News

The British commercial-public broadcaster partnership Radioplayer has unveiled a prototype touchscreen radio for dashboards, designed to show how smart ‘hybrid’ technology can transform in-car listening. Radioplayer describes Reference Radio as “the latest move in a series of ambitious partnership projects, aimed at helping car companies and broadcasters deliver a better user-experience in the vehicles of the future.”

Radioplayer has unveiled the Reference Radio, a prototype touchscreen radio for dashboards, designed to show how smart ‘hybrid’ technology can transform in-car listening.

Radioplayer has unveiled the Reference Radio, a prototype touchscreen radio for dashboards, designed to show how smart ‘hybrid’ technology can transform in-car listening. The new technology was demonstrated at the WorldDAB General Assembly in Berlin, and unlike most modern car radios, the Reference Radio shows a single list of stations across all those platforms. There’s no need to select different sources like DAB, FM, or Internet first - the driver just taps a station logo to play it, and the system does the rest.

RadioApp, the industry’s streaming radio platform, will now be used to provide Australian commercial and public radio content into the DTS Connected Radio platform.

The new partnership will see CRA’s RadioApp utilised to provide Australian commercial and public service radio content for Xperi’s DTS Connected Radio platform. This new integration will allow the refining of system operations, support on-going global automotive field testing and product development of hybrid radio, and validate listener experience.

Addressing the full audience of the WorldDAB General Assembly 2018 in English, CSA board member Nicolas Curien detailed the different phases of the DAB+ deployment in France and the public calls for applications.

MDR has been broadcasting its DAB + programs since this month via the BR location Kreuzberg in the Rhön region of Germany. The use of the half antenna directed to Thuringia at the Kreuzberg site is carried out in cooperation with the Bayerischer Rundfunk because there is no comparably suitable transmitter infrastructure in the relevant Thuringian region.

At the WorldDAB General Assembly 2018, the WorldDAB Award for Outstanding Service was presented to Ole Jørgen Torvmark. The award is in recognition of Ole Jørgen's work as CEO of Digital Radio Norway, where he led Norway to become the first country in the world to switch off FM.

Ofcom is to advertise a new local radio digital multiplex licence for the Channel Isles in the first quarter of 2019. The regulator says it will also extend the licences of Island FM Ltd in Guernsey licence, and Channel Radio Ltd for in Jersey for one year whilst it carries out the task.

A new independent report has urged Ofcom and Government to rethink their approach to community and small-scale radio in the UK. The report by radio consultant David Lloyd seeks to examine the scale of the impact of community radio on the most vulnerable commercial stations in the UK for the first time, and offers recommendations to Ofcom on how the two sectors might more successfully co-exist.