SUFFICIENTLY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY

All sides of the controversy over Arbitron’s Portable People Meter are about to be heard in an official capacity. The deadline for the FCC’s formal Notice of Inquiry is less than two weeks away, followed by the decision whether the PPM system’s numbers are to be trusted.

So the news about noticeable problems with the system in Detroit and other areas is particularly interesting, as are Arbitron’s efforts to make corrections. Hispanic and black audiences are underrepresented, just as critics said they would be.

The PPM system involves inaudible codes embedded in the radio signal which are automatically tracked and reported by rechargeable little gizmos that are worn by representative listeners.

If you really want to read the government-ese, here are links to PDFs of the Notice of Inquiry and statements by Acting Chairman Michael J. Copps, Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein and Commissioner Robert M. McDowell.

(Title lyric from XTC – video intro by Peter Cook! – and Creative Commons photo by SayHolaToTravis/Travis Ekmark.)

Pandora launched a new subscription-based premium service called Pandora One, which delivers better quality for $36 a year. Pandora One streams at 192K bits per second, allows unlimited song skips, enables five hours of non-interaction without timeout, and offers several different user interfaces to suit most preferences. Anyone who subscribed before, which simply let them avoid ads, gets a free upgrade to Pandora One.

It wasn’t that long ago that Pandora was struggling to survive. But now revenue may double this year to $40 million, thanks to sales of targeted advertising and the huge jump in users thanks to iPhone and BlackBerry apps.

(Title lyric from Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joey Kramer.)

Mere days after I was musing about creative uses for HD Radio, the Baltimore Sun ran a piece by Chris Kaltenbach about how National Public Radio offered closed-captioning for the deaf and hard-of-hearing live on election night. Invited guests were able to read NPR’s broadcast, in real time, during a demonstration of the technology at Towson University and at other locations in Boston, Denver and Washington.

Ellen Sheffield, an assistant professor of psychology at Towson and co-director of the International Center for Accessible Radio Technology, is quoted in the story talking about how important this service could be to the 28 million people with diminished hearing in the US.

You can read more about the trial and plans for the future at the nascent International Center for Accessible Radio Technology website. And when you decide to buy an HD Radio set for your home, you can support the effort by buying it NPR’s online store.

I’ve liked the idea of HD Radio for several years (sorry, they’re all Hollywood Reporter links that require a subscription), and was disappointed when I couldn’t find a unit last time I upgraded my car audio system. So Sarah McBride’s thorough overview in the WSJ caught my attention.

The story explains the technology’s ability to transmit a radio station’s primary digital signal along with additional channels within the station’s licensed frequency, but says that this programming “often isn’t much different from what broadcasters play on their primary frequencies.”

I doubt most stations will offer a completely different programming schedule, but I do think they will soon use these extra channels to broadcast things that don’t make economic sense otherwise. I can imagine small but devoted listeners tuning in to local sporting events, specialized musical genres or even uncut political candidate debates. Here in Los Angeles, it’s easy to understand why a station would give listeners their choice of what language the on-air personalities speak between songs. The article points out that most HD-2 stations also can be heard on the Internet, increasing their potential listenership and value.

As to HD Radio’s other capabilities, users can tag songs for later purchase. Broadcasters can send text information like song titles, artists, weather or traffic alerts for display on the player’s front panel. They also could send time-sensitive promotions or other things creative people could think up. Coming soon are features like a button that plays the most recent traffic or weather information, and possibly a “replay last song” button if the rights issues can be worked out. Meanwhile, enjoy Adrant’s take on the recent ad campaign.

Virtually all of the most popular radio stations offer their listeners choices among listening to the programming over the air, via the Internet, or time-shifted on a podcast. A story in Radio Business News reported on a survey by News Generation with this and other facts about how stations are dealing with the digital age, and how their audiences are growing because of it. As to the business model, reporter Jennifer Lane notes that embedded ads are proving successful, especially because they can demand higher cpms since listeners have deliberately chosen to access the program. (Creative Commons-licensed image by fatcontroller / John Ousby.)