Monday, April 14, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF BROADCASTERS 2003: Future sounding digital

Radios to come offer clean sound, rich experiences

Digital radios, including this Visteon Navigation model shown at last week's National Association of Broadcasters expo, promise compact-disc quality sound for both AM and FM bands. Photo by John Gurzinski.

Jeffrey Jury has heard radio's future, and it's clean, clear and digital.

Jury, senior vice president of Columbia, Md.-based Ibiquity Digital, a developer of digital radio systems, said radio's transition from analog to digital follows a similar shift in other media. Recorded music has morphed from vinyl LPs and cassette tapes to compact discs. Home movies have gone from videocassettes to digital video disks. And television's moving ever so slowly from analog to high-definition.

But at last week's National Association of Broadcasters convention at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Ibiquity unveiled a wall of new digital radios set for market phase-in. Ibiquity booth visitors could hear Las Vegas radio stations KLUC-FM (98.5) and KXNT-AM (840) broadcast digitally on car stereos or in a surround-sound equipped van.

Kenwood will begin selling the first digital receivers in June (retailing for $350, Jury said). In following months, receivers from Visteon, Delphi, Sanyo and Panasonic will enter the market.

Jury said 140 radio stations in 26 states have licensed his company's digital radio technology, dubbed HD Radio. Though some Southern Nevada stations are now testing the technology, none has so far licensed it, Jury said.

Digital technology allows for CD-quality sound delivery, Jury said, enhancing the FM experience and opening new possibilities for AM.

"There's less background noise (on digital AM) for one thing," Jury said. "So AM stations that may do talk instead of music now because of the way music sounds may be able to do music. Even something like a baseball game will sound better. The crack of the bat will sound more real."

Jury brought a conventioneer to an audio speaker and asked him to guess which band he was listening to, AM or FM. The bass was rich, the drums sharp. No hiss, no pops, no static.

"FM," the conventioneer said.

Wrong guess, Jury said. It was AM.

If first-generation digital radios aren't enticement enough, Jury said, second-generation sets, due in 18 months, will offer even more features. Listeners will be able to scroll data, seeing song titles and musicians' names on a radio's display as a song plays (a feature satellite radio listeners now have), or click a button for other information.

If someone were listening to "Car Talk," a popular National Public Radio program, for example, Jury said, he might hit a key to see data on the car being discussed or repair being performed. Future sets also will offer on-demand playback, Jury said, which will let users store parts of broadcasts for later listening.

David Feld, the NAB's radio committee chairman and chief executive officer of Bala Cynwyd, Pa.-based Entercom Communications Corp., said digital's rollout has him and others in radio excited.

"(Radio is) free, it's ubiquitous," Feld said. "Once a consumer pays for a new set, they'll get digital quality. And they'll continue to get current radio on their existing sets. It's a win-win."

Jury estimated it would take about 12 years for radio stations to fully convert from analog to digital.

Some people at NAB last week worried about the state of radio, in particular market diversity. Some attendees said they feared the deregulation, and subsequent consolidation, of radio following the Telecommunications Act of 1996 had homogenized programming, weakened competition and left listeners wanting.

Feld disagreed. He cited a December survey of 1,000 radio listeners by the Mellman Group that found 65 percent expressed satisfaction with local radio stations' overall programming. Furthermore, Feld said, the survey found 77 percent of listeners believed their favorite local radio stations provide music they liked all of the time, most of the time or some of the time.

Gary Fries, president and CEO of the Radio Advertising Bureau, said during a luncheon speech last week that radio's importance has been demonstrated during the U.S. war with Iraq. Homeland Security Tom Ridge, he noted, advised Americans to include battery-powered radios in emergency-preparation kits and to listen to them for breaking information.

"Radio has never been more relevant, especially in these troubled times," Fries said. "We are uniquely positioned to serve the information needs of listeners and clients as they arise."