Throughout media’s evolution the mantra of “Content is King” has been the only constant. 

That phrase refers to relevant content that people want to consume. The ultimate refinement of this mantra is “Personalised Content” – which is the pick of the crop for a demographic of one, the individual.

This theme linked presentations throughout the SMPTE Conference in Sydney this week and was reflected in the associated Exhibition.

With a decade of technology and business model refinement around personalised devices, a second, equally important mantra, is emerging – “User Experience is King”. This not only refers to when and where content is consumed but to the actual experience associated with the event – from the ease of browsing and selecting content, to the content delivery experience and connections via social media.

In a presentation titled Tomorrow’s Radio Studio, Matt Steadman from Southern Cross Austereo outlined how the design basics of a radio studio are constantly changing. For most of radio’s 100 year history analogue audio design principals were fairly static, with newer generations of technology simply improving audio fidelity. In the last 20 years we have seen a rapid change in the tools available to audio engineers, commencing with basic AES digital audio, then ever larger TDM digital audio routers, and now Audio-over-IP technology.

The needs of on-air announcers are also changing rapidly. Australia’s introduction of talkback radio in the 1970s revolutionised the medium, and we are currently undergoing a change of similar magnitude as social media technologies allow content teams to engage with their listeners in new ways. His presentation explored the ideas broadcast engineers should consider to ensure they stay “ahead of the pack” when dealing with these challenges.

SCA’s Steve Adler presented a paper on the success of the DAB+ On Channel Repeater Trials in Australia. Soon after the 2009 launch, it was realised there were deficiencies in DAB+ coverage due to either technical constraints required by the ACMA or terrain influences when trying to cover a licence area from a single transmitter site. The industry had heard of some preliminary work already undertaken in Europe in designing and implementing On Channel DAB+ Repeaters and a trial to investigate the feasibility of introducing On Channel DAB+ Repeaters into these markets was conducted. Steve’s paper outlined each step of the process, which ultimately led to an industry funded, full scale rollout of 14 On Channel DAB+ Repeater sites across Australia.

radioinfo will have more from the SMPTE Exhibition tomorrow.