The third day of the EBU Technical Assembly in Ghent aired a range of challenges faced by broadcasters today in delivering their programmes and multimedia to the public. A selection of the issues on the (historic) tables of the 13 century meeting room was as follows.
EBU TECHNICAL director Lieven Vermaele at the TA 09.
What is the future of radio?
As a media form, audio services will live forever, but there are now many ways to deliver them, and assessing the cost effectiveness of each, over the long term, is a difficult equation to solve. For digital radio broadcasting itself there are multiple options, coupled with the options of inserting radio stations in television 'multiplexes' and Internet. As if this was not difficult enough, we add the real social difficulty of switching off FM radio to make way for digital. A revolutionary new media form is 'on its way', which is causing broadcasters to really sit up and take notice. This is the combination of television and the Internet on the same TV screen - sometimes called 'hybrid broadcast broadband' (HBB). It brings its own technical challenges to define a single system, creative challenges to understand the impact on programme making, and legal issues too, when the two services TV and Internet actually do converge.
Cognitive radio
Another subject was: 'Cognitive radio'. This may be a 'what's that?' for many in broadcasting, and certainly for the public, today. The idea is relatively simple. When a radio broadcaster wants to use the airways, he examines what is already on the air, and picks a wavelength that no one is using. It is rather like we do when we look for a space in a municipal car park. And this just might be called 'find a parking space radio'. Of course, it’s a lot more complicated than that. The two and a half day meeting closed with delegates better informed about the future of broadcasting, in a time of recession yet ironically with more options than ever in broadcasting's history.