Ira Glass: Public radio can capitalize on its popularity without selling out

Re:Ira Glass: Public radio can capitalize on its popularity ... by derefr on Tuesday May 19, 2015 @06:16PM (#9573531)

Instead of the "directly-streamed linear programming" model, you could do radio audio broadcast the same way you do GPS: just have the local radio towers spraying some selection of podcasts on a loop (with high enough frequency+bandwidth+compression that the effective audio rate is faster-than-real-time, unlike satellite radio), and then have "radios" in cars (or wherever) which catch the files and cache them.

You can build whatever you like on top of that—a hybrid device that will siphon up local OTA content along with arbitrary podcasts when it can find 4G, and then intelligently arrange the combination into linear programming, for example. (Really, though, you're just creating a weird sort of secondary internet that only allows retrieval of files relevant to the local area. In fact, you could make the "radio" into a 4G picocell that actually re-serves said limited internet to your phone, where the OTA content then shows up in your regular podcast app.)

Effectively, this would be the over-the-air equivalent of how pay-per-view (not video-on-demand, the older one) worked, but with the client device then acting as a set-top box to turn the received broadcasts into something equivalent to video-on-demand.

This would also be equivalent to how the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellaview received game programs.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ira Glass: Public radio can capitalize on its popularity ... by opaque_salmon on Tuesday May 19, 2015 @07:00PM (#9573693)

You technically could, but wouldn't the complexity and the cost of migrating over to a system like that completely outweigh the benefit you could reap? Think of all the cars that only have FM/AM tuners, and all the stations that would lose listeners the moment they transition their programming model over.

Not to say its a totally awesome idea in terms of features and functionality. The amount of inertia it takes to move away from a proven technology wouldn't let such a system see the light of day.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ira Glass: Public radio can capitalize on its popularity ... by rpcope1 on Tuesday May 19, 2015 @06:41PM (#9573621)

This sounds like a ton of work to do what FM already does reasonably well; if anything I'd like to see the amount of funding, variety, and _bandwidth_ for public radio increased, hopefully breaking some of clear channel's grip. I know everyone likes technologically advanced solutions, but honestly for anything that isn't straight broadcast, such as your suggestion above, the amount of work needed to workably implement it on the surface appears huge; why replace what just works with something else that doesn't have a immediately distinct advantage?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ira Glass: Public radio can capitalize on its popularity ... by NeutronBoy on Tuesday May 19, 2015 @06:37PM (#9573604)

That sounds super complicated compared to good old FM radio.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ira Glass: Public radio can capitalize on its popularity ... by derefr on Tuesday May 19, 2015 @06:49PM (#9573650)

You're imagining FM radio as some magical simple system that turns audio files into airwaves. But guess what's in the middle? People. People making decisions about what airs, in what order, on a very limited amount of real-time audio band.

This would move that decision-making to the client device, which could follow any algorithm the user preferred. There would be no people "working" at such a radio station. It would just be a box out on a hilltop with an antenna, retrieving files from an S3 bucket and spraying them—a bit like a numbers station.

Now, there might be some curation going into what counts as "local content" for the box to download and broadcast, but it could be algorithmic or just economic. Picture something more like the "curation" that Public Access television gets: anyone who wants to show up at the station and book a booth for an hour for a fee can have a "TV show." In the same way, anyone who wanted to hand the maintainer of the box an RSS feed of their podcast could have a "local radio program" that cars could receive.

The key, here, is that there would be an unlimited number of such "local radio programs."

Don't imagine radio as it is today. Imagine driving into the vicinity of a city and "picking up" the YouTube channels of everyone who lives there.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ira Glass: Public radio can capitalize on its popularity ... by cplease on Wednesday May 20, 2015 @01:30AM (#9574812)

That's not how GPS works.

[ Parent | on HN ]