Month: May 2007

It’s been the get-together we’ve all wanted to see, and now it’s official – the iPod and DAB shall come together.

Of course, it’s not quite the integrated union we would really have liked, but I guess it was always going to be a long-shot that Apple would integrate DAB into a device that has sold 100m units, compared to “just” 5m DAB Digital Radios.

So what we have is a sidecar, a clip on. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and it certainly didn’t hinder the popularity of iTrip. It’s a tremendous development, and I predict it will sell very well (assuming the retail price and distribution are right). And I expect there will be surprise that the manufacturer are Roberts Radio, who have generally favoured traditional leather bound radios (although I would think there’s been some coaxing behind their decision to produce this product).

What I am very disappointed by is Apple’s reluctance to allow some of the cleverer DAB stuff to happen. Maybe the only way to get Apple to licence the add-on was to persuade them that it was no more threatening to their business model than an FM Radio (either integrated or clipped on). Regardless, your iPod clip-on will be missing Text Information (DLS) and it will be missing Slideshow visuals, which I suspect will disappoint quite a few potential early purchasers.

There’s a deep irony in this. Text information has been on virtually 100% of all DAB Digital Radios ever produced (even the first prototype DAB receivers had text), and the industry has built genuine interest in consumers in text content and slideshow, but the iPod plug in won’t support them, even though iPods have lush colour screens. Two steps forward, one step back I guess.

If you’re not a slave to the Jobs machine (and I’m not), then I recommend hanging on in there just a little longer to get your hands on the iRiver B20. I’ve got one in final debugging stages, and it’s a very nice device. I’ll do a review once it’s cleared final hurdles and is heading to the shops, but if you’re toying up with how to converge your digital media life, then this is by far the best starting point I’ve seen in a very long while.

I was at a WorldDMB Marketing Committee meeting today, which is a tremendously useful opportunity to network with people developing DAB Digital Radio in other countries, and to share information and best of practice. Most valuably, it’s a way of helping people overcome objections they’re facing in their own countries to the (further) development of DAB, primarily by providing case studies and information about what’s worked well (and what’s not worked so well) in similar situations.

The people around the table today were representative of the normal attendance of a MC Meeting, and indeed a reasonable cross-section of the DAB ecosystem; some broadcasters, some transmission providers, some multiplex providers – but we were missing a few manufacturers at this one. We were primarily from Northern Europe, which did reflect the meeting venue (Bern in Switzerland, as guests of SRG SSR idee suisse, who are energetic protagonists of DAB/DAB+ and deserve to have a lot of success).

What struck me from the discussion is how local radio has remained, by which I mean we really don’t have a dialogue between radio stations that crosses borders. Even with owners like SBS, RTL, NRJ, I don’t see much common strategy for the development of radio across Europe or beyond, and that worries me somewhat because the newcomers that radio is battling against are pretty much all global in nature. Last.fm may be based in London, but I’m sure they see themselves talking to a global market; similarly Pandora, or iTunes or the music industry as a whole. Yet in radio, we still develop strategy and direction in national isolation, apart from rare “international” meetings and conferences, and informal chats in the bar.

I’m not necessarily proposing the consolidation of radio across Europe, and centralisation of control; that would largely defeat one of the facets of radio that listeners appreciate. But surely we can get smarter about networking with our neighbours in Europe and beyond?

One of the outcomes of today’s meeting was to be more pro-active about going out and talking about radio’s digital future to our colleagues outside Europe, which of course means new and unfamiliar territories. There will be meetings in Asia and the Middle East to try and engage with the people who are making radio there, which will no doubt be both challenging and fascinating in equal turns. It’s good to see the industry realising the opportunity to act globally

I’ve blatantly plagiarised the headline of another frothing piece from Jack Schofield on DAB Digital Radio.

Sadly, the piece does him no credit. It might be acceptable to attack a regulator if they had a track record of making bad, ill-informed decisions that were unpopular with industry and consumers, but that doesn’t describe OFCOM and therefore his position that OFCOM is “muddling along” is unlikely to create much resonance with the reader.

It’s also desperately unwise to dismiss research out of hand.

Jack’s response to OFCOM’s independent research findings that consumers think DAB Digital Radio sounds fine is “This is, of course, nonsense.“. What a brilliantly crafted and well honed argument. Bravo.

The difficulty Jack now has is that he has thrown his reputation behind two key assumptions:

• DAB sounds worse than FM
• DAB+ will fix the problem and make everything sound CD quality

The problem is that there’s no evidence that either statement is true (in fact, absolutely the contrary). So how does Jack get out of this one? I’m not seeing any carefully thought out or well crafted arguments that might cause the reader to pause and think, so I’ll assume he’ll just bluster away, degrading his reputation on this issue as he continues.

Jack might get more credit if he stopped and analysed more carefully the risks and benefits of accelerating DAB+ migration, and to whom those risks and benefits would fall. But that would require understanding and assimilation of quite a lot of information and modelling complex outcomes. The kind of thing that radio broadcasters (with a huge interest in seeing a successful DAB market) and OFCOM (also with a huge interest in seeing a successful DAB market) do every day.

As a closing thought, I think you might want to e-mail Jack and ask him for how long he’s owned a DAB Digital Radio, and therefore on what basis he makes his rather dramatic statements of experience of audio quality.