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Future of radio and the internet (Click to select text)
The future of radio and the future of the Internet are irrevocably intertwined. Recently, radio has begun to be broadcast over the Internet, and Internet content has begun to be broadcast over the airwaves. For this exchange of positions to occur, there needs to be a change in transmission of sound from the standard analogue of radio, to the digital nature of the Internet. Analogue audio will become extinct in the near future. Although sound in nature and our own hearing is analogue, the capturing, storage and transmission of analogue sound is difficult without losing quality. For example, if one keeps making copies of an audio tape, the quality gets worse every time; in the same way, each time analogue sound is modified or retransmitted, it loses quality. Digital audio uses a binary code representation of the continuous stream of data. Once in this form, it can be modified in any way without any degradation of the original sound. One can make copies of copies with digital audio, and the hundredth will be exactly like the first. The great advantage of digital audio with respect to radio is the possibility of listener interactivity. Currently, any interactivity is limited by the inability of the individual talk to the other end of a radio transmission chain. When one switches stations on our radio, there is no interaction, we are simply selecting from a series of predefined options, just like changing channels on television. If you switch from one station to another, none of the stations know about it, and can do nothing to make their programming more interesting than their competition. The Internet has no such limitations, from the ground up; it was designed as a mass communications medium that was two ways. With the Internet, there is no broadcaster or receiver and you can easily talk back to the content providers, or become one. The only downside to the Internet is availability; in today's world, Internet content is about as accessible as radio content was in its early days. The Internet and its content are largely available through a large, ungainly box, usually in the corner of the living room. As technology becomes more advanced, this will change, and soon people will not think much of having full access the Internet from a tiny box that they can carry anywhere, just as a person with a Walkman is nothing remarkable. One of the great things about wireless communication is the freedom to be anywhere. The natural extension of the Internet is to allow the elimination of the wires and place the Internet into the car, in public, and the "Netman" on the beach. As the Internet begins to permeate the classic places for radio to be used, radio will have to adapt to remain in use. The most likely way for this adaptation to occur is for most of radio broadcasts to be transmitted over the Internet. Mode of the delivery is, irrelevant compared to quality of programming and content, including advertising. Whether wired or wireless we should see radio in the broader view, as an ideal medium for communication but without the "old radio" constraints. When television first arrived it was described as "radio with pictures," and maybe we might now think of radio as not, "television without pictures," but as a medium that can add pictures and other content as desired. Television does not have its impact without sound, but radio is great without pictures. Imagine a radio combined with pictures and video all delivered via the Internet to the palm of your hand. Radio, delivered over the Internet can be thought of as the base medium. Then functionality can be added to it at any time. This can be any combination of the sound we now call radio, the pictures we normally see as television plus the raw data and interactivity confined to our computers. The future is rapidly approaching and a new mass communications technology revolution has started, one that allows all people to communicate at once, and be able to access information for anywhere in the world. It is time to rethink the way we communicate information and not to just re-engineer the old methods with new technology. Internet radio systems already offer potential for change to broadcasters, but potential to do what? The question is will the new methods of transmission really change radio, or will it be essentially the same as it has been for the past one hundred years? At present, even with Internet broadcast, choice is limited to the station selected, time of day, and turning it off. Radio needs to evolve with technology, in the future, we need to be able to do all the things we wished we could do with traditional radio. For example with the assistance of digital technology, people can request programs to fill their needs at a time when they can listen. The broadcaster will examine the request then create a "custom radio station" for each user, inserting ads as necessary. This new type of radio would benefit both the listener and the broadcaster; the listener would always be listening to the kind of programming they enjoy, and the broadcaster would be able to customize the advertising message to each user. Today's broadcasters need to become collectors of information about the listeners and act as a source for the listener to tap into whenever they wish. The consumer is then no longer confined to the content that the broadcaster has picked for them, but content that the listener has decided that he or she wishes to hear, and at a time when they choose to listen.
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