Thoughts on “I love Digital Radio”
Posted on Wednesday, February 6th, 2008 at 12:46pm. #
A DAB Digital Radio, showing Norwegian radio station P4′s visual service
My boss’s boss has posted a long and cogent think-piece about DAB Digital Radio, which is well worth a read. From it…
I want DAB to show me weather, traffic and travel information graphically, on (a) nice big screen. I want DAB to use its metadata – the information about the programmes – to differentiate itself from FM, which is surely its biggest competitor. I want DAB to look like a product of the future, not the past.
It’s a great post. I have long argued that the benefits of DAB (the equivalent of, for most people, ten megabits of data, for free, into almost all homes in the land) should be used for more than just audio.
And Ashley’s right. Where things become even more exciting is a device which contains a DAB radio and wireless connection: it’s the backchannel which is most interesting.
Imagine what could happen if you could use this to – with your permission – monitor what you listen to and offer additional choices of programmes it thinks you’ll like (I’d like that across all of radio, not just the BBC). Use the technology to listen live via DAB (with all the quality of service that gives you) but on-demand via IP to the last seven days of the programmes I want to listen to. “Radio James” sounds compelling for me, and I can ignore, thank heavens, all the hideous Goldfrapp on “Radio Ashley”.
The backchannel could also add details of the song, or book, or play, sent to your email address, or to your iPhone, or to your Dualitt toaster, to continue that music discovery chain.
While this may get me a piece in Private Eye’s “Order of the Brown Nose” column, Ashley’s spot on here. While none of this is new, he’s combined some good thoughts into an interesting piece. At a time where some quarters of the industry is making funny noises about supporting DAB, it’s exactly the right thing to say. I hope that the rest of the BBC, and the industry at large, listens. It’s the future of radio we’re talking about, after all.
PS: as part of this, we’re hiring for an Executive Producer, Visualisation for BBC Audio & Music Interactive: making radio look as good as it sounds. Apply early!
William T
Brian Betongde
Richard Street
DAB receivers with multiple tuners seems an increasingly irritating omission from the current range of devices – particular if you want to deliver a reasonable amount of data over the air while people continue to listen to a programme.