The password for the radio audience at the Radio Technology Forum on Sunday was “metadata.”
For the formerly Nautel User’s Group, now Radio Technology Forum, audience speaker after speaker talked about metadata — as an information source, a monitoring medium and a tool to run software and hardware systems.
Steve Newberry, chief executive officer of Quu, and Keith Barton, vice president and general manager of small group owner Max Media, started the festivities.
Newberry noted that 68% of new(ish) vehicles have multiple screens in them. Barton replied, “Several years ago, I realized there was going to be a war for the dashboard.” That led them to a discussion about the metadata in radio advertising that is becoming available through companies like Quu and Xperi (HD Radio’s purveyor).
They also agreed that too many station owners are not taking advantage of this data, nor are they taking advantage of RDS’ ability to deploy visual brandingly. Much of that behavior is fallout from not transitioning from analog to digital radio.
And speaking of HD Radio, Xperi’s Joe D’Angelo (above) expounded on the case of DTS, another Xperi property, and its growing tsunami-level of data (meta and more) coming from the Broadcaster Portal car radio monitor. According to D’Angelo, it is hoovering up 750 million data events per day and delivering them to broadcasters within 24 hours, often as early as the following morning. This in-car metadata carries information on listenership numbers and location, plus advertisements. It covers 300 U.S. markets and comes from thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of listeners.
David Layer, one of the NAB’s top engineering talents, asked why more stations aren’t jumping onto the digital radio bandwagon when things like metadata are such great selling features. “Why wouldn’t a broadcaster be all over this?”
Nautel’s Head of Marketing, John Whyte, briefly redirected the metadata parade with his presentation on what’s new at the show for Nautel. Leading that off was the latest on Nautel’s project to expand penetration of its Advanced User Interface among its transmitter owners. He also detailed the new NX AM radio transmitters, 1 kW and 2.5 kW models. Expect a fourth-quarter shipping date on those.
Nautel Chief Technology Officer Philipp Schmid had the latest on Nautel’s GV2 transmitters and the software-based air chain project that they are attached to. Yes, that involves metadata, among other things. Shmid mapped out an airchain where detours and jam-ups, such as split processing paths and diversity delays, become a thing of the past. Whyte then announced that Nautel was offering a turnkey HD Radio package, including HD Radio licensing, for $299 a month.
Things then returned to metadata with a panel consisting of K-Love radio engineer Bill Jackson, Brendan Cassidy of Super Hi-Fi, and Adrian Berkovits, founder of Adventure 33, the creators of the Prism broadcasting platform. The gist of the discussion was that metadata and HLS could be used for all sorts of things, such as remotely triggering EAS tests. They made the case that metadata has a bright future in radio.
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