A Word From the Sponsor: Read the Radio

Music fans driven crazy by disc jockeys who never identify the songs or artists they’re playing can rejoice: Now the radio itself will name that tune.

For listeners who already think there are too many advertisements on the radio, this is not good news; the ads are starting to appear on the radio in the form of text messages scrolling across the display screen.

Radio Data Service is a technology that has been around about a decade, enabling FM receivers to automatically display the call letters of a station or identify the song and artist being played. Advanced systems can shut off a CD or cassette if a traffic report or weather warning comes on the air, if the user has programmed it to do so.

Widely popular in Europe, where the receivers can also switch between stations of the same format to find the best reception, Radio Data Service has mainly languished in the United States because neither broadcasters nor the electronics industry ever embraced it. Only about 700 of the 5,000 radio stations in the United States employ it, according to the National Assn. of Broadcasters.

“To date it’s never been a successful commercial medium. In some respects this is a solution in search of a problem,” said Steve Herbert, chief engineer at KCRW-FM (89.9), which has used Radio Data Service for about eight years to display call letters and program information. “Anything that we could do to stand out was viewed as a good thing.”

But now a Newport Beach company, dMarc Networks, has partnered with radio giant Clear Channel Communications to start offering song information, traffic reports, stock quotes, news headlines, sports scores and, of course, advertisements, on the company’s five L.A.-area FM stations: KHHT (92.3), KYSR (98.7), KIIS (102.7), KOST (103.5) and KBIG (104.3).

On Radio Data Service-equipped receivers--found in some home stereos and appearing recently in General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota and others’ car radios--the messages will flash in bursts up to eight characters long, in the space where the time or station frequency is usually displayed.

The messages are beamed from radio stations on a “sub-carrier,” a signal on a separate frequency that piggybacks the broadcaster’s audio transmission. DMarc president Ryan Steelberg said he saw the potential in this resource that all FM stations have. And though Radio Data Service isn’t ubiquitous, about 12% of all cars and 40% of all new cars in Southern California have the technology.

“The numbers just made it seem like an interesting opportunity,” said Roy Laughlin, Clear Channel’s regional vice president.

“We’re trying to pioneer it as a way to service the listeners better. And once you get somebody to enjoy an additional service, there should be a way to monetize it,” Laughlin said, such as by offering information on buying albums or concert tickets.

KCRW, a public radio station based in Santa Monica, tried Radio Data Service as a funding source when it started using the system, scrolling “See your name here” messages, Herbert said. But KCRW got more angry calls from listeners who didn’t want commercials coming from their noncommercial station than it got inquiries from potential underwriters.

“We abandoned that experiment pretty quickly,” he said, and now the station uses the system only to identify itself and show what program is on.

“Unfortunately, that whole technology has undergone the chicken-and-egg phenomenon,” Herbert said; stereo companies weren’t manufacturing the receivers because not enough stations were using the technology, and stations didn’t want to bother with the system because so few radios could pick up the messages.

But even though Radio Data Service-enabled radios aren’t numerous, Steelberg sees them as an untapped market. And the equipment that stations need to transmit the messages “is pretty cheap right now,” he said, a few thousand dollars compared to the $67,000 to $100,000 price tag expected for stations that want to convert to all-digital transmission within the next couple of years. That technology, when it arrives, will also feature text messages and, unlike the Radio Data Service system, graphics, interactivity and better sound quality.

Steelberg said his company’s offerings will be compatible with digital radio, so it won’t be obsolete in a couple of years.

“We’re pushing the RDS right now because it’s in the marketplace,” he said.

With its system, dMarc sells the ads and splits the revenue with the station. Steelberg said radio stations are “obviously excited, because it adds to the bottom line. Our job is to make it not only profitable but turnkey for them.”

Each station and its transmitter are connected to dMarc via the Internet. A station sends its computerized playlist to dMarc, which receives the information four to 10 milliseconds before a song begins. If a Madonna song is playing, for example, dMarc’s computer searches its database for the current ad campaign related to her--whether it’s an announcement of an upcoming concert or a pitch to buy her new album at Wal-Mart--then sends that message to the station’s transmitter so it can be broadcast along with the song.

The ads can also be independent of whatever is airing on the station: A message can be programmed to appear at a certain time of day, or if the temperature hits 80 degrees, when your radio might suggest you stop at a 7-Eleven and buy a Coke.

Steelberg said dMarc has already tried a stock-ticker program during morning drive time on KYSR. “Unfortunately, the market wasn’t doing what people wanted, so I don’t think the consumers liked what the content said,” he noted.

But a drop in the Dow may not be the only crash a driver has to worry about while rolling at 60 mph trying to read stock quotes, the Dodgers score, the date of an upcoming Paul McCartney concert and the greeting, “You ... are ... tuned ... to ... KBIG.... Please ... drive

A study by the Center for Transportation Research at Virginia Tech University showed that in-car devices requiring more than 15 seconds of attention or more than four glances greatly increase the risk a driver will veer from his lane or deviate at least 10 mph from his intended speed.

“This is an in-dash billboard. We don’t feel it’s any more distracting than the bells and whistles that are in your car now,” said Steelberg, who, with his brother Chad, founded the online advertising company AdForce.

“In terms of safety, the main problem children out there are the interactive devices,” such as cellular phones and navigation systems, he said. “Our product is no more distracting than your oil gauge light going on. It’s not like we’re pumping motion video into the system.”

DMarc hopes to expand the service elsewhere in the country by the fall, with Steelberg saying the company can--by using the Internet--work with stations in New York and Dallas as easily as with those in Los Angeles and even coordinate ads in several cities. He said the company also hopes to work with other chains and with independent broadcasters.

“It’s a nifty technology,” Herbert said. “Hopefully it will catch on. It would be nice to have a reason to have it.”