Australia has implemented a $5 million campaign to promote the new digital radio LG smartphone, according to Joan Warner at BroadcastAsia2016.
Warner presented details of the Australian radio industry’s campaign as an example of how much can be achieved for radio if all players in the industry work together to influences audiences and regulators.
Some of the benefits of being able to receive free to air digital radio in a smart phone include no streaming costs and less battery strain.
The target for the campaign is young people, who do not want to spend money on streaming audio when they have to pay for it from their data plans, but are happy to listen when reception is free.
The Australian activity is part of a world wide campaign to test the market for digital radio in smartphones. “It is generating global momentum,” said Warner.
Radio broadcasters are offering free advertising for smartphone makers and telcos that activite digital radio reception in phones. In Australia two telcos, Optus and Virgin are partners in the campaign and are stocking the LG DAB+ smartphones.
Warner mentioned the example of the recently launched children’s DAB+ radio station Kinderling in Australia, which is generating good audiences on digital radio and enticing new advertisers who previously did no advertise on radio.
Moving on to the topic of social media, Warner said: “Social media is great for radio. It helps us deepen loyalty and engagement.”
In a later session in the radio conference Milos Pavlovic, Sales Manager, Broadcast, LS Telcom Germany outlined the technical implications of DRM and DAB+ broadcasts compared with FM.
Network coverage and optimization of transmission are major issues to be considered when moving to digital transmissions according to Pavlovic. At the World Radio Conference, “population planning is a very important element in planning for digital radio,” he said.
Comparing both versions of digital radio Pavlovic said: “DRM needs less transmission power, bandwidth is the major differentiator of the two systems… DRM and DAB+ are much better solutions than FM.”
Fraunhofer’s Alex Zinc explained the difference between digital broadcast radio and audio streaming: “The difference is that there is a fixed cost of transmission and receiving in digital radio broadcasting, but with streaming there is increased cost when you ahve more listeners and there is a data streaming cost for the audience.”
Zinc showcased the latest high efficience audio codec developed by Fraunhofer, which makes digital radio transmission and audio streaming much more efficient. See our earlier report for full details about the codec.