The Chief Engineer of FNQ Broadcasters, Eric Brodrick, has written to radioinfo in response to Steve Ahern’s paper on digital radio presented at SMPTE and reported in this section last week.

Eric writes:

Dear Sir

Will DRB be “Radio” ?

I read Steve’s paper with great interest, mainly because of his comments on
multimedia content. It appears to me that DRB will be a third form of
electronic media somewhere in the middle between Radio and TV.

As an engineer I know what fun it is to play with new technologies, find
their limits and how to work around them. I also know how easy it is to get
so wrapped up in new toys that you forget what you actually are there to do.

Steve’s paper made much about an increased VISUAL component in DRB but what
does this mean to radio and it’s “place on the dial” ? Radio is an aural
medium, it’s major audience is either having breakfast, driving or at work.

Most of the time they are not within easy viewing distance of the radio
receiver. They use the radio because listening is a “background application”,
unlike watching which requires almost full concentration. It’s easy to
perform another task (working,driving, playing) while listening to the radio.

However, I for one do not want to be in the way of someone squinting at the
pretty station logo on a typical car radio LCD while driving down the F4.

Come to think of it I wouldn’t like them to be watching any thing bigger
either. Which begs the question, what is the proposed display size on a DRB
receiver ?

Pictures may be pretty and the technology may be state of the art but what is
it going to achieve ? If the audience want to watch something they will turn
on the TV which is bigger and easier to watch, announcers will still be
required as the stations will still have to cater for the “listening”
audience as opposed to the “viewing” audience. Continuous music, sub-titled or
not, is not the answer as the satellite music channels and various
narrowcasters have shown by their miniscule ratings.

How much will an advertiser be willing to pay for a graphic the size of a
Windows icon or hard to read scrolling text ? Messaging services ?

Maybe, but
it would have to be cheaper than SMS to get any sort of following.

We have the technology, yes, but I don’t think we have a market of any real
magnitude. Whatever the delivery system we should concentrate on producing
“Good Radio” because everything else associated with DRB runs a real risk of
becoming another Teletext.

Regards

Eric Brodrick
Chief Engineer

FNQ Broadcasters