Standards for Hybrid Radio
Nick Piggott · 2014
Broadcast radio and Internet Protocol (IP) have diverse and complementary technical attributes. Whilst radio stations use both technologies separately to distribute their programs to listeners, creating a hybrid solution that is a seamless combination of both technologies could enable a step-change in the listener experience of broadcast radio and remove some of the inherent difficulties, both technical and commercial, of streaming over the Internet. This paper considers the issues involved with creating open standards for hybrid radio that can be freely adopted by manufacturers, broadcasters and service providers, the business drivers behind them, and the practical issues of implementation. Broadcasting has strong technological attributes which make it uniquely suited to radio as it has been traditionally known; a medium where each individual station is consumed by a relatively large proportion of the population; where consumption is free at the point of delivery; that is available mobile and ubiquitously within the planned coverage area; and where a large proportion of the population consume the medium (as a whole) concurrently over a short window of time. Broadcasting is attractive commercially as it is costeffective both as a capital investment and operationally.