At the Australian Broadcasting Summit last month, the chairman of Commercial Radio Australia’s Commercial Content Standards Group (CCSG) Des DeCean encouraged advertisers to send high quality audio to digital radio stations using professional distribution, not email.

Decean’s  key messages are:

• The new medium (DAB+) provides the necessary catalyst to review the standards for commercial (and other) content  on radio. It provides an opportunity to cease receiving and broadcasting low bit-rate emailed files a d get back to maximising the quality of content broadcast on radio.

• Emailing of commercials in itself is not the issue, it’s the low bit rate crap quality that is the problem. Even if a commercial is delivered on a CD if it is less than a linear file, it should not be accepted by the radio station. Unfortunately emailing of commercials usually goes hand in hand with unacceptable quality, as a linear file is too big for many to email.

• Raising the quality bar is not meant to penalise anyone. On the contrary, it is meant to enhance the quality of the client’s product, improve the impact of the ad on the  listener, and to ensure that there is no disparity between commercials in a break because of quality issues. Additionally it encourages broadcasters to be proud of the quality they deliver rather than allowing others to decide how the station sounds.

• As we move forward into a multi-media world with DAB, we need new tools to ensure that the content components are packaged, delivered to the broadcaster then aired as intended. Piñata was developed to address both the quality control and content management issues.

It is intended that the new standards for commercial content apply to all services, AM,FM and DAB because AM and FM services are simulcast on DAB.

Dave Cox the Managing Director of audio dispatch company AudioNET agrees with DeCean, telling radioinfo:  

“Digital radio is all about two key things: high quality sound and additional media elements for advertisers. There’s absolutely no point introducing high quality broadcasting without ensuring those standards are maintained throughout the delivery process to the radio stations.

“Email was never designed to carry broadcast quality audio files: they’re too large and slow down internet traffic. If and when the email eventually gets through, it gets lumped in an inbox along with junk mail, memos and jokes.”

As well as discouraging emailed audio, CRA has set a deadline of June 1st for the introduction of new technical standards and work practices for radio commercials.