Month: February 2008

Categories
radio real life

Who Loves Local?

We Luvs Bristol

I saw this poster on the way home, and immediately wondered which of the radio stations in Bristol was running a poster campaign. Local Radio stations seem to be unique in professing their love for their cities. Local newspapers do it tacitly on their mastheads every day, and of course there’s no local TV. (It’s not wise to profess your love for Bristol if you also cover Swindon, Chippenham, Bath, Taunton and all places in between).

So my immediate reaction isn’t really that surprising. Who else would be out there with gert big posters saying they love Bristol?

Much to my surprise, it’s an insurance company, Liverpool Victoria Equitable. They have a base in the city, right on the strip known locally as “The Centre”, and are one of a number of financial service companies based in and around the West.

So why the “We Love Bristol” poster (which, to be really authentic, ought to be “We luvs Brizzle!”)? They’re recruiting for their call centre, and I’ve subsequently seen national TV adverts touting the benefits of dealing with a company with UK based call centres. So I guess that would be Bristol (home of the high quality call centre).

It seems that local radio stations had better not assume they have the monopoly on expressing their love of life round here.

Categories
dab digital radio mobile radio technology

nanoDAB – DAB, Bluetooth and Mobile

GSMWorld 2008

Tucked away on TTP’s little stand (1B39) was something remarkable, and genuinely revolutionary. This is “nanoDAB“.

Well, actually, it’s not nanoDAB. It’s a Lobster phone, ex of BT Movio fame. (Remember them – Mobile TV – yes? no? oh well, suit yourself). TTP designed the guts of the BT Movio device, which most owners (all five thousand or so of them) will tell you was a dreadful mobile phone with a rather marvellous DAB Digital Radio in it. It was sensitive, it was functional, and it had a very nifty little EPG.

When Movio closed down, it seemed a shame to lose the phones. So it’s great news that TTP have extracted the goodness, and squeezed it down into a great DAB radio accessory which can hook into any device via Bluetooth. Neat.

At first glance, it’s great because now you can have DAB Digital Radio on any mobile phone, and you get a free handsfree too. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Whatever. It’s a great opportunity. (Unless you have an iPhone, of course, which has a crippled Bluetooth interface. Can’t imagine why that might be).

But here’s the very special sauce of the nanoDAB.

Why are all DAB Digital Radios square wooden boxes? Because radio manufacturers understand square wooden boxes, and colour displays, embedded browsers and memory over 2Mbytes scares the living daylights out of them. So much DAB functionality is unused because of boring radios, from manufacturers who assume that consumers are boring and unable to deal with change.

But a mobile phone. Well, it’s a nirvana. Handheld, colour screen, embedded browser, pots of storage, performance microprocessors, and a real, genuine, programmable operating system. Now the nanoDAB allows DAB data services to bridge into the mobile phone, and finally you can see what DAB is to radio – it’s mobile, wireless, broadband at a fraction of the cost of 3G/UMTS/WiFi or WiMax, and it’s ours… all ours. We control the spectum, and we get it for free.

TTP were demonstrating DLS text, Slideshow, EPG and downloading audio and video files for on-demand playback, and doing so on a Nokia, a Sony Ericsson and a Motorola phone. Just pair the device, it installs the relevant Java app, and off you go.

Go find out about nanoDAB. It will be worth it. Pass the details around to colleagues who don’t get DAB because all they see is wooden box radios.

nanoDAB is the future of DAB. Good work on TTP for salvaging something genuinely useful from the wreckage of BT Movio. Let’s hope they keep the APIs nice and open so that people can freely develop exciting applications for it. (And apologies to them for adding an enhanced profile to Slideshow about two weeks before they launched it. But that’s innovation).

(P.S. I didn’t actually see the nanoDAB device. It was kept hidden around the back for cryptic reasons to do with branding).

(P.P.S.The eagle eyed will spot the juxtaposition of “Planet Rock” with Slideshow content from KISS 100 in London. Apparently, that was an in-joke).

Categories
mobile technology

GSMWorld…zzzzz….

What's on at GSMWorld

Two days in Barcelona at GSMWorld, to devine what’s in the pipeline for the mobile environment over the next couple of years. Knowing what mobile devices manufacturers are going to be pressing into consumers’ hands means we can start working out how to get radio onto them, and what kind of experience it should be. It’s also early warning of new competition for listeners’ mobile time, and new directions for mobile content.

The good news, strangely, is that GSMWorld was pretty dull. No whizzy new phones, no outstanding new functionality, no category killers. It looks very much like the manufacturers have stop trying to capture market share off each other with incredible innovations, and are trying to make a decent margin by selling sensibly featured phones at presumably sensible prices (but who knows, because it’s the networks that buy the phones). So really, nothing sensational to report.

Nokia rolled out their N96, which is an N95 8GByte with some go-faster stripes. ARM, Qualcomm and a few other fabless silicon shops were “demonstrating” the Google Android platform. Samsung sheepishly rolled a statement saying they would demo an Android phone “soon”. I can see that major manufacturers don’t want to antagonise network operators at this stage over the issue of advertising funded mobile devices. Nokia Siemens (the networks and infrastructure business of Nokia) were demonstrating the concept of targetted advertising injected into the mobile network, and there was some talk of a collation of networks looking at advertising funded mobile web browsing.

Mobile TV was considerably reduced over the heydays of 2006. Most of the majors had their 2007 handsets on display, reserving a bit of space for DVB-H, T-DMB, S-DMB, ISDB-T or somesuchother format. But no big displays for TV, and interestingly it was music and media capable devices that were being given the prestige slots. Maybe Live TV on the go isn’t what consumers want – maybe something common sense might have told you. Oh well.

Nothing staggering in content either, other than to note that the ringtones/ringtunes/wallpapers business seems to be subsiding a bit. Adobe demonstrated Mobile Flash Lite, which offers some excellent opportunities to develop fun things for mobiles, including customising the User Interface. Opera Mobile is developing nicely too, and maybe it will slowly edge towards a defacto standard?

There was one interesting item – the nanoDAB. but I’m going to blog that as a separate item.

(PS. Isn’t it so nice of GSMWorld to consider our spiritual wellbeing, by making sure that the Prayer Room was located conveniently close to the Adult Content Zone. Well done chaps).

(PPS. “When clever travel plans go wrong”. I think I was the only delegate who took 17 hours to get back from Barcelona. What started as a “clever idea” quickly turned into a re-routing nightmare involving four hours sleep in a Holiday Inn Express, and delays at GVA, FRA and 35 minutes circling LHR waiting for fog to clear. I made it back to the office with minutes to spare).

Categories
dab digital radio radio

GCap Media and DAB Digital Radio

A necessarily short post.

There will doubtless be a great deal of coverage over the coming days of GCap’s new strategy, and the parts of it that concern GCap’s commitment to DAB Digital Radio.

Here are some facts, most of which are drawn from GCap’s statement:

  • GCap is refocusing on what makes money right now, which is FM and Broadband. GCap is disposing of two DAB Digital services, three regional FM services, and eventually an entire network of AM services, because they just don’t make money now. GCap’s investors have been calling for better financial performance since the merger of GWR and Capital in 2005, and the company is subject to a takeover bid from Global Radio.
  • No DAB transmitters are being switched off, nobody will lose any coverage they have now. DigitalOne is still on-air, and wholly owned by Arqiva, who provide the transmission infrastructure. Local DAB licences continue to be advertised and won, and Channel 4 are still committed to launching a second national multiplex. GCap’s local radio services (under the “One Network” brand) continue to be simulcast on FM and DAB. GCap will be lobbying for AM radio to be turned off.
  • GCap’s commitment to DAB infrastructure has exceeded that of the BBC’s, which is a bizarre situation when you consider the relative funding available to the two organisations. (The BBC’s funding for radio is £536m plus a share of £154m for on-line – GCap’s annual revenue is about £193m, which returns a profit of about £11m).
  • The justification for pulling back on DAB is “we do not believe that – with its current cost structure and infrastructure – [it] is an economically viable platform.” (my emphasis). The issue with DAB in the UK is the cost of the unique way in which infrastructure has been built, licenced and funded (which I have commented on in the past), not the principle of the technology.
  • GCap was the first commercial operator to invest in DAB infrastructure, between 1999 and 2002, on very long contracts. The cost of new DAB infrastructure has fallen by about 60% since then.
  • GCap is one of six big radio operators in the UK. The BBC has a 55% share of the market, GCap 12.8%, Bauer (formerly EMAP) 10.4%, Global 4.9%, GMG Radio 4.7%, UTV Radio 3.1%. All these other broadcasters continue with their DAB Digital Radio services.

Flattering as it may be, it’s an unrealistic perception that a change in GCap’s strategy can , or indeed should, dictate the success or failure of DAB Digital Radio in the UK or anywhere else.

Categories
mobile radio technology

Live radio on the iPhone and iPod Touch

iPhone Streaming (C) 2008 GCap Media plc

Ubiquitous and mobile – two characteristics that encompass the radio experience. For over twenty years, between the invention of the transistor and the arrival of the Walkman, those characteristics were unique to radio (the medium) and radio (the device).

Radio, the device, has no future.

That seems to be a bold statement to make against sales of 6.5m DAB Digital Radios in the UK, all of which have been dedicated “radio” devices, or “radio” devices primarily sold on the feature of radio. Those radio devices have been bought by an unconverged generation; older, more affluent, less aware of the fashionability of technology. They have replaced traditional wooden transistor radios by radios that are reassuringly recognisable, and simple to operate.

Radio, the medium, is capable of much more.

Once you shake off the radio=medium=device thinking, it allows so much more exploration of what radio is, and what it could be for people who do live in a converged media world; who do want to buy technology because it’s fashionable, and who want functionality executed brilliantly. That isn’t to say that DAB is pointless. DAB Digital Radio is a distribution platform that is extremely well suited to delivering radio into converged mobile devices, and it’s been a huge impediment to its growth to have been stuck in the radio=medium=device paradigm.

So if we are passionate about retaining our ubiquity, our mobility and our attraction to users, then we have to go and find out what devices listeners love, and find a way of getting radio to them.

Apple dominate the personal, mobile entertainment device market.

They understand the combination of form and functionality, and are uncompromising about delivering a converged experience on a converged device. As technologists and media operators, we might rail against the tightly-controlled integrated platform they’ve created, but it works for consumers. However, even an organisation as focused on delivering a brilliant mobile entertainment device can slip up, and I think Apple have.

Why is there no live radio on the iPod / iPod Touch / iPhone?

Is it conspiracy or cockup? It’s hard to say, and I doubt Apple would want to admit to either. But the absence of the UK’s/Europe’s most popular form of mobile entertainment from the most popular mobile entertainment device makes no sense to me. If Apple is intent on universal ownership of their device (and that’s a reasonable objective for a company), then we need to be equally passionate and focused about getting radio onto them. By hook, or by crook.

GCap Media is the first broadcaster to deliver live streaming radio to the iPod Touch and iPhone

I am immensely proud of my team – Andy Buckingham, Ben Poor and newcomer Adam Fox – for hacking their way into the iPod Touch and iPhone and being the first people to deliver live streaming radio. You don’t need any specific firmware, you don’t need to jailbreak your device, you don’t need to install anything. Simply visiting www.musicradio.com from your iPod Touch or iPhone will give you access to the live streams from GCap’s major stations, plus those essential features that all radio must now come with; what’s playing now, on-demand audio (podcasts), opportunities to purchase (from a selection of vendors, incidentally), and access to the station websites. Andy, Ben and Adam did the creative work to make it happen, and my role was to provide encouragement, direction and cups of tea.

No doubt the inquisitive will quickly reverse engineer what we did, and we’ll see more and more radio arrive on the iPod Touch and iPhone, at which point I would rather hope that Apple would choose to support it formally and embrace the opportunities. I’m positive that the EMEA people in Apple can help their colleagues in Cupertino see how important radio is in Europe, and how rather forward looking European broadcasters are.

Of course, there are weaknesses to our approach (not least of which it involves rather more horsepower at the back than we would like, and it’s at times like these that Amazon EC2 is a welcome helping hand), and inherent weaknesses in trying to use WiFi (or even 3G) to provide a reliable streamed service to mobile devices. If you up and leave your WiFi hotspot, then you’re going to lose your radio service. Anyone who’s used 3G on their laptop to stream content will know that 3G is a very stop/start system when you’re on the move.

So view what we’ve done as a prototype – an “in principle” demonstration of what is possible with radio on the move on a modern media device. By itself it won’t be material to GCap’s earnings this year, and I doubt it will deliver significant listening hours. Indeed, using the current approach of streaming over WiFi or 3G, it scales very poorly and we will struggle to deal with significant numbers of concurrent listeners.

If this prototype excites listeners and the radio industry, then the next step is to capitalise on that and look at how to integrate a proper mass-market distribution technology into the device, of which only one candidate fits the bill (in terms of economics, functionality and power consumption) and that’s DAB Digital Radio. And of course, whilst Apple make the world’s most successful portable media device with a phone in it, Nokia make the world’s most successful mobile phones with media players in them – and Nokia are already ahead of Apple with Nokia Visual Radio and Nokia Streaming Radio.

Categories
dab digital radio technology

OFCOM’s Review of DAB Sound Quality

Like My Ears? by *Rob* at flickr

 

OFCOM’s Future of Radio consultation has come back for a part 2, following the initial findings published in November 2007. Whilst most attention has focused on the regulation applying to local content on Analogue radio, there is also a significant statement on DAB Sound Quality.

 

Sound quality is a subject that provokes ferocious sentiment in a small number of listeners, some of whom feel that DAB should have stuck to its original proposition of very high quality sound. They haven’t accepted that the success of DAB so far has been driven by the mass-market appeal created by variety of services, and so continue to look for ways to bring DAB back to the place they think it ought to be.

 

I wonder if OFCOM occasionally curse the Broadcasting Act (1996) that brought DAB to life, as it also contained a statutory requirement to regulate the “audio characteristics” of a service, a piece of legislatory meddling that was no doubt done to appease someone somewhere, but now looks increasingly anachronistic in a world of streaming over the Internet and via Digital TV where no such regulations exist.

 

Unfortunately, the statues stand (s 54(6A) and 54(6B) if you’re interested) so OFCOM isn’t in a position to allow the market to take its course as it would do anywhere else. It’s also a point of leverage that the audio connoisseurs can bring to bear.

 

At first glance, their statement that they will now regulate not just the bitrate for services, but also whether they’re in mono or stereo, is pretty heavy-handed.

 

I ‘ve always maintained that OFCOM is a pretty realistic and pragmatic regulator, so finding themselves in between the rock and the hard place, I think they’ve found a way of meeting their statutory obligations (of which they have no doubt been reminded by the lobby groups) whilst seeing a way through pragmatic requests for change.

 

Reading the justification for the decision:

 

“…our policy is intended to be a backstop to ensure that multiplex operators do not seek to unacceptably diminish the range and variety of the services that they broadcast by changing the audio characteristics of a radio service in order that freed-up capacity can be allocated to services which, in our view, would not be in the best interests of listeners. Examples of such services would be those aimed at a closed user group (i.e. not available to the general public) and where Ofcom judges this would not be in the overall public interest.” 

 

That sounds like a very clear reference to DigitalOne’s situation where the (now defunct) BT Movio Mobile TV service chewed up vast amounts of capacity, forcing radio stations like Core and Life and theJazz into mono. As we’re some way past the event now, I can say that there was quite a lot of discussion about how to fit three radio stations into space made (snugly) for two, and in the end the decision was that it was better to run two moderate and one good quality mono services, than one medium quality stereo service and two ropey mono ones. If you disagree, then aim your complaints at me.

 

If OFCOM stick to the guidance they appear to have issued themselves, then I can’t see that it will affect reasonable requests from broadcasters, and by leaving the door open for a review in 12 months time there’s an opportunity to show that the market can manage services and spectrum effectively.

 

However, the phrase “shifting the deckchairs on the Titanic” also springs to mind. The reason D1 took BT Movio’s shilling (well, I hope it was more than 5p) was that it needed to justify the costs of their network and turn a profit, and that in turn overrode the economics of the radio industry and forced a capacity squeeze and a sound quality squeeze. The underlying problem of all of this – the reason why stations have to scrimp and save on capacity and cost – is that the infrastructure as originally built in the UK is too expensive.

 

OFCOM’s Digital Working Group, and particularly the Technology team, need to look at why DAB infrastructure is so inexplicably expensive, and how it can be got into the realms of the affordability that are achievable. If OFCOM can successfully apply their regulatory weight to that problem, then it will be appreciated by both broadcasters and listeners.