This weekend the University of Oregon’s George S. Turnbull Portland Center will play host to the What is Radio? conference. (Last year, it held a similar event focused on television.) The idea is to explore ideas related to "the changing nature of radio."
Things begin Thursday night with an opening reception and the Johnston Lecture delivered by Charles Jaco, a long-time broadcast news correspondent perhaps best-known (career-wise) for his work with CNN during the first Gulf War, and who more recently made headlines as the interviewer to whom former Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin made his infamous "legitimate rape" comment. Continue reading “What is Radio? Answers Debated in Portland”
Month: April 2013
Digital PowerRadio Dispute: The Downside of Closed Systems
There’s been an interesting story playing itself out over the last month involving a company’s claims of discovering a way to dramatically improve reception of HD Radio signals.
Florida-based DigitalPower Radio announced in late March that it has developed a computational method that allows radio receivers a stronger lock on AM- and FM-HD signals, especially in areas where there might be analog-to-digital interference. Challenging conditions such as these have been detrimental to the robustness of HD signals more generally, for which the (FM) power increase implemented by some stations a couple of years ago only partially helped.
This improvement might be especially helpful in portable and mobile devices, as the change is made on a chip in the HD receiver, not on the transmission side. Continue reading “Digital PowerRadio Dispute: The Downside of Closed Systems”
Greasing the Skids for AM's Digital Transition
The National Association of Broadcasters’ annual convention just wrapped up in Las Vegas, and HD Radio proponents used the event to begin the push to make the AM dial all-digital.
At a panel on "AM Band Revitalization" moderated by Republican FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai – the first Commissioner to moderate a panel at the NAB Show – CBS Radio Senior Vice President of Engineering Glynn Walden told attendees that there was no sustainable future for analog AM broadcasting and that the FCC should set a date for an "for a digital AM sunrise and for an analog AM sunset."
Walden has been one of the broadcast industry’s point-people on HD Radio from the very beginning. He helped develop the system’s core technical design and specifications, co-founded the company from which iBiquity Digital Corporation was born, and was instrumental in lobbying the FCC to approve HD as the U.S. digital radio standard. With three HD patents to his name, Walden would like nothing more than to see his baby actually fly after languishing all these years. Continue reading “Greasing the Skids for AM's Digital Transition”
ZoneCasting Technology and Costs Detailed
It first seemed to come out of nowhere: a Texas-based company announced last year that it had developed a system it calls "ZoneCasting," which would allow FM radio stations to subdivide their primary coverage area into specific locales using FM booster stations. Each "zone" would serve up geo-targeted advertising.
An initial proposal to the FCC from ZoneCasting’s proprietor, Geo-Broadcast Solutions, asking for a rule-change governing FM boosters (to allow them to originate programming) attracted hardly any comment from within the radio industry. Many broadcast engineers initially seemed skeptical that ZoneCasting could work in a real-world environment.
Things have changed significantly over the course of a year. Continue reading “ZoneCasting Technology and Costs Detailed”