Author: Nick Piggott

Categories
radio technology

Timeshifted Interaction

Macromote by jbwan @ flickr

The digitisation of media comes with costs and justifications.

One often touted justification for the cost of digitisation is that digital media will be more interactive, and that interactivity will lead to new revenues, increased profitability and so on.

Great theory. But the practice is proving rather difficult, because the interactivity isn’t happening as much as people had hoped. And less interactivity means that the potential revenues aren’t being realised. Falling at the first hurdle, and all that.

Let me make a postulation as to why. Maybe your moment of interest doesn’t coincide with the time to do anything meaningful about it. Maybe you don’t have time to interact right there and then. Maybe the device you’re using is particularly bad at doing interactivity.

Here’s two examples to explain better what I mean:

  • You’re watching The Simpsons / Family Guy / American Dad (insert wittily written, Korean drawn animation of your choice). The adverts start, and one of them is an advert for a car you’re kinda interested in. Pop quiz: What do you want to do now? a) Spend 10 minutes waiting for the interactive app to download, fill in the form “SMS-style” with the numeric keypad on the remote control, and confirm your ideal time to take a test drive whilst missing the programme you sat down to watch or b) ignore or that and watch the programme you sat down to watch in the first place.
  • You’re driving in your car (maybe the one you bought off the TV?), listening to the radio. You think the presenter’s quite funny, worth hearing more of. Do you a) stop to write down the URL of the show podcast and webpages or b) keep driving and keep repeating the URL in your head until something far more important (like traffic lights, or a speed camera) causes it to pop, irrevocably, out of your head.

It seems strange to me that we demand that people go immediately from “oh yes, that’s interesting” to full scale engagement. Why on earth do we expect people to try and do complex interaction on devices with tiny little screens and a single rotary-push dial?

If we can timeshift and pause media, why can’t we timeshift and pause interaction?

Why not let people do the “complicated” business of providing their personal information using a proper browser on a proper computer, and at a time that suits them? With better user interfaces, you can design experiences that will draw people in, maybe show them other things around that time, or around that event, that they might also be interested in. It’s simply a richer environment, in terms of time, attention and presentation.

I think it’s smarter to let people simply tag / pop / bookmark what they’re interested quickly and simply across their day, and then allow them to review what they’ve thought was interesting in their own time, in their own space. Let people take control of their interactions, and do it more on their own terms. Who knows, maybe they’ll do more of it?

There some interesting work going on around this subject; updates to follow.

Categories
real life

Closer to the world

Lufthansa First Flight by nickpiggott@flickr.com

I’ve watched Bristol Airport grow at an astonishing rate over the last decade. On my first flight from BRS, the terminal was a small bungalow, the gate had patio doors to the apron, and you walked to one of the handful of stands to hop on a small, often propeller, airplane.

Bristol has benefited from a low-cost airline explosion, with Easyjet making it their second largest base (something like 19 A319 aircraft are based here), and the terminal is now a mini-version of Stanstead. But whilst the “once a day” flights to places in Europe grew, the options for someone travelling on business were pretty limited, and became more so once BA hauled themselves out of the regions (and they call themselves “British Airways” – more like “London Heathrow Airlines”).

Those of us needing to fly on business (hoping, desperately, to do get out in the morning and back for bed) had to rely on KLM to Amsterdam (errmmmm) or Sabena to Brussels (er, no). After three cancelled flights in a row, KLM got in my bad books and I started heading off back down the M4 to Heathrow. That’s madness – creating unnecessary journeys to the world’s most turbulent airport. (And yes, I did have schadenfreude at BA’s T5 circus).

Slowly the airport has recognised that there are people other than those off to Prague to get plastered for 30p. The start of a Bristol-New York (Newark) route in 2005 opened up the Americas seriously, and I was lucky enough to be on the first CO77 flight back in May 2005. But we still lacked two things; a credible/reliable hub-operation, and a Star Alliance airline.

Now Bristol has both. Lufthansa have started flying 3 times daily out to Frankfurt, their main hub, from where it’s a skip out to most places in Europe and worldwide. I was one of the people who encouraged Lufty to see the benefits of Bristol, and I was very glad to be on the inaugural Bristol-Frankfurt flight on Sunday 30th March 2008.

People underestimate the benefits of hub flying. I would much rather pay £30 more to fly from Bristol, check my bags in in Bristol, have a short walk between gates at Frankfurt, and have the whole lot pop out again at my destination, than flog down the M4 to Heathrow, or even more ridiculously, go to Stansted! I put a real value of having a touchdown-to-front door time of 20 minutes. And it’s unrealistic to expect a place like Bristol to fill a 787 / A330 / 767 to places afar (and at Bristol, the runway is a tad short), so hubbing really does offer the best route availability.

I hope the route works out as planned. I’ll certainly be using it, but it does rely on people seeing the benefits (and relative reduction in pollution*) of flying from Bristol and hopping through Frankfurt.

* If you assume that you were going to fly anyway, the pollution of a short-haul in a small plane to FRA is less than the same journey combined with a round-trip of 240 miles to Heathrow and endless circling to land. But you may disagree with my initial assumption. I would also say that I rarely drive, walk to work every day, and am an enthusiastic user of public transport, so in every other respect I do my bit.

Disclaimer: I am a member of Lufthansa’s Frequent Flier programme “Miles and More”. I received (along with all the passengers on the first flight) a commemorative gift, and I took a complimentary upgrade to business class on the return trip from FRA-BRS.

Categories
dab digital radio radio

Under New Management

Under New Management by inju @ flickr.com

As the clock passed 17:00 without any official statement, it became clearer that the deal was almost done. At 18:30 it was confirmed by e-mail that Global Radio had made a formal offer to acquire GCap Media plc for £2.25 per share, valuing the company at £375m.

The purchase process won’t be particularly swift, as it requires a vote by shareholders to ratify, and then a period of scrutiny by the Competition Commission. The expectation is that operational transfer will take place in mid-Summer, and until then GCap will retain its own management and plans. (Mirroring the process that Arqiva is close to completing over its acquisition of National Grid Wireless).

There will doubtless be speculation about what this means for the strategy that was outlined on 11th February, and most particularly the very clear stance taken over DAB Digital Radio.

The purchase does not guarantee a clean bill of health for DAB Digital Radio. The structural problems that disturbed the management of GCap continue to exist, and cannot – indeed, should not – be ignored. That merely increases the risk of a unstructured collapse of the eco-system and economics around DAB in the UK.

As GCap starts a new financial year tomorrow, nothing has changed in terms of how much DAB is costing to transmit, and how little its potential is being used to evolve radio and the revenue that underpins it. The bills will keep rolling in, and there’s no reason why decisions to close Planet Rock or theJazz should suddenly be reversed or reviewed.

What a new ownership – an ownership in private hands, and away from the demands of institutional shareholders – should bring is an ability to look beyond the bills of this month and next month, and commit to approaching development of DAB (and other new platforms) on a new basis. We have learnt so much in the last 9 years about what’s good and not good about the current strategy; now is the opportunity, with most of the commercial radio industry in private hands, to take that experience and use it to regroup and reshape the DAB plan for the UK.

To generalise, private equity investors are ruthless on reviewing costs and benefits to customers. There will be pain, and no doubt many people will speculate on “what ifs”. If the potential for DAB can be underpinned with a viable medium-term business plan, then that may justify a renewed commitment to investment. But it’s hard to see how that business plan won’t involve radical change to the existing DAB plan.

It also requires more than just Global and Bauer to commit to change. If Arqiva can’t/won’t contribute meaningfully to cost-reductions re-engineering of DAB infrastructure; if OFCOM can’t tear up the old plan and write a new one; if the BBC are unhappy with changes to DAB for local BBC radio; if receiver manufacturers and consumer electronics manufacturers can’t produce 21st century radio devices – then it’s not going to make the difference that’s required.

I continue to be positive about the potential of DAB. The market is demanding more evolved digital media experiences. Listeners want more “stuff” and more control of it. Advertisers want more compelling, effective and measurable opportunities. Consumer Electronics manufacturers want to add more and more function to devices. The industry can create “new radio”, and of all the technologies that can be used to distribute it, the only one that maintains the ubiquitous, free nature of radio is DAB.

Categories
dab digital radio radio

The hidden value of Local Radio

Photo (CC) left_handed_male @ flickr.com

“Local Radio”. What does that mean to people? Alan Partridge on the slide? Cats stuck up trees? Jumble sales and council tax moans? Smashey, Nicey and cheesey jingles?

Local radio has a poor reputation with media (sorry, meeedijah) types, and possibly justifiably so. From a distance, the UK’s local radio stations used to seem terribly, well, raggedy. I think it must be a bizarrely British quirk to name local radio stations after rivers (Trent, Wyvern, Severn), Latin mottos (Invicta), Victorian railway companies (GWR) or most inexplicably, Anglo-Saxon kings from the 11th century (Hereward).

National radio may have “brands” and “stars”, but local radio brands are astonishingly highly regarded in their local areas, and local radio stations have local heroes. You might not have heard of Bush & Troy or Jo & Twiggy, but to the people of Bristol and Nottingham they’re as prominent as Chris Moyles or Terry Wogan, and considerably more visible.

Local radio has a hidden commercial value too. National radio might be able to attract national brand advertising, but only local radio can take both national and local revenue. The economic cycle seems to be moving back towards smaller independent businesses again; my local coffee shop (Baristas) is 150m away from Starbucks, but does fabulously well and has more character and is more welcoming. I’m writing this in the Star & Dove, a gastropub which is doing roaring trade and knocks the spots off Wetherspoons. These are businesses who can invest in local radio advertising, in the same way they can invest in Google Adwords and local classified listings.

Google loves local. They know that they can create more inventory and make advertising accessible to more businesses by segmenting their audience based on where they live. (Thus, in a strange way, copying something that local radio did 20 years ago by splitting adbreaks across transmitters).

Of course, when Google do something, it gets a funky new media (sorry, meedijah) name…

Geo-targeting

So maybe a new way to think about local radio is geo-targeted radio.

On DAB Digital Radio, both DigitalOne and Channel 4 will have single frequency networks across the UK, which sounds lovely and “national” and big. But I would suggest that as digital stations get bigger and bigger, we’ll see something unexpected happen. The really big digital radio stations, will move to the local multiplexes. And the national multiplexes will become the home of the “community of interest” (= “niche”) radio services.

The geo-targeted multiplexes (local multiplexes) will deliver more profit to national radio stations. On FM, Classic fm has to split commercials into regions because it’s simply too expensive for most advertisers to buy as a single station; by making it available in smaller units, more business comes in and it makes more money.

So what’s the future for “local radio”?

I think it’s potentially quite bright, because geo-targeting works for content as well as advertising. I’ll always have more interest in things-about-Bristol, and choosing to listen to GWR Bristol automatically defines a filter-set for content that includes national/international stuff I need to know about, and local stuff I want to know about. It’s like adding “+bristol” to a Google query.

Whether or not the structure of local content remains the same is open to more debate. OFCOM apply a fairly broad-brush approach to “locality” which is largely disconnected from economics. That tends to make “local content” seem like a chore, a cost and something to be avoided, rather than being an essential weapon in the competitive armory. It worries people to think that local content in the future might be regulated by actual demand, not specified requirements.

I’m excited about the prospects for geo-targeted radio. I’m looking forward to commercial radio brands using star-power to knock the BBC into a corner, but combining that with essential local information and local content that the BBC can’t replicate on Radio 1 or Radio 2. (Nor should be allowed to – note to BBC Trust). The existing local radio brands (that are powerful and valuable in their local areas) could be supplemented by new national commercial brands, but all providing geo-targetted content and advertising.

There’s a growing understanding that delivering a national brand on geo-targeted platforms could be more profitable than delivering a national brand on a national platform. I’m expecting a renaissance for “local broadcasting”, one where local content continues to thrive but in a different way to now, and spread across geo-targeted DAB multiplexes populated by the famous local brands we know now, and new national commercial brands yet to be developed.

Categories
dab digital radio mobile radio

DAB = WEB

mac stillness by shapeshifter @ flickr.com (cc licenced)

Emily Bell wrote an Opinion article on MediaGuardian yesterday about the implications of a successful takeover of GCap Media by Global Radio.

In it, she notes:

“Many think that Hazlitt had a point about developing DAB. If the future distribution of radio is going to be via the web, then investing in an alternative infrastructure does seem slightly risky.”

So what does it mean to say “the future distribution of radio is going to be via the web“? What is “the web“?

In my mind, “the web” is a convenient catch-all to describe “stuff you access through a web browser”, and most people think of that being on a PC. Some people are getting used to the idea of surfing the web on something other than a PC, and the iPhone / iPod Touch have moved the concept of handheld browsing into the mainstream.

But how does “the web” get to you?

Moving “the web” around requires infrastructure. The majority of “the web” moves around on cables; cables between ISPs, cables under the sea, cables to your house.

Some of “the web” moves around without cables.

There are technologies like WiFi and GPRS+EDGE and 3G and HSPDA and WiMax.

All of these technologies require substantial infrastructure investment, have significant weaknesses and most are very expensive. Somebody has to lay cables, build towers, buy spectrum.

DAB has an image problem.

People think “DAB = Radio”, which is reasonable considering it’s been promoted as a “radio” system, championed by “radio companies” and all it’s ever done is transmit radio.

DAB = mobile broadband.

Each “multiplex” is equivalent to a 1.152MBit/s broadband connection.  Admittedly it’s a one way connection, but then so is HSPDA on 3G (and that’s a dirty secret that networks don’t like to shout  about). And DAB doesn’t use IP, but using IP would simply make it less efficient by introducing irrelevant routing information.

The UK Radio industry has flooded most UK cities with about 5MBit/s of completely free, mobile, broadband.

The investment in infrastructure to make that happen has been big for the radio industry (bigger than it appears it ought to have been), but tiny compared to other technology platforms. Miniscule. That’s why it’s the only mobile broadband platform you can access completely free and on devices costing less than £15 to buy outright.

The problem is that “the radio industry” struggles to understand how to monetise content other than radio on this valuable platform. But “new media” people who do some research understand the strengths and the weaknesses of DAB. A particular strength is that’s surprisingly economic and universal, and the weakness of being a unidirectional technology can be circumvented by combining with other technologies, like 3G or WiFi or something better at bi-directional traffic.

So investing in DAB isn’t “investing in an alternative infrastructure” at all. Investing in DAB is investing in “additional infrastructure” for distributing “the web”, and it’s particularly good at delivering the demanding application of streaming radio which people expect to access universally, on the move, for free. (WiFi and 3G simply can’t provide the Quality of Service to deliver uninterrupted mobile audio streaming).

But you can also use DAB to distribute web-sites, podcasts, video clips, traffic and travel data, public transport information, weather forecasts, local event data – anything you can access on “the web” can also be distributed simultaneously to millions of people via DAB.

We should start saying “DAB = WEB“.

(Bootnote – as I gave this blog its title, I remembered that “DABWEB” was the name of the very first webhost for Core, Planet Rock, The Storm and The Mix, wayyy back in 1999).

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.