given that the FM waveband will no longer have the big radio stations on it, this is a massive opportunity for these smaller stations, since they will be handed considerable new audience.

What technological advances have had to take place within the radio broadcast stations to coincide with the digital switchover? What effect have the recent technological developments had on the employment growth of the industry?

None particularly; broadcasters have been making digital radio services available for a number of years. Supporting the information appearing on a digital radio screen (like now-playing information, for example) has required some work for broadcast software manufacturers; and to establish the digital radio stations in the first place required more positions within the broadcast industry.

Why do you think the digital switchover is taking increasingly longer to secure a precise date to ensure it is the only form of radio consumption?

Unlike television, people generally don’t flick around the radio dial. As a result, there is little incentive to switch to digital if listeners feel they are simply going to continue to enjoy their same radio station with almost identical functionality (a volume knob and a speaker). It could be argued that the radio industry has not innovated enough on digital radio functionality to make it a clear upgrade for consumers.

Listeners to radio stations on AM claim that they are happy with the audio quality of the platform, and therefore see little reason to upgrade.

And typically, radio comes free with another device; a hifi, a music player, or a car; actual purchases of radio sets is mostly driven by a need to replace a broken receiver – yet with the absence of any moving parts, radio sets are generally very reliable, lasting many decades of use.

With the larger radio stations dominating the podcast chart (particularly on iTunes) will this see the demise of the smaller radio stations?

Podcasts are responsible for a tiny amount of radio listening, and do not reflect the requirement, by most radio listeners, to enjoy their radio stations ‘live’.

With regards to the relationship between podcasts and the increasingly popular iTunes, available on any computer, iPod, iPhone, and now iPad. Will there be a need for commercial radio at all?

Radio – whether the BBC or commercial – is free and portable; it requires a receiver costing only a few pennies to add to most consumer electronics. Most people consume radio by literally turning on the ‘power’ button, listening for a while, and switching it off later.

While interactive services (podcasts, last.fm, Spotify) will have a place, for most people who require a simple, easy form of free entertainment, radio will continue to be popular for many decades to come.

It is said that commercial radio is “challenged not dead” due to the digital switch and increasing use of Internet radio.
i) What recent issues have led to the fall in growth and popularity?
ii) What can it do to help keep up its popularity?

The people who are saying that are wrong.
- Internet radio accounts for a tiny percentage (less than 3%) of all radio listening in the UK. It isn’t taking significant audience away from broadcast radio.
- Digital switchover has been more beneficial for commercial radio than the BBC, with significantly higher audiences choosing digital from commercial radio stations.
- Commercial radio, while suffering over the last five years due to a global advertising slowdown that first started in 2002, still commands a significant market share; and has only fallen from 46% to 42% in ten years against a strong BBC, while overall radio listening hasn’t dropped at all. (RAJAR Q4 1999 / Q4 2009).

While both BBC and commercial radio need to ensure radio remains relevant to the new generation, the only threat that commercial radio faces is advertising agencies thinking that the medium is ‘untrendy’. It’s just as popular as ever.

What are the new HD radio stations? How will this effect the employment state of the industry? And its digital success?

HD is a technology enabling digital radio in the US. It’s irrelevant for the UK, not least because the technology used is incompatible with frequency use in Europe.

Do you agree with my answers? Am I sounding too optimistic, or too pessimistic? Have your say in the comments beneath.

Welcome to a rather splendid Sunday. Want a lazy day sitting in your chair in the sun reading interesting stuff? First, find some sun; then, try these:

Radio consultant Mark Ramsay makes a decent point about traffic reports on the radio and the need to ensure they’re right. He says that technology will replace the traffic report. Mark’s blog is mostly “Oooh, Scary Things!” with little advice on how to fix them, though he’s right, again. A rather more positive post is one from Radio 2020 which claims that a rebound is on the way for the US radio market, and also gives a fascinating piece of information about radio advertising’s effectiveness.

Jon Moonie, a former GCap executive, has discovered a new iPhone app for radio professionals or, indeed, podcasters. Might be worthwhile taking a look. Meanwhile, Steve Campen has a few bits of advice for radio producers which I’m afraid I profoundly disagree with – see the comments for my take on it.

Nick Piggott reports that RadioDNS is born, a piece of news you also found on this blog on Feb 17th. I make no apology for repeating it: it’s excellent news and considerably changes the future of radio on connected devices. Please take a look at the website, and become a member if you want to change the radio world.

Paul Smith writes about the recent RAJAR figures in The Guardian, as does Adam Bowie on his personal blog. Both point out the real story, not the attention-grabbing headlines. Worth a read. Meanwhile if you like the truth, rather than the attention-grabbing headlines, you might also like this piece about the new unbreakable beer glasses that the government seems to be foisting on us, and the propensity for the media to simply cut’n'paste rather than to check figures; and this amusing take on the scary anti-pirate public information film in front of movies.

And digital eadio station dabbl has been shortlisted for an award, which pleases me since I’m mentioned on the dabbl website for having “written the document which led to dabbl”. Good luck, folks.

Lots of stuff about the BBC: a good and enlightening piece on the BBC Internet Blog by Bronwyn van de Merwe, who worked for me for a couple of weeks, on the new global visual language for the BBC website. It’s lengthy, but worthwhile reading for all web designers. Bronwyn was definitely one of the smarter people I worked with, and I regret not having spent more time with her.

Staying with my former employer, the Corporation has recently discovered the iPhone a few years after everyone else had, and in a blaze of publicity, have announced some iPhone apps. Worthwhile finding the geographical distribution graph in the middle of this post (or here if you’re lazy) which shows a significant difference in consumption for mobile websites in Africa. And if you like stats like that, here’s another one – 34% of Skype-to-Skype calls include video.

And something that might be useful for my former employer: details of how Google claim that they run Googley meetings. From setting a firm agenda to discouraging office politics and using data to argue, they’re useful hints and tips for any business. It’s also worthwhile reading this thought about meetings too.

Engadget turns off comments – not because comments are broken, but because the anonymous grandstanding got too much. The quality comparison between Media UK’s discussion area (where you can’t be anonymous) and Digital Spy (where you can be) is very marked. Perhaps the world of anonymous commenting is beginning to end? Can’t be a day too soon.

Google Listen, a decent podcasting app on my new Android phone, gets a upgrade, reported by AndroidAndMe which makes it significantly less good for me; since it merges podcast subscriptions with Google Reader, I now have a cluttered-up Google Reader, and am forever marking podcasts as listened-to while flicking past them in by Google Reader. #fail

And my new favourite blog is Faded London, which seems to consist of a bloke wandering around taking pictures of vaguely interesting things in London and researching them. Every blog post is fascinating and marvellous. I recommend it.

A great day yesterday in Geneva, as RadioDNS, the way of linking broadcast radio to IP, was finally born.

Now, there’s a proper organisation ensuring that radio receivers can be cleverer – using broadcast radio for scalable, reliable audio; and the internet for personalisations and back channels.

Your organisation (or you!) can now apply to be a member.

Do pop along to the RadioDNS website to discover more about what it is (that’s me talking slowly on that video), and to apply to be a member, supporter, user, or friend.

I’m hugely grateful to those on the Statutes Drafting Team for their help; for the EBU for their support and advice; to all the Supporters for their, um, support; and Nick Piggott who’s done most of the work around the formation of RadioDNS.

Come and change the (radio) world with us. It’ll be fun.

I walk into the ABC’s offices in Sydney’s Ultimo, and into the boardroom in the radio section. Fergus Pitt has, sensibly, asked not to see my standard presentation about what we’re doing in the UK: he’s seen it all before. Instead, he’s keen to understand what I’ve learnt so far in my global trip.

So, earlier that day, I’d sat in a café I knew next to Sydney’s Central Station, and – over a flat white accompanied by toast and Vegemite – scribbled notes in my red notebook (purchased in Stockholm during Radio Days Sweden) using a cheap Radio France pen (given to me in Paris during the WorldDMB general assembly). I hoped I’d got a story or two to tell.

I set up the Mac, and say hello to some old friends, as others wander into the room. All of a sudden, I hear a voice from Yorkshire – and one of the brightest people I worked with at the BBC, designer Sean McVeigh, is shaking my hand. He’s made the leap from the BBC to the ABC, and started work here the week I saw him. One of the more surreal moments in my travels. (Later, over a beer, he claims he’s actually Canadian.)

The ABC is the first public service broadcaster I’ve seen since the CBC in Canada, and it’s interesting to see the differences between the two ‘Aunties’ – both the ABC and the BBC are known affectionately by this name. Like the BBC, the ABC’s services are commercial free; but unlike the BBC, the ABC is funded directly by government grant. So, every three years, the ABC has to wander into the government, cap in hand, and ask for some more money.

The ABC is also different online. Fergus shows me the equivalent to BBC Music: a resource that, like the BBC, uses Musicbrainz, but unlike the BBC is rather more relaxed about using content from other people. I can click through to view YouTube videos of artists, for example, as well as ABC content.

He points me to Black Saturday, a compelling resource on the bush fires from a few years ago. A nicely-presented timeline links to material from the ABC, as well as the photo-sharing site Flickr.

And he shows me Triple J’s “Hottest 100” for this year. I wrote extensively about the chart for last year, and how clever Triple J had been; this year, I noticed, they’d built on what worked, and added some nice new features – since the countdown happened on Australia Day, a national holiday, they linked to the ‘Triple J countdown parties‘ happening right across the country with a Google Maps mashup. I like the idea of pretending the entire country is partying because of your content!

The ABC seems to be both innovating (albeit in the way that a large public service broadcaster does), but it also seems to be significantly more relaxed about using third-party content than the BBC (while working within the API guidelines for each piece of content). For better or for worse, the ABC is also using lots of different technology in each of its websites: which sometimes means interesting, innovative content, and sometimes means a peculiarly un-joined-up user experience, with duplicated content in different sections of its website.

But for all of the quirks of the ABC website, it’s clear that there is significant innovation going on, and for public service broadcasters, this Auntie is just as interesting as the Auntie back home.

The photo is me listening to ABC Radio National on DAB+ – where they broadcast pictures as well as the audio. More on that in a few days; and we take a trip to Australia’s other public broadcaster.

If you want office-envy, and you work in the radio industry, you’ll be wanting a walk around Austereo. It’ll make you really depressed at the rubbishness of your own radio station offices: from Global’s lived-in Leicester Square headquarters, to the nicely refurbished Absolute Radio, to the newly rebuilt BBC Broadcasting House, I’ve yet to see anything better than Austereo.

Wander round Austereo in Sydney, and you’ll be impressed at the natural light, the space, and the clear branding of Triple M that permeates the main building, situated right in the main shopping centre of the city. In the ground floor, there’s a coffee shop and a cafe, and a queue of people being shepherded around by 2day FM uniformed girls. A studio, with glass walls, holds the 2day FM morning presenter; outside, people enjoy a coffee and a sandwich, watching her at work.

Austereo in Melbourne is a little walk south of the Yarra river: into a cooler area of town than the CBD, close to the Crown Casino – until recently the largest casino in the Southern Hemisphere, and the home of the Commercial Radio Australia Awards this year. Get access into the building, and you’ll enjoy the dark, modern, feel of the studio complex, and the gorgeous studios themselves, branded with the Fox/2day (“Today Network”) blue blobby star thing. (I’m sure Austereo have given a name to it. I was going to say it looked like a supernova, then realised Nova is one of their competitors, so decided not to.) Above is a photograph of the newly-opened Melbourne studios – the presenters to the right, the producers in the to the left; and I’ve more photos if you want.

My tour round Austereo Melbourne is with Corey Layton, who’s worked in London and is, by all accounts, delighted to be back home. He enthuses about Austereo. He introduces me to the guys working on the digital radio stations – Radar (a mostly unsigned music station) and Jelli (much like dabbl in the UK). Wandering round to the web guys, they show me their content-rich websites: video of the ’stunts’ that Australian radio is famous for; the kind of talkability that radio used to have in the UK before the BBC or Ofcom got terrified of doing anything that might garner one complaint.

Jeremy Macvean shows me round Austereo Sydney. We sit and look at some of their websites. Jeremy shows me some of the commercial opportunities that their websites have opened-up to sell. He discusses the 2day player, and says that this is one of the things he’s working on, wanting to improve the information that’s available. He discusses content management systems, and it’s not long before I’m letting him know about a station in the UK using freely-available tools to produce a great website, and giving him a useful contact.

Commercial radio here in Australia was, to a large degree, insulated from the worldwide recession. They’re using digital (both web and DAB+) as a way to innovate; to try new ideas for programming and revenue generation. They’re very aware that DAB+ won’t earn money for a number of years yet; but very keen to find out what will work in this new world. This isn’t a half-hearted, low-staffed operation: instead, Austereo are seeking to grasp the opportunities available with both hands, and have resourced it accordingly.

Austereo calls itself “one of Australia’s most progressive and exciting entertainment based media companies”. For once, the hubris is true. Austereo is a shining example of a company that is investing in digital media: not because the shareholders want them to, but because they see it as crucial that they understand this space better than their competitors. The UK could – and should – learn from them.

Photo: Austereo, used under licence.
Later this week: we go and see the other Auntie; a multi-language broadcaster in Australia; and, if I write it, a trip to India too.

For no apparent reason, I bought a Google Nexus One phone at the end of my round-the-world trip (while sitting in a hotel room in India while confusing Google that I was really in London). As the phone made it from the US to the UK (via East Midlands Airport and then to London Heathrow) I was making it from India to the UK, via Zurich Airport and then to London City. I did beat the phone, but only by a couple of hours.

I mentioned that I’d got one, and a few people have asked what I think of it.

So, to my first 24 hours with a Nexus One, seen through the eyes of an Apple iPhone user for the past couple of years. This is done without reading the instruction manual, as is my usual way of using new electronics; I always read the manuals cover-to-cover after a week, to learn new tricks.

Buying the phone
Yay: the link to DHL meant I knew exactly when it was going to arrive.
Yay: it’s unlocked!

Initial setup isn’t great
Boo: On setup, it asks you for a ‘Google Account’. And, as any Google Apps user knows, sometimes this can also mean a Google Apps account (my @cridland.net one), or sometimes you can only use a @gmail.com account. My first step, therefore, was to, um, Google to discover that a Google Apps account was actually acceptable as signup.
Boo: It didn’t automatically know what the settings were for my O2 iPhone contract; so it attempted to try and set up the phone without a data connection. In its credit, it knew enough to tell me this, and to offer me the chance of setting up a wifi connection, so I was able to complete setup. I then had, yes, another Google session to discover the correct settings for an O2 iPhone contract on the Nexus One.
Boo: Once I’d nearly completed setup, it had noticed that there was an update of Android available for download, and that just dumped me right back to the beginning again.
Yay: Once I’d managed the above on the new build of Android, I didn’t have to set up silly things like my email or calendar: it just did it all automatically. Most impressive setup.
Yay: I didn’t need to plug it into a computer and download bazillions of pieces of software. Take that, Apple! (And I still haven’t had to plug it into a computer).

Google integration is excellent
Yay: Send me an email, and it pings the phone (and the Gmail client is excellent). The calendar automatically updates as soon as I change it on the website (or vice-versa). The contacts work perfectly. And it lets my @gmail.com account coexist with my Google Apps @cridland.net one.
Meh: However, I was already doing all this on the iPhone: with push email, contacts and calendar. True, it required a little setting up, but once I’d done that, it worked just perfectly too. This isn’t a complete win for a Nexus One.
Yay: I assumed that ‘Gallery’ (with an icon that looks like a photo gallery) was going to be empty; but to my amazement, it isn’t. It uses my Picasa photographs too, and other things. Very neat.
Yay: Google Voice is hidden from UK users, but easy to activate if you know how. I forward my calls to it; it’s perfectly handled on this phone.

Build quality
Yay: I rather liked the (free) engraving service. I nearly put my mobile number on it, and then realised how stupid that would be. It’s not really ‘engraved’ as such, but it’s nice having my email address on the back of the phone.
Yay: The display is much clearer. Much clearer. Yum.
Meh: It uses a micro USB cable, and not a mini USB cable. Now, this is the standard, so it probably should have a ‘yay’, but everything I have in this house (with the exception of the iPhone) uses a mini USB cable, so it’s a bit of a nuisance. I’ll survive.
Boo: The screen is significantly less touch-sensitive than the iPhone, and requires a little more pressure. I’m also convinced that the screen is calibrated slightly too ‘low’ for my fingers; I’m forever hitting the wrong thing.

Included software apps
Yay: Google Maps is much better than the iPhone, with the inclusion of Latitude and a significantly better display. Google itself is constantly including local results in everything, which is excellent. And multitouch and things just work.
Yay: The browser is very snappy, and also works rather well when you double-click, reformatting parts of the page to make it more visible.
Yay: The location field in ‘calendar’ is clickable and opens Google Maps, so I can see where the meeting is. C’mon, Apple, it’s not that hard…
Yay: I can invite people to meetings with the calendar app, rather than have to jump onto the PC.
Yay: Google Talk works brilliantly. And in the background, too! Yay!
Boo: If I go into the calendar and search, it does a web search. Huh? I just wanted to find out when I had a meeting with Bill, can’t I just search for Bill? Seemingly not.
Boo: The calendar’s UI is inconsistent; I have to drag up and down in calendar view, but left and right in day view, to get to the next month or day. That’s a bit silly.
Boo: The Gmail app is great, but do I really have to scroll right down to the bottom of the message, past the pointless terms and conditions and stuff, to get to the ‘reply’ button? Why doesn’t it float like it does on the iPhone web client?
Boo: The keyboard is really odd to get used to, and I keep missing the space key. And the full-stop, while in a better place than the iPhone, is in a different place and therefore irritating to hit.
Boo: No world clock application? Pthrhrhrt.
Boo: While faster than the iPhone, it’s not as whizz-bang; no nice animations, and the whole interface looks a little less polished.

Downloadable software apps on the Android Market
Yay: Spotify is here, and way better than the iPhone version (not least since it works in the background)
Yay: Last.fm is here, and scrobbles the music I listen to on this device, and last.fm radio works great too
Boo: No proper Skype. Instead, something called SkypeLite, which doesn’t do the job at all. Pointless.
Yay: Google Listen is a nice little app which may well totally change my consumption of podcasts. Very nice indeed.
Yay: That Layars augmented reality thing is very cool indeed.
Yay: beebPlayer is everything that a decent BBC iPlayer app should be, complete with live TV and live radio. Picture quality is disappointingly poor, however, and seems to use a version of the video which is very badly topped/tailed.
Boo: Not too many radio apps (and most that are, are Spodtronic ones). Special mention to Absolute (for a hobbled thing that doesn’t work in the background) and Capital (for a very basic app that does at least play in the background – but sadly only contains Capital and not LBC). I can’t find an alternative to Wunderradio – anyone?
Boo: Curiously, the very thing that gets in the way of the iPhone – Apple’s requirement to review apps before release – is the thing that is a problem on this Android phone. There are hundreds of apps in Android Market that are quite simply appalling; copyright-violations in their iconography (one uses Apple’s Safari logo as a compass app!), and some that look like password phishing programs (“Facebook Pro”, anyone) or simple spam. The complete lack of any quality control is actually rather frustrating. Further, Android Market isn’t actually that great – the search functionality lacks Google’s spelling auto-correct, and the order it returns appears almost randomly generated, rather than based on popularity or anything else discernable. Some apps have very odd UI indeed, and some look hideous. “Wheat from the chaff” has never been more valid – and it could be that it’s the very openness that gets people interested in the Nexus One is the thing that hampers the phone from achieving mass-market adoption.

Overall
The killer on the Nexus One is the flawless integration with Google, and the opportunities that the openness of the platform provides. I’m pleased that most of the apps I use on the iPhone have made it over to Android (though clearly this is a second-best platform for most).

In short, I’m quite impressed, so far, with the Nexus One, though there are significant shortcomings with Android Market. It is, however, definitely a geek’s phone for now – Google’s challenge is to make it as mainstream as the iPhone appears to have become.

PS: almost forgot.
Boo: No FM radio.