Technology360

Pandora pulling away

2009-11-22T22:09:54-05:00

Pandora is one of many “smart” online music services that learn from usage, but it seems to be pulling away from the pack and thus seems the one most likely to disrupt music radio formats. Mark Ramsey recently made two posts that you should check out.

How Pandora Can Become the New “Radio”. Link: hear2.0. The title speaks for itself.

Pandora nearly bets CBS in Online Radio. Link: hear2.0. New rankings show Pandora as the number 2 streamer among U.S. listeners, just behind CBS, but more than double number 3 Clear Channel.

But also see Tom Webster’s, If Pandora is the Canary…Who’s Mining the Coal? Link: The Infinite Dial. --Dennis

Economics of abundance

2009-11-19T22:49:42-05:00

John Proffitt embeds a short but good video tutorial by Mike Masnick, then adds some thoughtful comments. Masnick’s point is similar to that made by Kevin Kelly’s “Better Than Free” essay linked on the left side of this page.

Link: Gravity Medium. --Dennis

Best practices in digital journalism

2009-11-19T22:25:32-05:00

Pat Aufderheide’s group at American University has published a study titled, Scan and Analysis of Best Practices in Digital Journalism In and Outside U.S. Public Broadcasting.

The executive summary begins:

In this report, researchers at American University’s Center for Social Media identify a set of best practices in digital new media journalism intended to guide planning and initiatives in this area specifically for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and more broadly for the Public Service Media community in the US. We offer an overview of the current journalism and public broadcasting environments, derived from a scan of recent reports and interviews with relevant experts, along with a set of identified best practices, bolstered with analysis of specific examples that could be replicated by public media producers. …

Link: Center for Social Media. --Dennis

Could calls for more spectrum lead to end of OTA TV?

2009-11-19T22:12:15-05:00

David Oxenford writes on the surfacing of this topic at the FCC:

An article from TV NewsCheck last week reported on an approach by an FCC representative to television operators, floating an idea that the FCC would "buy" TV spectrum from existing television station operators, and repurpose that spectrum for wireless users - presumably some sort of wireless broadband. The funds to buy the spectrum would come from the auction of the frequencies. Over-the-air TV viewers would perhaps be left with a limited over-the-air service. …

Link: Broadcast Law Blog.

John Eggerton writes of public television’s reaction in Broadcasting & Cable. --Dennis

Mobile TV update

2009-11-19T21:58:52-05:00

As a new standard to carve out a more robust portion of the DTV bitstream for mobile services comes closer to reality, people are starting to consider how to make it pay. There are a number of existing mobile services using other spectrum in North America and around the world, and Broadcast Engineering has a pretty good overview of economic results to date. See Mobile TV providers strive to stay out of the red. Also see Carolyn Schuk’s, When it comes to advertising, mobile TV isn’t just a ‘me too’ channel in the same publication. --Dennis

Does radio need to worry about IP-delivered audio?

2009-11-18T13:48:36-05:00

Back in September, Radio World published a column titled “The Problem Isn’t Demand, It’s Bandwidth” by veteran broadcast engineer, Frank McCoy. The title was a bit of a non sequitur, because of course if there was no demand, bandwidth wouldn’t be a problem.

McCoy notes that:

… There are dire predictions that radio's best days have come and gone. Who can blame the pundit who sees only a simple consumer choice between listening to what some radio program director predicts that I (and 20,000 other people) want to hear, and choosing for myself exactly what I want when I want it? …

He asks,

… Should we all be concerned that the days of the 1,000-foot tower are gone and that anyone with a computer and an Internet connection is a possible new competitor? Will radio as we know it become just another feature of cell phones? Will in-car Internet give commuters millions of station choices? ¶ The answer is no. …

He arrives at this “comforting” conclusion by comparing the bandwidth required by IP audio streams in a real-world situation vs. available bandwidth, finding that IP audio just won’t scale up enough to be a threat to radio broadcasters.

The exercise is interesting, but it would be a mistake for us to draw much comfort in it – at least if your goal is to stop worrying about other platforms.

Here’s why.

[1] Distribution technology isn’t a static thing. For example, one of the commenters to his article points to a new broadcast-friendly technology called Multimedia Broadcast and Multicast Services (MBMS) now being rolled out in certain cellular telephone networks. Other multicasting* efforts are also in development or available.

*NB: IP multicasting has a different meaning than does broadcast multicasting. Rather, it is a way to achieve one-to-many bandwidth scaling without having to have to “home run” each stream back to the original server. In other words, IP multicasting is roughly comparable to what we mean by broadcasting.

[2] Other technology components aren’t static, either. Better compression and error correction algorithms are being developed all the time which enable more and better services in less spectrum. And, for music stations, there is already the profound effect already felt from digital music players like the iPod, which in turn benefit from improvements in mass storage. Moore’s Law posits a doubling of data capacity every 18 months. One might ask, why take up valuable spectrum to repeatedly retransmit bits that can be more easily stored in a listener’s purse or shirt pocket? Or, as Pandora, Slacker and other streamers-that-learn have done, why not, if you’re going to retransmit bits, at least customize the radio experience on the fly? Smart radio operators in the future will learn how to stitch value into, and thereby extract value from, these customizable streams.

[3] IP streamers and broadcasters aren’t the only games in town. Digital TV broadcasters are about to get into the act with the ATSC-M/H standard in this country as DVB-H and 1seg have done so elsewhere. While billed as mobile video services, they also do mobile audio much more efficiently than the IP streaming most stations use now, so look for some of that traffic to migrate to the television spectrum.

[4] Ever since the brainy actress, Hedy Lamarr, co-invented frequency-hopping radio in 1941, our notions of spectrum as protected real estate have been under challenge. Some feel that spectrum as we know it is an obsolete concept – that smart receivers and smart transmitters can much more efficiently utilize the spectrum than can the geographically-allocated transmitters and dumb receivers that we now use (a huge amount of existing spectrum is un- or under-used due to the need to protect cheaply-made receivers). I posted back in June about efforts to raise a public debate about this from the New America Foundation, which had just published four papers on the topic. I doubt that either the economics of the consumer electronic industry or the requirement for the FCC to maintain a detailed and accurate database of transmitters in use will favor this idea any time soon, but these conditions, too, are not static and will likely become more favorable to more spectrum-efficient technologies in the future.

[5] Lastly, we broadcasters shouldn’t think of this as a complete migration of broadcast listening to mobile IP platforms insofar as its economic consequences. To be consequential to us, these services have to only skim the cream off our listening to harm the thinning margins that most stations are experiencing. So these new services don’t have to capture the full broadcast load of listener attention to do damage to legacy broadcasters.

Some 50 years back, radio faced another challenge as television decimated its previous programming model. Needle-drop radio replaced it and a new business model was born. We need to be at least as agile in adjusting broadcast service and business models as technology has shown in its ability to evolve over time. As the old joke’s punch line goes, one doesn’t have to run faster than the bear, just faster than you.

As always, opinions expressed here are my own. --Dennis

NPR and iBiquity strike deal on HD Radio power increase

2009-11-05T13:42:08-05:00

National Public Radio (for which I work) and iBiquity Digital Corporation today jointly filed with the FCC a framework to allow an increase in digital power of at least 6 dB while minimizing the occurrence and severity of interference to existing analog operations. I’ll withhold specific comments except to say that this agreement makes me more optimistic about the future of digital radio in this country than I have in a long time. It’s intended to help digital radio succeed. I’m following this with the press release and then links to two press reports which have already appeared.

NPR & IBIQUITY STRIKE DEAL ON HD RADIO POWER INCREASE
Blanket 6 dB increase, interference safeguards recommended to FCC; higher power levels possible

November 5, 2010, Washington, DC; iBiquity Digital Corporation and NPR announced an agreement for managing an HD Radio™ power increase that will significantly improve reception of HD Radio signals. The two organizations are jointly presenting their recommendations to the FCC today and encouraging the Commission to move to adopt the power increase quickly.

“We are delighted that the radio industry is now poised to push this technology ahead together. We’ve found practical and balanced solutions that will greatly improve reception while limiting interference to existing analog operations,” said Bob Struble, President and CEO of iBiquity Digital Corporation.

The agreement proposes that the Commission authorize a blanket 6 dB increase for all commercial and non-commercial radio stations’ digital power from the current level of -20 dBc to a power level of -14 dBc; this is four times the current power level. NPR and iBiquity consulted with a broad spectrum of commercial and noncommercial stations over the last few weeks, and identified several conditions and criteria to manage the power increase process. These conditions were informed by NPR Labs' recent field research, “Advanced IBOC Coverage and Compatibility Study,” filed with the Commission earlier this week. Conditions of the blanket increase included commitment by iBiquity and NPR to additional enhancements to the HD Radio™ system. The development work of the two organizations will focus on single frequency networks to fill gaps in digital coverage, asymmetrical digital sidebands to reduce the potential for digital interference to short spaced first adjacent analog stations, and low bitrate codecs and conditional access crucial to moving radio reading services into the mainstream of digital radio broadcasting.

Notably, the two organizations offered an approach to additional power increases beyond a 6 dB increase, depending on spacing criteria and conditions that limit harmful interference, and initial models suggest most stations will be able to exceed 6 dB.

Mike Starling, Executive Director of NPR Labs, said “We are optimistic about the future of HD Radio broadcasting, and eager to continue to work with iBiquity on the developments that will make this power increase work to everyone’s advantage – stations, listeners, and receiver makers.”

"I am thrilled that a workable and efficacious compromise has been agreed to on this extremely important and controversial issue," said Milford Smith, Vice President of Radio Engineering at Greater Media, Inc. "Replication of analogue coverage by the new, digital service is absolutely critical to the continued successful roll out of HD Radio technology."

iBiquity and NPR encouraged the Commission to act on unresolved complaints in cases in which interference is shown to cause a problem.

The agreement also proposes a series of steps drawn from the current AM rules for interference to be applied to qualifying and limiting harmful interference with analog at the 6 dB increase level (-14 dBc). These steps would remediate harmful interference from any stations increasing power above the existing -20 dBc power level.

[paragraphs describing NPR and iBiquity omitted]

The story has been picked up by Inside Radio and Radio World's The Leslie Report.

Updated 11/11/09:
Here's a link to a story from Radio Ink, and another from Radio Business Report. --Dennis

The Reconstruction of American Journalism

2009-10-28T09:06:44-04:00

This is the title of a new report by former Washington Post executive editor, Leonard Downie, Jr. and Professor Michael Schudson, The Journalism School, Columbia University. They begin:

... Newspapers and television news are not going to vanish in the foreseeable future, despite frequent predictions of their imminent extinction. But they will play diminished roles in an emerging and still rapidly changing world of digital journalism, in which the means of news reporting are being re-invented, the character of news is being reconstructed, and reporting is being distributed across a greater number and variety of news organizations, new and old. ...

Some lengthy comments on public broadcasting begin on p. 5 of the online version (p. 12 if you make a 39-pp. pdf of the document). Their recommendations for public broadcasting begin on p. 14 of the online version (p. 33 of a pdf) and look to reorienting public radio and television "to provide significant local news reporting in every community served by public stations and their Web sites." I've given shortcuts to pubcasting material, but it's important to read their analysis and recommendations in context.

Link: Columbia Journalism Review. Thanks to Vivian Schiller for the link.

Update: 28 October 2009:

The "atomic" version of Current newspaper has a page one overview of this report by Karen Everhart. It's not yet on current.org. Also on page one but not on the site is a report on the forward-looking Chicago News Cooperative. WTTW-TV is a founding partner and the article says WBEZ-FM may also join the partnership. I'll try to remember to add links when they appear. --Dennis

Why is HD Radio™ important for public radio?

2009-10-21T15:21:44-04:00

... Asks Caryn Mathes, GM of WAMU in Washington, in an essay reprinted from Current (can't find it there) for Radio Business Report. WAMU is a public radio station that recently won a well-deserved industry award for its leadership in HD Radio™. She concludes:

... However, I think that to truly “get” the importance of HD Radio, you must abandon the old metrics, and stop trying to layer those measurements on the new landscape. ¶ The days of double-digit share are gone; 1-2% may become a good share in the brave new world. The landscape has irreversibly changed, with so many platforms available to tempt the listener. Podcasts, mobile, Internet radio – the competition for ears is everywhere, as we all well know. I believe that, comparisons to Betamax and 8-tracks aside, very rarely does a format completely disappear – the pieces of the audience pie simply get smaller, and you need to be accessible on every possible platform in order to get the same aggregate AMOUNT of the pie. ...

Link: RBR.com. --Dennis