Digital’s Early Transmissions

Either it’s playing music or talking all day, or it’s giving you static. And you feel like it’s not living up to its potential. Is your radio acting like a troublesome teenager?

Well, after 80 years, commercial radio may be growing up and doing more for you. Later this year, in Los Angeles and five other test markets, broadcasters will begin transmitting their signals digitally, a conversion they promise will not only improve sound quality but also enable them to offer text messages, continuous traffic or weather information, maps, pictures, song and artist information and other perks, all while simultaneously playing the station’s programming.

“It represents the first major technical advance in FM broadcasting in probably 40 years, since the advent of stereo,” said Steve Herbert, chief engineer at KCRW-FM (89.9) in Santa Monica.

Others say it will breathe new life into the AM band as well, returning music to those staticky frequencies now populated almost exclusively by news, talk and sports.

“The first major benefit will be the sound quality--FM will sound like a CD and AM will sound like today’s good FM stations,” said Bob Law, vice president at Kenwood Corp., the home and car stereo manufacturer based in Long Beach.

The digital signal will be less susceptible to interference than the analog radio waves and can carry more information--thus making possible AM stereo and wireless data services.

The technology, called In-Band/On-Channel, or IBOC (often pronounced “eye-bock”), has been in the works for a decade but was officially introduced this week at the National Assn. of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas. There, vendors began offering the equipment that radio stations will need to start transmitting digitally, and the National Radio Systems Committee endorsed the system for AM use. That committee, jointly sponsored by the National Assn. of Broadcasters and the Consumer Electronics Assn., advises the Federal Communications Commission and already endorsed IBOC digital for FM in November.

Those endorsements virtually ensure FCC approval some time this summer, and radio stations will begin adding digital streams to their analog broadcasts later this year. Listeners will be able to buy new digital-compatible equipment after that, around the time of the annual Consumer Electronics Show in January, said Dave Salemi, vice president of marketing for Ibiquity Digital, the Columbia, Md., company that developed the IBOC technology.

“It opens up whole new opportunities,” he said. “It’s time for radio to come into the digital world.”

Satellite radio broadcasters already transmit digitally and tout their CD-quality sound. Following broadcast and cable television, Salemi said, terrestrial radio is the last communications industry to take advantage of the promise of digital.

Fourteen of the nation’s largest broadcasting companies have invested in Ibiquity, including giants such as Clear Channel Communications, Infinity Broadcasting Corp. and ABC. The company also has support from interested heavyweights such as Ford Motor Co. and retailers including Crutchfield and Good Guys.

Ibiquity officials hope that the critical mass of stakeholders behind it will guarantee IBOC’s acceptance in the marketplace and separate it from orphan technologies touted as the “next big thing” but adopted by only a few, such as Digital Audio Tape to replace CDs or the failed first stab at AM stereo in the 1980s.

The difference between the current analog broadcasting and digital is roughly the same as the difference between vinyl albums and compact discs. Radio stations transmit continuous electromagnetic waves that fly through the air until they’re picked up by receivers tuned to that frequency, which then convert the waves to sound. But the waves are very vulnerable to interference. Digital broadcasters send their signals not as continuous waves but in short bursts, which are reassembled and decoded by radio receivers. Those signals can be compressed, allowing for a much higher volume of information to be sent out--such as pictures and text data, in addition to just the music--and the information can be stored in the receivers. That prevents interruptions, the way portable CD players avoid skips by delaying playback for a few seconds.

Digital radio proponents tout that feature, saying it will keep listeners from losing their signals when they drive into a tunnel or behind a tall building.

Not everyone is enchanted by the new technology, however. For instance, supporters of Low-Power FM--a service designed to allow church or civic groups on the airwaves with tiny stations that can transmit only a few miles--say the digital signals will interfere with their broadcasts and eventually squelch the fledgling service altogether. Other critics say the digital signals that will accompany each station’s analog transmission for a while create static for stations next to it on the dial.

“I’m not saying there’s no interference,” Salemi said. “It’s in the fringe areas, where you wouldn’t get the signal anyway.”

And the conversion to digital will be expensive--broadcasters will have to upgrade their equipment and license the technology from Ibiquity, the only company in the game right now. Herbert said KCRW officials are still deciding how soon they’ll jump on the bandwidth wagon. “Traditionally, public radio stations have been the early adopters of new technology. But some of the conversion costs range upwards of $250,000,” he said.

And like other manufacturers of consumer electronics, Law said, Kenwood will begin offering digital converters for its existing receivers by next year, ranging from $300 to $400. More advanced receivers, with view screens and other add-ons capable of taking advantage of whatever new services broadcasters may dream up, will start showing up in 2004 or 2005, he said.

Some stations already employ a more primitive technology that lets specially equipped radios display simple text information, such as a station’s call letters or the name of the program being broadcast. Herbert said KCRW has been using the Radio Broadcast Data System about six years, but its offerings are limited and the service hasn’t really caught on.

The digital conversion won’t make current radios obsolete for many years. Neither broadcasters nor government regulators want to strand consumers, who have an average of about six radios per household, Salemi said.

Stations will stream the digital signals alongside their current analog signals and may not convert completely for anywhere from five to 50 years, he said, probably depending on how many listeners in a given market have made the switch.

In addition to L.A., the first test markets will be San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Miami and New York, with Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Denver and Detroit following next year.