A new web site has been launched to provide information on the idea of promulgating the use of Digital Radio Mondiale in North America.
The site grew out of a four-year old mailing list which originally began as a place for listeners to post logs of DRM signals. Notably, the site contains a bibliography of journal articles written about the technology.
So far the group’s only superficially engaged in the change-process through comments on the reboot.fcc.gov site, but hey, you gotta start somewhere.
Although Digital Radio Mondiale – the newest of the three most prominent digital audio broadcast standards – is open source, covers all three broadcast bands, and provides the best bandwidth-for-performance efficiency improvement to the medium of radio, it is unlikely to find ready acceptance in the United States.
HD Radio – the U.S.’ chosen DAB standard – is floundering. By design, the technology was unlikely to gain purchase in the marketplace, and this is painfully occurring. The most recent trends in digital media consumption point to a bleak future for HD.
Unfortunately, it’ll take probably another ten years before the industry comes to grips with the fact that they bet on a losing horse, and the FCC’s not independent-minded enough to readily explore all-digital alternatives to its blessed hybrid technology.
By that time, it’ll be an open question as to whether radio as we’ve known it can maintain meaningfulness in a convergent media environment.
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