With so much attention going to social and mobile marketing, it is easy to forget that traditional marketing media – print, radio, TV etc – is not exactly dead. I am continuing a series on how those channels are evolving, surviving and thriving. As the National Association of Broadcasters convenes next month for its annual Las Vegas event, it is timely to profile some of the innovations in radio technology it showcases on its site
Radio-enabled mobile phones
give consumers a convenient new way to access free radio service, and more importantly, improve public safety by ensuring that broadcasters' Emergency Alert System (EAS) messages and critical information reach the widest possible audience.
HD Radio
More than 2,100 AM and FM radio stations around the country are broadcasting in digital using HD Radio technology …which makes it possible for listeners to "tag" the songs they hear on the radio for later purchase from the iTunes online music store; advanced traffic information integrated into GPS navigation devices using data supplied by the Broadcast Traffic Consortium (BTC) and Total Traffic Network (TTN); and program associated data (PAD) such as song title and artist.
Radio Data System (RDS)
The RDS signal consists of a digitally modulated subcarrier centered at 57 kHz in the FM baseband. While it has a modest data capacity of approximately 700 bits per second it is an extremely robust signal and if a receiver is capable of capturing an FM signal then it is usually able to decode an RDS signal embedded within it. One of the most recent applications of RDS technology is called "RDS tagging" which involves transmitting a "tag" using RDS, simultaneously with broadcast music, which identifies the song being played so the listener can easily purchase it over the Internet.
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