Cruising down the highway in Bigcity, USA, your radio picks up near-CD quality croonings of Bessie Smith and displays her name, the song title, and the album cover.
You're heading toward the bridge, and you want to make sure there's no gridlock. You press a button on your car stereo and voila -- a voice reads you the traffic for the bridge only, immediately. Choose another station, and a stream of stock quotes scrolls across your dashboard.
It's not such a far-fetched scenario. In another year, it could be a reality, as traditional radio -- one of the last remaining analog industries -- gets ready to go digital. We've watched telephones go cellular, music go to the CD and DAT, and even television make slow progresstoward a high definition digital future.
Digital audio broadcasts will sound as clear as CDs, be less susceptible to interference, and allow for some data broadcasting to deliver text over the airwaves.
The catch? Listeners would have to purchase new radios, priced 20 to 30 percent more than current models to receive digital broadcasts.
"This is very important to radio's future," said Jeffrey Bobeck, vice president of communications at the National Association of Broadcasters. "It's become a very competitive market out there."
The FCC is expected to unveil its recommendations for moving radio to the digital realm very soon. The proposal, initially scheduled for release last week, was delayed due to disagreements over the language, according to David Fiske, FCC spokesman.
Industry observers say the final regulations may not be issued until late 2000.
Since there are three competing technologies that radio stations could use to go digital, the NAB hopes the FCC will eventually choose one standard to spur the industry and prevent another standards battle, such as the one that slowed the development of digital TV.
"Once upon a time there was supposed to be this thing called "AM stereo,'" said Tim Pozar, an engineer in the San Francisco Bay area for 23 years before leaving the business in 1996. Pozar said the technology never took off because of a standards squabble.
This time, however, the competition is stiffer. Services like CD Radio will soon offer listeners hundreds of commercial-free, CD-quality radio station broadcasts via satellite for a monthly fee.
The development of such services "was a big scare for terrestrial stations," said James Schurek, director of new media at Jeff Mcclusky and Associates in Chicago, a firm that helps record labels get radio exposure for their bands. "The radio industry is so reactionary. They're not going to change their strategy until [change] is forced upon them."
Local programming is a costly proposition for such satellite-focused companies, said Jim Griffin, CEO of OneHouse and a consultant to the music industry. But if traditional stations moved their regional weather and traffic reports into the digital realm, it could give them an edge over satellite stations, he said.
Regional stations could also use digital distribution to promote local concerts and events, and even try to break in a band regionally, said Schurek.
The improved digital sound will have AM stations producing FM quality, and FM stations will sound almost as good as CDs, said Schurek. Stations will be able to broadcast digital and analog signals from the same frequency, so that "WILD 100" will keep the same location on the dial.
"Our company is very much interested" in digital radio, said Erick Steinberg, director of technical operations at KFOG in San Francisco, and "will participate at such time the FCC gives us the go-ahead."
Another digital radio standard being slowly adopted in Europe, one that is not under consideration by the FCC -- Eureka-147 -- uses a separate band for digital transmissions. But the US military currently uses the band for its communications in the Bay Area, said KFOG's Steinberg.
Down the road, some futurists predict even more possibilities for digital radio. Stations could choose whether to broadcast CD-quality sound from a single station or break up into as many as 10 different FM quality stations, all with different formats -- a Spanish-language station, a hip-hop station, and a polka station, said OneHouse's Griffin.
He envisions Net radio stations like Spinner hooking up with terrestrial stations and letting listeners use input devices like cell phones or pagers to request tunes.
Once the stations become data broadcasters, the possibilities open up, said David Weekly, an audio consultant. Conceptually, "this is a first step toward a national wireless data infrastructure. Five iterations down the line you [could be able to] receive any kind of data anywhere in the US," he said.
And devices like Tivo and Replay Networks' smart VCRs, which can scan television programming for specific genres and save the content for later viewing, could be developed to "listen" to digital radio, said Weekly.
At this point, traditional radio isn't looking so far ahead. "Our primary interest is broadcasting traditional programs," said the NAB's Bobeck. "This is not the National Association of Datacasters."
Even the technology offered by USA Digital Radio -- one of the three companies developing technology for radio stations -- doesn't currently allow for multiple audio broadcasts.
Twelve of the nation's largest radio broadcasters -- including the likes of ABC, AMFM, and Cumulus -- have invested in the company and are testing its technology.
But in a world where most stations are owned by one of several giants, Net radio enthusiasts are skeptical that the programming will get all that exciting, and that CD quality sound will be enough to entice consumers to shell out the bucks for a new radio.
"It's an incremental improvement, and appropriately analogous to HDTV ... questionably useful for the common person," said Weekly. "When do people listen to the radio? When they are driving fast in their car ... [the sound quality improvement] is wasted because people listen in noisy environments."
"The digital radio that's going to succeed [will be] delivered over Internet protocol," said Brian Zisk, founder of Green Witch Radio, an Internet webcasting company.
"If it's over IP, you can have a full range of Internet services" such as radio stations customized by genre, and the ability to set the playlists or micro broadcast over the Internet. And, as wireless Internet access becomes a reality, "If you can put a box that plays wireless [IP-based] Internet radio in your car, why would you want a box that plays digital radio?" he asked.
"Most stations in the Bay Area are owned by [one of] five companies," said David Fricks, founder of Sonicbox, which makes a device that allows Net radio enthusiasts to play Net radio stations over their home stereos. "It's still this generic corporate thing, like broadcast TV before cable television."
"Radio on the Internet is an interesting innovation -- it's another choice for consumers, but it's never going to replace traditional radio," said the NAB's Bobeck.
"We have to make sure the product continually improve ... improves. Perhaps [in] the 1960s, people were saying, 'what's wrong with AM, it sounds great to me.' But [FM] spawned a new industry."
The arrival of digital radio could also delay the FCC from ruling on the future of smaller radio stations trying to get access to the airwaves. David Salemi, director of marketing at USA Digital radio, said digital broadcasters have requested that the FCC make a ruling in their arena before addressing low-power FM stations. "We're not sure how [it] will affect them."
