NAB: The Internet of Radio

The National Association of Broadcasters is meeting this weekend and into next week with sessions, for the first time, integrating both television and radio. It’s an interesting juxtaposition given that television is a lean back experience, normally on a couch and radio is primarily a lean in experience in an automobile.

Just as television has been disrupted by subscription services and programming guides that often make it difficult to find free over-the-air content, the radio in the car is being muscled aside by streaming music services and apps. While it may be relatively easy to remember and search for ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox, anxiety is building in the broadcast radio industry that listeners may lose touch with favorite stations as call letters and frequencies are unmoored from the traditional radio dial.

Consultant Gary Berkowitz called attention to this concern in a recent blog noting the importance of radio stations getting the RDS station ID data feeds right so that listeners can more readily and accurately recall their listening history for ratings surveyors. Part of Berkowitz’s concern is that the addition of metadata such as song, artist, and genre might be crowding out the more essential station ID info.

What this points to is the reality of radio listening in cars becoming a visual experience. Thanks to the onset and adoption of digital radio technologies such as DAB and HD Radio, broadcast content is searchable and suitable for discovery and recommendation engines.

In fact, most automotive content consumption experiences represent a combination of streaming Internet sourced content and broadcast – and, in the U.S., satellite radio. The radio dial has been replaced by fancy graphics, drop down menus, and user interfaces ranging from voice and gesture, to touch and hardware controllers (i.e. BMW’s i-Drive).

Drivers have never had access to so much content before with so many ways to search and organize it. Car makers, too, have more tools to create unique – presumably non-distracting – user experiences.

Contrary to Berkowitz’s concerns, the truly troubling reality is that it’s not always easy to find the local radio stations or the radio itself. Car makers have their own bespoke interfaces. Apple (CarPlay) and Google (Android Auto) have their unique smartphone-based interfaces.

At times, in-dash systems can seem to have a mind of their own, with CarPlay, for example, unexpectedly “taking over” the screen. What has been lost in this fragmented listening environment is that unified radio experience. In place of the radio dial, consumers are increasingly forced to seek their local radio signals within the walled gardens of individual apps.

This is where frustration begins. Even if the listener knows the frequency or call letters of a favorite local station, he or she may not be able to find it – particularly if an app-based system like CarPlay or Android Auto is in use.

The onset of HD Radio and DAB have enabled a searchable radio experience, but the rise of app-based interfaces has broken the unified experience of the radio dial. None of the dominant U.S.-based radio apps - Audacy (formerly Radio.com) or iHeart or TuneIn – provide access to the entire range of local stations.

With the possible exception of Audi’s hybrid radio – developed in-house by Audi - the only way to find an integrated, searchable point of access for all broadcast radio sources is with Xperi’s DTS AutoStage – currently launched in the latest Mercedes EVs. DTS AutoStage is, in effect, the Internet of radio – a new means of experiencing broadcast and streaming content in an integrated platform.

Berkowitz is correct. Radio listeners are in danger of losing touch with frequencies and call letters in the current heterogeneous listening environment. The solution is to lean in to digital and adopt DTS AutoStage to tap into new forms of content engagement enabled by the internet of radio.