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Radio: Why Going Digital is Not an Option.
Jonathan Marks
Director
Critical Distance
Stam 69
1275CG Huizen
The Netherlands
Tel: +31 35 5243507
Web: www.criticaldistance.org
Newsblog: http://criticaldistance.blogspot.com
Broadcast Gadgets Blog: http://whatcaughtmyeye.blogspot.com/
e-mail: [email protected]
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Contents
Abstract – The need for change................................................................................................................ 3
1. Digital: The Impact on Radio Reporting ........................................................................................ 5
A brief history of recording techniques ................................................................................................ 5
MiniDisc Challenges ........................................................................................................................................... 6
2. Digital: The Impact on Production .................................................................................................... 8
Trends......................................................................................................................................................................... 8
New Era of Digital Production ..................................................................................................................... 9
Learning from Workflow Disasters ........................................................................................................10
Analogue Technology Can No Longer Compete............................................................................13
Reworking Digital Workflows.....................................................................................................................14
Sideways Thinking............................................................................................................................................17
Label, Label, Label............................................................................................................................................19
Training – The vital key to acceptance...............................................................................................20
3. Digital: The Impact on Distribution ................................................................................................21
Podcasting..............................................................................................................................................................21
Limits to the Limitless Technology ........................................................................................................24
Conclusions ...........................................................................................................................................................26
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Abstract – The need for change
In 2004 and for the first time, more money went to on-line advertising
than into the British commercial radio industry. Radio production has
gone digital relatively quickly and around the world. But on the
transmission side the era of analogue FM is far from over. Radio stations
have access to new production tools that facilitate thinking as ’crossmedia’ production houses rather than only as on-air radio stations.
The switch to digital technology gives radio the chance to break one of
the biggest drawbacks of FM radio: valuable content is hidden behind a
frequency number. Even in production, however, there have been missed
opportunities. Radio managers have often simply digitized old analogue
processes without looking sideways to work out how they can contribute
content to emerging platforms, especially mobile media and “podcasting”.
The situation radio faces is similar to what has happened with the
Internet in the past decade.
When the Internet went mainstream users initially used the web to
browse. This quickly evolved into ’search’ architecture, and in 2006
companies like Google and Microsoft are using the word ’subscribe’ to
define next generation browsers. Radio broadcasters in many countries
need to redefine and reconfigure their chain, as well, to offer possibilities
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for subscription and to share published audio alongside traditional
streams, either over the air or on the web. This represents keen and
potentially problematic challenges for public radio.
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1. Digital: The Impact on Radio Reporting
A brief history of recording techniques
Even though there are tens of thousands of radio stations in the world,
the radio reporter in the field has had to put up with an array of makeshift
solutions ever since large manufacturers such as Sony Broadcast pulled
out from the radio marketplace. Reel-to-reel recorders from companies
such as the German UHER company or the more expensive Swiss Nagra
company were the workhorse for radio journalists throughout the world in
the late 1970’s and throughout the 1980’s. But as the audio quality
improved, with the introduction of Dolby Noise reduction, broadcasters
accepted the compact cassette as the medium of choice, both for feature
and news production. But even with the introduction of better quality
tapes, such as those with a lower noise chrome-dioxide backing, there
were fidelity limits. In 1996, the price of the MiniDisc format dropped to a
level that freelancers felt was worth their investment.
The success of MiniDisc has been mixed, needing two launches in the US
(1994 & 1996) before prices were acceptable for some consumers to
switch from cassettes. Even then, the lack of pre-recorded titles has
severely limited the markets in Europe and North America. Japan,
Australia and New Zealand were quicker to adopt, but solid-state MP-3
recorders are squeezing out disk based recording formats – mainly
because downloading and transfer of files to the MP3 devices is much
faster.
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MiniDisc Challenges
There have been several attempts to make a rugged MiniDisc recorder for
“professional use” at radio stations but Sony’s insistence that the system
use its own digital compression system (ATRAC) did not make for
seamless integration into most digital audio workstations. The recorded
interview always had to be copied into the work station in real time, as
opposed to the much faster “ripping” of tracks in both the compact disc
and flash memory systems.
Most of the reporters have made do with consumer grade recorders,
discarding them when they eventually break down. Repair is either
impossible, or not worth the expense. The user interface on many early
machines was also clumsy, requiring the user to find the end of the last
recording, before starting to record a new interview. Failure to do so
resulted in material being erased – often by accident rather than design.
In late 2005, several well-known recorder manufacturers such as NAGRA,
Marantz and Avid M-AUDIO started to produce hand-held flash memory
recorders. These devices store 10 or more hours of high quality audio
onto a flash memory card. The prices have dropped from several
thousand Euros, to under €1000 for many of the new devices. Since
broadcasting stations are increasingly relying on the freelance reporter
market, this development is likely to speed the decline of MiniDisc
recordings.
From war-torn areas with little or no infrastructure, the use of satellite
phones with ISDN capability have made it possible for the larger radio
networks to get high-quality audio from very remote locations. The cost
of the satellite call may be expensive (in the region of US$10 a minute),
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but this is a fraction of the cost of 4-wire music lines that were needed for
an equivalent quality 10 years ago. For news organisations such as the
BBC, this solution gives them independence from local telephone
infrastructure, which is often unreliable just at the moment it is needed
the most.
There are clearly developments in the short-term with phones too.
Experiments in the UK and The Netherlands with GPRS and 3rd generation
phones to send back high-quality audio, photos and short video have
been surprisingly successful. An interface is needed to capture the audio,
turn it into a data stream, and feed it over the phone network. Doing it
this way means a 5 minute piece may take 10 minutes to feed, but the
result is studio quality ( as opposed to a live interview over a mobile
phone). The quality of cameras in phones is set to jump in the next year,
with 5 Megapixel camera phones already on sale in South Korea. BBC
reports that “citizen journalists” are becoming increasingly part of the
news gathering process. During the large fire in Hemel Hempstead, UK in
mid December 2005, listeners and viewers sent 6,500 photos of the
incident to BBC On-line services.1
1
Vicky Taylor, BBC News Interactive. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4522014.stm December 13th 2005.
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2. Digital: The Impact on Production
Trends
Radio stations are increasingly required to manipulate content of various
types audio, visuals and data. Traditionally, radio stations gathered their
news from a team of reporters filing stories over the phone or by
physically bringing interviews on tape back to the studio. Now news items
are being gathered from a much wider variety of sources and platforms
(televised press conferences, mobile camera phones) as well as from
“citizen journalists” who submit material and tips to the station over the
Internet or via SMS messages.
Stations such as BBC Radio 5 Live in the UK or Business News Radio in
the Netherlands have built their brand around breaking news stories.
Increasingly, those scoops are being broken by newsrooms supplying
content, not just for radio, but also for mobile phones, PDA’s, i-Pods and
pagers – invariably at the same time. So making the final programming
accessible to the public on a variety of platforms is also very important.
The old notion of “content is king” is being challenged. The context, i.e.
where a user hears something and on which device, is becoming as
important as relevant and reliable content. Any person writing a Weblog
or putting material into an open-access encyclopaedia such as Wikipedia2
is creating content. There is no guarantee that it is reliable, verified
content.
2
http://www.wikipedia.org
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“Reputation” in the new social media world is based on how many other
users regard an author as a reliable source. Reputation is directly linked
to website traffic – reliable sources generate the most sustainable traffic
to their sites.
New Era of Digital Production
A new phase of news and feature production is emerging for radio. This is
the result of consolidation in the industry where several crucial
developments are finally coming together.
•
The cost of storage continues to drop. Less than US $1 per GB.
Several brands of “ home” computer in Japan already are shipping
with 1- Terabyte hard-discs (i.e. 1000 Gigabyte) of internal storage.
•
Flash memory is also dropping in price, allowing smaller and more
reliable recorders to be designed – there are no moving parts to
wear out and audio files can be copied many times faster than real
time (12-90 times is common).
•
Networking costs have crossed some crucial thresholds. It is reliable
and affordable.
•
New players have entered the market, challenging the “old guard”
both in terms of price – and easier techniques for getting the job
done faster.
However, perhaps the most important trend is that radio production has
entered the open-standards era where managers expect journalists to be
able to drag and drop material as it flows through the broadcast centre,
rather than cut and paste it. Thanks to standards like Media Object
Server (MOS), different brands of equipment are getting better at talking
to each other. There is still plenty of work to do – but according to the
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GSAM Digital Asset Management 3report conducted in the first two
quarters of 2005, developments are moving in the right direction, both for
the user and manufacturer.
Learning from Workflow Disasters
Several digital production conferences have take place at the
headquarters of the European Broadcasting Union in Geneva. They have
examined digital production as seen from different perspectives –
journalists, management, engineering and IT design4. But the common
thread is that re-design of the basic workflow is essential. Stations must
decide for themselves how information will flow through their production
system, turning this into a specification that IT equipment manufacturers
can build to a price. Although the final product may come out of the same
radio, the way stations organise themselves internally varies enormously.
This has a lot to do with their heritage (audio, print or both) as well as
how many platforms they expect to be active on.
In the days of typewriters and tape-recorders, the paper and tape were
physically brought to other people in the production centre. This meant
that only the person holding the paper or tape had access to the content
at that particular moment.
Networked computers have made it possible to “publish” content across
buildings, allowing simultaneous editing to fit closer deadlines. There are
some newsrooms where the front end of an interview is being auditioned
and edited while the closing stages of the same interview are still being
fed from a remote location. In stations, such as BBC World Service, Radio
3
4
Cynthia Francis, GSAM DAM Report Q1-Q2 2005 http://www.g-sam.org/library/gsam .
Proceedings of the PMC Group, January 2005, http://www.ebu.ch
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Australia or Deutsche Welle, simultaneous access to incoming content has
made these international broadcasters able to compete more effectively
with domestic radio stations in other countries. In the past, incoming
news feeds were processed in one language before being published for
translation in another. This meant some language departments were
broadcasting news that was 90 minutes old – simply because this was the
time needed to make the translation. Simultaneous access means stories
can be written and translated as they come in, with editorial responsibility
being delegated to regional editors.
However, there are stations visited by this author where the analogue
production process has simply been automated. Desktop computers have
replaced the typewriter and stand-alone recorders and some simple
networking allows for simple file sharing. But there has been no attempt
to anticipate the move to other platforms (such as mobile or PDA’s) with
the result that digitization has not helped the station process information
faster and with a higher degree of accuracy.
Part of the challenge in the management of digitization has been the
blurring of job functions in broadcasting, especially in technology and
editorial areas. There used to be a clear demarcation between the audio
engineers (who ensured high standards of audio recording in studios) and
automation specialists (who installed and fixed office computers).
Once computers started recording and networking audio, many stations
downsized the number of audio engineers and transferred s portion of the
resources to the IT department. The problem has been that the Head of
Information Technology at a specific radio station has often been given a
completely different set of priorities to the senior editors in the newsroom
or features department.
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The list of priorities for the Head of IT includes the reduction of
investment, manpower and maintenance costs. However, most of the
radio newsroom users are journalists, who need to be persuaded by other
arguments that just the old, “more-for-less story”. In order to gain
acceptance in the newsroom, those on the IT implementation have to
convince users that the introduction of IT technology means
•
faster turnaround times
•
beating the competition
•
being able to find relevant material from a multitude of
sources,
•
being accurate as well as first.
In many cases, the introduction of IT has been used as a thin disguise for
re-organizations and downsizing. Management, sometimes under
pressure from politicians, would like the same quality output for less;
much less. If automation can reduce costs in the supermarket business,
why doesn’t it work in the same way in the radio business?
Some jobs do indeed disappear, such as the technician who simply
pushes faders during a straightforward newscast or music show. Yet,
especially in stations making radio features and complex live news
programmes, new jobs are created. The person who combines the
knowledge of IT solutions/workarounds, together with appreciation for a
journalists’ deadline, will find he or she is really in demand. IT people who
can think “out of the box” to a deadline, as well as journalists who can
define what they really want to keep, are becoming influential in the more
successful stations.
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Analogue Technology Can No Longer Compete
Analogue news production people have done a great job against all kinds
of logistical challenges! Production teams, both in the field and in the
newsroom, have developed ingenious routines to get news stories on the
air as fast and as accurately as possible, despite a multitude of tape and
audio compression formats that have come and gone in the last two
decades. But little that can be done now to make that system any faster.
The cost of maintenance of recording machines and blank audio tapes is
rising. Likewise, journalists coming out of college training are no longer
taught how to edit tape with a razor blade.
In addition to the logistics of production, journalists and producers are
being faced with increasingly complex situations that require them to find
and verify information from multiple sources. This cannot be done if the
journalist is forced to write in one place, edit in another and research in
yet another part of the building.
Broadcast competitors who have taken up the digital route in the right
way can now easily outpace their analogue news-gatherers. Whilst
benchmarking is difficult, the increase in speed has been between 20 and
30% for operations of 30-50 people5. That’s because we changed the
fundamentals of the workflow.
Efficient digital newsrooms and feature production units can share the
workload, especially when it comes to metadata…the “who did what and
why information” which used to be written on a tape label and in the
script. Journalists often need to retrieve audio quotes again after today’s
deadline is over. No one can afford to start each news day with a blank
5
Jonathan Marks, Radio Netherlands report to EBU New Media Forum, July 2004.
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sheet and assemble all the audio again. But if journalists can’t find
archive material fast enough, they often resort to calling up the
interviewee again to re-do the item. Investigative and political reporting
relies on keeping track of what public figures say over a period of time –
audio clips prove whether policies are consistent or simply vague
promises to mask that particular moment.
Reworking Digital Workflows
A “production number” has traditionally driven analogue news and
production centres. That number was the only common thread linking the
programme from its preparation or transmission in a studio and the
physical tape in an archive. The problem in the digital world is that no
one, either inside or outside the organisation, wants to search for content
by using numbers.
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Lifecycle of an Idea
Idea
Selected
Idea
Get it
Shape it
Distribute it
Keep it
Idea
Idea
Reuse it
New broadcast centres in Denmark, the Netherlands and the UK6 have
been reworked so that productions are driven by the name of the idea,
rather than a number. Producers want technology to help them shape an
idea that flows in through from the outside world, to be edited, put on the
air or on the web and (possibly) filed away for future reference.
The method of producing radio varies across the globe. In some
countries, a lot of airtime is “stream of consciousness” style liveinterviews. There is little post-production.
In other countries, the lack of rehearsal time has totally changed the way
serious music concerts are recorded. Several strategically placed
microphones capture the live performance and the raw audio mix is
dumped into multi-channel recorders that can cope with a wide range of
6
See Newsroom report by Hélène Rauby-Matta, EBU International Training, Geneva, Switzerland
http://www.ebu.ch/CMSimages/en/Visit%20DRnewsroom2005_report_cs_tcm6-41606.pdf
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levels. After the event, the fine mix (for radio or a CD) is the result of
careful post-production. Sound balance is much easier and faster this
way.
The way of working in many stations may be comparable, but it is usually
unique in the details. It will depend on a variety of critical factors – legacy
systems at the station, the size of the radio market, journalistic goals and
capabilities, as well as audience expectations. Whilst it is always possible
to learn from a larger or smaller station, the organisations that have
reported the least journalistic resistance to change, have picked and
mixed ideas to come up with their own solutions.
Below is a diagram showing the traditional way of running an analogue
news/features radio station; it is basically a three-step process.
Gather, Edit and Shape Audio
Material
Transmission to Listeners
Store Selected Tapes in Archive
In the digital production centre, material is put into a database at a much
earlier stage, in pre-production rather than post-production. This has
given system designers the ability to change the passive archive into an
active one by moving it further up the production change – into the
middle. By doing so, the archived content is changed from being
accessible by a few to being accessible by everyone.
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Gather, Edit and Shape Audio
Material
Digital (Pre) Production Active
Archive
Content Accessed by
Non Linear Platforms
(e.g. mobile phones)
Transmit Selected Material in Linear
form (radio programme)
Note that the archive in this case isn’t just old material. It may contain
audio that is only seconds old and has never been broadcast (yet).
Sideways Thinking
Changing the workflow like this has a number of advantages:
1. By doing workflow this way, broadcasters have realized a really
useful goal – being able to separate the shelf life of content
from its transmission date. Radio stations are currently spending
millions of dollars creating content which is only accessible to the
public when it is on the air.
2. Of course, they continue to compile content in the traditional way,
“pushing” it to an audience in the form of a broadcast. But offering
content to match a person’s specific request or profile is also
becoming big business. With a growing sector of the population
getting their news from IT devices (PCs, PDA’s, and increasingly
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Smartphones), the active archive puts the station in a strong
position to supply content adapted to the needs of mobile providers.
As a creator of local or regional content, the station becomes an
ideal partner for a mobile phone company or web portal. As mobile
devices get greater bandwidth (through 3G phones and Wi-Fi
technology), there are clearly business opportunities for those who
are crafting audio, video and stills, rather than simply text.
Radio production systems that use open architecture are ready for the
days when having easily accessible content is valuable not just inside
their own organization, but for third parties too. That content is valuable
to another set of consumers, and so of interest to advertisers or
stakeholders.
It is unlikely that a broadcast system will arrive on the market soon that
can produce ready-to-use content for ALL platforms. On the web side,
newsroom templates that allow a journalist to structure a story to be used
on a webpage, TV-text page, PDA, mobile phone and pager do exist.
Some organizations have succeeded in using them. But a webpage can
only be a good resource for a radio story. Good radio copy may share the
same raw material, but it will obviously sound best if the text is written to
closely link to relevant sound clips. Sentences will tend to be longer. In
many European languages, there are even more striking differences
between written and spoken language that more extensive re-writes are
needed to make “listenable” audio. If this is not done, the sound of the
station resembles more of a “talking newspaper”.
At Denmarks Radio in Copenhagen, the design of a new production facility
to open in late 2006 has been to strictly “cross media” and focussing on
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synergy between text, audio and video7. The active archive is used to
share raw, partially finished and finished material. IT Technology can
assist people to re-write and re-purpose material for other media. But the
human brain is by far the most efficient processor when it comes to
scanning content thinking in parallel, deciding what is relevant for the
device the audience is using to access the material.
Label, Label, Label
The challenge for broadcasters who need to re-purpose across various
platforms has been the task of labelling content. Digital files have a habit
of getting buried inside huge hard disk systems unless there are ways to
properly tag them for future reference.
Some of this is being achieved at the production stage, by ensuring
important metadata, such as the time, date and location of a recording
are automatically filled in by the system. But training journalists to label
content accurately for future reference has proven a challenge for many
broadcasters, especially when the journalists’ deadline is the most
pressing problem,
One way of reducing the pressure on the journalist or producer has been
to spread the task of filling in the forms. As an item flows through a
newsroom or feature production department, various people are shaping
it, probably in various versions for different shows or distribution
platforms. The system needs to log who does what, filling as many
sections of the “metadata” forms in automatically.
7
Presentation by Leif Lonsman, Denmarks Radio, Radio Rencontre, EBU Conference, June 2005
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The administrative back office, tracking items such as performing rights,
contributor payments is gradually being integrated into these new forms
of workflow. The integrated approach ensures that as audio, video, and
text are crafted together in different ways, the labels describing the
components remain firmly attached for later searches.
There is a parallel here with the courier business. They used to be focused
on when they could deliver. Now, with tracking systems that customers
have quickly taken for granted, customers want to know where there
stuff is and the reason for any delay.
Training – The vital key to acceptance
Traditionally, training is mentioned at the end of research papers. A
glance at the brochures of broadcast software vendors creates the
impression that training is no problem – and that it will be completed in
no time. In practice, European radio stations, such as Radio Netherlands
or Deutsche Welle, have taken five years to completely digitize the work
place. It is not simply a matter of replacing equipment. There is a
fundamental change needed to the way of radio programme making.
The successful training schemes have been written to highlight the user’s
objectives, which may not be the same as those of the radio station’s IT
department. Training that tries to fill the brain like the gas tank, all in one
go, is extremely in efficient.
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3. Digital: The Impact on Distribution
This paper does not go into the details of digital transmission alternatives
to AM and FM broadcasting. HD Digital radio (in the US), as well as the
DAB and DRM standards, have all been well documented in other places.
All have one thing in common – they provide a similar “stream” of audio
content, but then using digital compression technology rather than
analogue.
But this paper does examine some other platforms that are emerging for
audio and data content produced by broadcasters.
Podcasting
In the last two years , especially during the summer of 2005 and 2006,
mainstream press in many parts of the world were full of references to
podcasting. The “pod” refers to one of the market leaders in MP3
hardware – Apple Computer’s iPod. The “casting” aspect draws a parallel
to radio broadcasting, where a number of people are listening to the
same. This term, coined by British journalist Ben Hammersley in the UK
Guardian8, describes a system allowing the user to subscribe to audio
content via the Internet, so that content is automatically downloaded into
any brand of MP3 player. This player can be on the computer desktop, or
a portable MP3 player.
Although a catchy name, it is in fact misleading. Neither podcasting nor
listening to podcasts requires an Apple branded iPod and no
“broadcasting” over a transmitter network is involved.
8
Ben Hammersley, The Guardian, 12th February 2004
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Although audio files on the Internet have been available for over a
decade, the subscription model of podcasting made it different from the
rest. From 2001 onwards, various people including Kevin Marks, Adam
Curry and Trisan Louis experimented with blogging and syndication
software from Dave Winer to offer subscription audio files9. Podcasting
only became popular in autumn 2004 with the spread of free software
that enabled automatic downloading of audio MP3 files onto computers
and mobile MP3 players. In July 2005, Apple released the 4.9 edition of iTunes software. This included a way to subscribe to podcasts from a
catalogue of 3000 podcasts within iTunes. Apple reported that within 2
days of this version of the software, one million people had signed up to
the podcasts in their directory.
California based technology writer Doc Searls
10
may have said it best:
“podcasting will shift much of our time away from an old medium where
we wait for what we might want to hear to a new medium where we
choose what we want to hear, when we want to hear it, and how we want
to give everybody else the option to listen to it as well.”
On September 28, 2004, Searls reported a search for the word
“podcasting” produced a result of 24 hits. A search of the word podcasting
in October 2005 yields just over 30 million references in the same Google
search engine. Podcasting has certainly succeeded as a marketing
operation.
Two developments need to happen while the podcasting is still on the
edge of its wave of discovery by the masses:
9
10
See “podcasting” entry on Wikipedia. www.wikipedia.org
See http://www.itgarage.com/node/462. Doc Searls, 28th September 2004
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•
Simpler software and equipment to record your own podcast and
post it automatically to a computer server. Many potential
podcasters have discovered that publishing audio is not as easy as
writing an entry in a blog. Audio often needs to be edited. Good
microphones and suitable recording equipment are not cheap,
especially if you are aiming to be creative. MP3 flash recorders,
such as those from the South Korean company of I-river are mainly
designed for music playback. Making a recording on such devices is
still tricky for most people.
•
Once the recording is made, posting it to a server and writing the
accompanying show notes is time consuming. There are signs that
the “podrecorder” is coming – partly as there is a growing demand
from radio journalists for a replacement to the Sony Minidisc. This
would have a minimum of buttons and allow the user to post a
recording to the web very shortly after completing the recording.
This field changes fast. Several blogs, such as
http://www.whatcaughtmyeye.blogspot.com offer independent
impartial advice on what is being launched, as well as what is hot
and not.
The range of interesting content has to move out of the “geeksphere”,
beyond technology and small niche interests. National Public Radio in the
US reported 4 million downloads of its podcast offering within 2 months of
launch11. BBC’s experimental podcasting of programmes like “In Business”
is also step in the right direction. To gain a wide audience, this new
content MUST be listed in podcasting directories, such as those inside
Apple’s i-Tunes, or from search engine companies such as Yahoo or
11
http://www.paidcontent.org/pc/arch/2005_10_31.shtml Report on Paidcontent weblog October 31st 2005
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Google. In October 2005, a newcomer entered the search engine scene.
Blinkx12 is a US based start-up company, which has licensed advanced
speech to text recognition software, enabling intelligent searches within
streaming audio. Since the software understands the context as well as
content (in 6 languages so far), the software engine provides an
interesting insight into more than 15,000 podcasts (as of November
2005).
Limits to the Limitless Technology
Whilst feature material is ideally suited to on-demand listening, live news
events or audio material with a short shelf life is less suited to podcasting.
Podcasting's initial draw was enabling individuals to list and distribute
their own ”shows”. This produced content of a widely varying standard,
the majority of the shows being best suited to friends and family. But the
system is increasingly used for other reasons.
•
Re-Broadcasts: Broadcasters such as the BBC , National Public
Radio (US), SBS in Australia or Dutch public broadcasters use
podcasting to give radio listeners on-demand access to feature
programmes. This enables listeners to follow programmes well
outside the coverage of the transmitter network.
•
Musicians are building a fan-base for their music without going
through traditional record companies.
•
Distance education. Musselburgh Grammar School in Scotland
began podcasting foreign language audio revision and homework,
possibly becoming the first school in Europe to launch a regular
podcast. (see podcasting reference in Wikipedia.org)
12
www.blinkx.tv
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•
Religious Podcasting (or in this context, Godcasting) has already
been used by many religious groups to either distribute church
services or take people on “sound tours” of religious places. During
the inauguration of the new Pope, the podcast “Catholic Insider”
13
gave unique descriptions of the events unfolding in Rome.
•
Official and unofficial audio tours of museums
•
Director’s Commentary. Battlestar Galactica writer and executive
producer Ronald D. Moore creates commentary podcasts for each
new episode of Battlestar Galactica. This is similar to the Directors
commentary on DVD films. Other US television shows have since
followed suit.
•
Protest. The 5,500 locked out staff (editors, journalists,
technicians, hosts, etc.) of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
podcast news and other programming at www.cbcunplugged.com14
during an industrial dispute in the summer of 2005. Some Iranian
writers use audio, alongside their blog, to get messages published
inside Iran which would not be selected for use on Iranian state
media.
•
Briefing. The Society of Critical Care Medicine has a podcast which
is used to update clinicians with summaries of important articles, as
well as interviews.
13
www.catholicinsider.com
14
www.cbcunplugged.com
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Conclusions
Digital radio offers broadcasters new paths to increasing market share as
well as consolidating production costs. But real benefits only appear when
station owners examine how they currently produce programmes and look
for ways to integrate new services into their workflow.
Programme Associated Data and Electronic Programme Guides are NOT
an after-thought. Audiences are already demanding new ways of finding
content.
If properly implemented, the flexibility of digital radio will stimulate early
development of Advanced Application Services, providing broadcasters
move beyond their traditional ”radio” model and explore cross-media
opportunities. Such a move requires adapted production tools but, just as
important, it means aggressive business development and creative
marketing.
Quite simply, digital technology arriving shortly will put radio receivers
into a lot more devices than traditional “radio sets”. That means it will
also increase the time consumers spend with radio and that’s important to
any station owner, commercial or non commercial. This increased market
share will only come to radio owners who exploit their digital radio data
capabilities in strategic and creative ways. All the technology is now in
place to enable the third golden age of radio!
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