November 4, 2010 – CBC Radio fans can now listen to CBC Radio One, Radio 2 and Radio 3 on iPad thanks to the latest update to the highly popular CBC Radio app. The new universal app for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch is available now on the Apple App Store.

“It’s truly exciting to be able to offer the full slate of CBC Radio’s diverse program excellence in such accessible and innovative ways via the iPad. It feels like a whole new rich content experience,” said Denise Donlon, general manager, CBC Radio.

Listeners can listen live to any CBC Radio station across Canada or program favourite CBC Radio shows on-demand such as The Current with Anna Maria Tremonti, Q with Jian Ghomeshi, The Next Chapter with Shelagh Rogers, the new Day 6 with Brent Bambury, Writers & Company with Eleanor Wachtel, As it Happens with Carol Off and much more.

Enjoy live streams of CBC Radio 2 including Radio 2 Morning hosted by Bob Mackowycz, Tempo hosted by mezzo-soprano Julie Nesrallah and Drive with Rich Terfry. Plug into CBC Radio 2’s live streams of Canadian composers, Canadian songwriters, classical and jazz channels or catch CBC Radio 3 with all genres of new music including indie rock, hip hop and electronica.

The updated CBC Radio app brings iPad users the full range of CBC Radio content already available to those with iPhone or iPod touch. Users can also access the CBC Program Guide to find out what’s playing now or to plan their CBC Radio listening schedule.

As well, the updated app also offers audio sessions from CBC-TV favourites, letting listeners enjoy audio-only versions of George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight, Mansbridge One on One and the CBC News At Issue panel.

CBC Radio content accessible through the CBC Radio app includes:

• CBC Radio One: A wide range of local, national and international news, current affairs, documentaries, arts and culture including 63 on-demand programs and 22 live streams.

• CBC Radio 2: The best Canadian music, commercial-free: classical, jazz, singer-songwriters, pop, R&B, world, soul and much more. Four on-demand programs and nine live streams.

• CBC Radio 3: A ‘Best Online Radio’ nominee at the Webby awards two years in a row, CBC Radio 3 is THE place to discover the best new Canadian indie acts. Five on-demand programs and one live stream, plus access to more than 100,000 tracks from more than 20,000 artists via the now embedded in-app CBC Radio 3 website.

The app also lets users run CBC Radio content as multi-tasking background audio while tending to other tasks on iPhone or iPod touch. For iPhone, the app also remembers episode playback positions if listening is interrupted by an incoming phone call.

The CBC Radio app is available for free from the Apple App Store on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, or at www.itunes.com/appstore.

More info:

CBC mobile services

Chartattack compiles the Top 50 Canadian Campus Radio Chart, along with its genre-specific charts World/Folk, Metal/Punk, Jazz/Blues, Electronic and Hip-Hop. They’ve been doing this for 20 years. Under the deal Chartattack’s charts editor Chris Burland will participate in a segment called “CHARTattack Way Back Track” as part of The R3-30 three-hour broadcast.

Pedro Mendes, the producer on R3-30 had this to say:

The history of indie music has long been an integral part of The R3-30, says Mendes, “and Chris, with his intimate knowledge of almost 20 years of CHARTattack hits, will take our show to a new level of depth and relevance. Plus, he always brings pie. We love pie.”

This because of the launch last May of the Canadian Music Wiki a joint project between CBC Radio 3 and University of British Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

According to the website’s mission statement, it is “dedicated to using collaborative and social media to enrich Canada’s music scene by creating a comprehensive guide to Canadian music.”

Launched on the 21st of May, the site was 9 months in the making.

Steve Pratt, the director of CBC Radio 3, and Alfred Hermida, an associate professor at the UBC school of journalism came up with the idea. They asked Amanda Ash, a graduate student at UBC, to join the project because it combined her interests in social media with her background in music journalism.

“This was their initial idea to put together something like this,” she said recently over the phone, “and I took that idea and ran with it.”

The site currently has 2,300 pages of original content. The goal is to keep that momentum going. They are also updating the site so it’s easier to contribute. “We want everyone to be able to add, from your grandmother to a 16-year old kid that’s a Justin Bieber fan,” Ash said. She said the first step it get a base of contributors and keep it growing.

According to Ash, Radio 3 is the perfect kind of environment to experiment with a project like the Canadian Music Wiki. “Radio 3 is kind of on the fringe, and we’re given a little more space to experiment,” she said.

Ash said that although there isn’t a lot of resources available for the project, she hopes the community will come together and sustain the site now that it’s up and running.

“Having 100,000 Canadian songs uploaded to the site is a huge milestone for CBC Radio 3 and a testament to the depth and quality of the Canadian music community,” says Steve Pratt, director, CBC Radio 3 and digital music.

The 100,000th song was a track called Cold Cold Blues by InLimbo, a four-piece alt/indie band from Niagara Falls, Ontario.

In the video below, Steve Pratt, the director of Radio 3, provides a quick tour of some of the new features, focusing mostly on the new radio streams.

As Pratt says in the video above “there used to be just one web radio station, now there’s five.” In addition to the main Radio 3 stream, there’s also streams for pop, rock, hiphop and electronic music.

Additionally the new site includes many social media features, many of which are unique to Radio 3, like creating personal playlists, the ability to forward tracks to friends, and the ability to sign in and create user profiles on the site. Thankfully the site is also larger and exposes more of the blog posts and content, including concert calenders.

“The goal was to showcase more of what CBC Radio 3 has to offer than just our blog and the streaming radio service. We found with our old design, many people didn’t know that all the music played on CBC Radio 3 has been uploaded by musicians and that there are over 18,000 artists and over 80,000 songs on the website to browse through, discover, and share with others,” Pratt said on the site this morning.

Another feature of the new site is the thumbs up or thumbs down feature which allows users to rate the songs and according to Pratt “will let us improve the music programming on CBC Radio 3 by understanding which songs have stronger (or weaker) reaction from listeners.”

Overall the reaction to the new site is generally positive, although some users have reported bugs on a few features while others are having problems with the streams.

A guide to the new Radio 3 site is available here, there are also a bunch of tutorial videos on YouTube here. If you spot a bug or something wacky with the site you can send it to the developers here.

What do you think of the new site?

Pratt says that Radio 3 is more like an ecosystem – an organic community. “A lot of the tools on the website are designed to help people discover and get to know artists and then be able to share stuff they like with their own social networks,” he said.

There is no doubt that Pratt believes in strongly in online distribution, but only to an extent. For instance, he doesn’t believe the web should be a dumping ground for content.

He said on his blog in May, regurgitating TV or radio content online is a bad strategy because it doesn’t necessarily address what the audience wants. “It is this ease of ‘copying and pasting’ content on the web that often leads to a lack of thinking about serving the unique needs of the audience online,” Pratt wrote.

All of this puts Pratt in an interesting position. As the director of CBC Radio 3, he wants to avoid being saddled with corporate-wide solutions that don’t met his needs and he wants to try to experiment as much as possible. This sometimes puts Radio 3 at odds with CBC corporate mandates. But as Pratt says “a one-size fits all solution for the creation and distribution of digital content isn’t sufficient and can possibly hamper your success and growth.”

MONDAY UPDATE: The results are in. Radio 3 listeners have voted 77% to 23% in favor of a 100% all Canadian CBC Radio 3.

For the last few days a debate was raging over at CBC Radio 3 about how much non-Canadian content should be on the “air” at their single surviving station. As John Paolozzi wrote on the Radio 3 blog “Currently we have two separate radio stations. One web. One satellite. Due to budget cuts we will merge the two stations into one on Monday, June 15th.”

The web station currently features a 100% Canadian mix, whereas the satellite feed is an 85% Canadian 15% international mix.

The question is… which path do we follow? Do we include some international music on our web stream, or do we change our satellite station to 100% Canadian?

However as the North by East West blog explains, this isn’t a final decision, but while be taken into consideration by the Radio 3 management.

Wether it’s final decision or not, you have to admire the way they make decisions over there.

CBC Radio 3 now has a Twitter feed at http://www.twitter.com/cbcradio3, which tweets new podcast releases, network news, and more.

(If the above sentence makes no sense to you, read on.)

It’s kind of hard to explain Twitter to people who haven’t heard of it, so I’ll borrow from the Wikipedia text:

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates (otherwise known as tweets) which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters long.

Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default).

Twitter is now being adopted by companies and media organizations like CBC News as a way of sending updates to people who follow them. It’s a simple of effective way of announcing new blog posting, news reports just in, and so on.

This blog itself has a Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/thecbc. Click “Follow” to receive a Tweet every time this blog has a new story.

Do you know of any other CBC- or media-related Twitter feeds? Let me know in the comments and I’ll update this post them them.

Thus, Meow and CBC Radio 3 will host a two-hour concert this Friday to be broadcast live on the network on May 23 between 4 and 6 pm.

This was no simple poll; this was a playoff-style series of polls that took two months to decide the victor in the war of the vinyl. Chad VanGaalen, a rising star in the indie scene right now, was one of the supporters of Meow’s bid, and will be performing at the store concert on Friday.

Meow will be holding events all day Friday, so if you’re in the area, get on down there and bring your best sense of funk.

The Flip camera is a video camera with a “flip-out” USB port that allows you to plug it directly into your computer without a cable. It is available inexpensively, at a price point of around $200 as opposed to the expected $1200 for a digital video camera in the past.

This brings the realm of the video blog into everyone’s reach. Mr. Thompkins runs through the technology and software needed to work with a Mac; it is easily adaptable to a PC simply by just changing the software package to something like Podesk which is tailor-made to produce video blogs and video podcasts.

CBC shows have been taking advantage of this video format and have been posting their own short web videos; check out the following links to get the feel.

Spark – How To Make A Radio Show
The host of “Spark” and co-staff produced this how-to video.
http://www.danmisener.com/archives/334

R3TV (Radio 3 TV)
http://blip.tv/file/258335/
This contains some fun stuff, a music video, and interesting commentary in the manner of an internet video rather than a sleekly produced TV Show.

ZeD:
http://zed.cbc.ca/go?c=ZedCandidHomepage
While cancelled, the videos on this page try to keep the feel of an amateur internet video and give you the general idea of what is possible.

Go here for opinionated goodness:
http://radio3.cbc.ca/polls/?pollId=15

For public broadcasters like CBC Radio 3, we are not judged by how much revenue we take in (which is none), but by how relevant we are to our community of listeners. And an award like the Webbys People’s Voice is a great way to document community support.

If you like what Radio 3 is doing, and you want to help us champion independent Canadian musicians in this country and on the international stage, than please take the time to vote. (Once you’ve confirmed your registration, you’ll find R3 under Website / Media / Radio.)

As one of five nominees from around the world in this category, Radio 3 and the team behind it are eligible for the Internet industry’s two most sought-after awards: The Webby Award and The Webby People’s Voice Award. This is the second year in a row that Radio 3 has been nominated.

CBC overall was also named an “official honoree” for CBC Podcasts—an honour granted to fewer than 15% of entrants and one that signifies an outstanding caliber of work.

Unlike other awards shows, where only judges choose the winners, The Webby Awards also give the global Web community an opportunity to decide who will take home a Webby. Starting today, and running through to May 1, the public can cast their votes in The Webby’s People Voice Awards.  Award winners will be announced May 6, and honoured at a star-studded ceremony ceremony for the 12th Annual Webby Awards in New York City on June 9.

Hailed as the “Oscars of the Internet,” The Webby Film and Video Awards are the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. Established in 1996, the Webbys are presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. This year, the Awards received a record 9,500 entries from across the U.S. and over 60 countries worldwide.

Do we really need to have sponsorship messages in CBC podcasts? Isn’t CBC Radio supposed to be non-commercial?

CBC Radio is only funded for terrestrial (AM & FM) broadcasting. All the money to make our podcasting a reality is cobbled together at the expense of our ‘traditional’ radio programming.

There is a significant amount of effort going into the creation of the podcasts.  CBC Radio produces over 40 separate podcasts a week, almost all of which need to be edited to fit a podcast format, or to remove material that we do not have the right to put in a podcast.  We also produce several original ‘podcast-only’ programs that are not broadcast on terrestrial radio.

In all cases, this production takes time and money that we don’t have and can’t sustain. (As you know if you check out iTunes, our podcasts are extremely popular, and every download consumes bandwidth, too.)

So CBC Radio has made the choice that several other public broadcasters have made – to include sponsorship messages to help pay for these increasing costs.

So why have podcasts at all?

We feel it’s vitally important for the future of CBC Radio that we provide our programming as podcasts.  More and more audiences are choosing to consume content on platforms other than a traditional broadcast, and as a public broadcaster, we need to do what we can to make our content available on these platforms or risk losing  relevance and value to our audiences.

But I thought the CBC gets new money from Parliament every year?

CBC has not had a substantive funding increase in some time, and if we waited to be given money to do new things, we’d very quickly fall behind the needs of our audiences.  We would not be in a position to consider alternative sources of funding should our funding increase to reflect the new realities of podcasting and other multiple platforms. I sincerely hope that in the future our funding will reflect these new realities.

In the meantime, though, I think it’s far more important that we find ways to distribute our content where it matters to our audience instead of staying out of the game entirely because we can’t afford it.

We conducted a survey a couple years ago in order to gauge interest in podcasts and it provided some strong guidance as to how we should proceed with respect to sponsorship. An overwhelming percent said they wanted CBC podcasts and that they wanted them to be a free service from their public broadcaster. They told us very clearly that they did not want to pay for podcasting themselves. We have to respect that.

Do the sponsors have any control over the content?

The sponsors have no say, and will never have any say, in the content we produce.  That has not happened at the CBC in television, it does not happen on the website, and it will not happen in radio.

As always, please weigh in with what you think. Faced with limited options (no podcasts, charging listeners for podcasts, or permitting sponsorships), did we make the right call?

Outgoing CBC Radio vice-president Jane Chalmers sat down with me (well, via phone) for her Exit Interview. Even though she uses the management-speak phrase “leveraging our content assets” (what do they make those people smoke at the Niagara Institute, anyway?), I thought she was quite candid. Best wishes, Jane.

How long have you been thinking about leaving?
I’ve been thinking about it since the spring. My aunt, who is a second mother to me, died in March, and I was with her to the end. I was sitting at home afterwards and I gathered some letters that my mom who died 18 months earlier wrote to her over the years, and whenever she referred to me, I was off working. I missed a lot of family time because I was reporting or producing or attending some kind of network meeting. These things can be painful. They have a sense of shaking you a bit — checking to see if your priorities are right. And I began to feel like I didn’t always have those priorities straight, so it felt like the right time to realign.

I’ve been in this job for five years and I had specific things I wanted to achieve; I haven’t done everything I wanted to, but I did get to a lot of it. I knew when I took the job there likely wasn’t anywhere to move afterwards but I wanted the opportunity to try out my ideas. Robert Rabinovitch gave me that chance and I will always be grateful for thr opportunity. But the bottom line was pretty clear. We’re going to have a transition [with a new President] and I’d have to make a firm commitment for another three or four years, As I looked inside, I realized that I just don’t have the same kind of energy. These jobs demand a lot of commitment and people in the radio service have a right to expect that.

What kind of commitment will your successor have to make?
I travel most weeks, quite often worked on weekends writing speeches or preparing and even on days off, the radio is on. It’s a full-time commitment. [CBC Radio has] 37 stations, 1,100 employees, and 185 programs. And then we’re doing a lot of development work. I leave home at 7:00 a.m. and usually don’t get back there until 6 and often 7 at night. My neighbours joke with me — they see me drive up and ask ‘Are you ever home?!’ But I don’t see how you can do the job anyother way. it’s important that you’re out and about in the regional stations to listen to the shows, talk to my colleagues, provide feedback and hear what support they need from us. It’s important to talk with listeners in those communities to get their views on our performance. It’s essential. It’s a big country.

You mentioned there were specific things you wanted to achieve. What were they, and did you achieve them?
Before I give the list, I want to make it clear that our success is really possible because of the leaders and our programmers inside Radio. This has truly been a team effort.

First, I wanted to put the emphasis back on creativity and risk- taking. I’ve always believed that if you can work collaboratively with creative people, you can produce great results. I wanted our people to dream about opportunities and their ideas. We turned Program Development into a research-and-development exercise — a lot of emphasis was put on training people, mentoring, consistent feedback and creating working partnerships with different people and different skill-sets across the system. That system led to a lot of new programing and the summer schedules. Making great radio is all about nurturing creativity. We are blessed with an exceptional work-force. So, I hope change isn’t seen as threatening any more. People don’t lose their jobs by trying new things’or when shows don’t work. We celebrate our successes and learn from our experimentation.

Second, I wanted to put the emphasis back on the importance of our regional stations. We increased local programming time and gave regions the ability to unilaterally take the network off and put their local programming on air when it was necessary [for local breaking news, emergency broadcasts, etc.]

I’m surprised they couldn’t do that before.

Not easily, no. So they can do that now, they can make that call, and just let me know after the fact. They know what’s going on in their community and they’re smart and responsible people, so I trust them.

We must give people the freedom and ability to shape programs central to their community. That said, it’s not just about local. Getting it right in communities also informs our choices in network shows. We must always remember that our listeners experience our networks from the perspective of where they live. That’s how we build relevance.

And it’s also how we’ve created more network programs in the regions. I’m really proud of that.

Third, we are braver. More confident. Radio One has become a place where we’re consistently developing our shows, introducing new programs, redeveloping drama and comedy, and we’re showcasing more talent and ideas from the outside. I think it’s a more creative place for our programmers and for listeners. Our listening share is growing – we’re in the top three in most markets – and our national and international awards are at record highs. We’re re-developing Radio Two, expanding our core strength in classical music to more forms of Canadian music-making. Radio 3 with a focus on contemporary music and innovation has really grown and prospered.

Fourth, I think our local radio expansion plan is well on its way. We’ve already moved to FM in a number of markets and we’ve been talking with politicians and meeting with residents in those communities that are growing at a rate much greater than the Canadian population. Do you know that 6-million Canadians in large markets have no local service? These people deserve a local CBC Radio station — there’s a lot of support for the expansion plan. It would bring 12 new stations online’and 3 more for francophones’ if we can bring the plan to fruition. It would require $25 million operating money each year, but that would increase our listening by 100 million additional hours per year. That’s good bang for the buck.

The need is clearly there. The challenge is to get the funding.

Finally, I wanted to build stronger international partnerships and we’ve been very aggressive in that regard. We’ve been getting our shows sold and listened to in the U.S. As It Happens is in more than 100 U.S. cities, Quirks, Wiretap, Ideas, the Vinyl Cafe are making inroads. Our concerts and the Massey Lectures are featured around the world. We feel it’s a really important part of our mandate to expose Canadian talent and ideas internationally.

What do you think CBC’s radio network will look like ten years from now?
I think we’ll be over the air still, but that said we’ll be much more into content on demand and looking at whatever those new platforms are to make sure our programs are on them whenever and in whatever form people require. We’ve already got news on mobile phones, R2 streaming concerts, Sirius Radio etc. We’re looking at more opportunities with our television colleagues. Together, we evaluate every digital opportunity, so it’ll be a mixed bag like it is today, but we’ll be on more platforms.

I can also foresee real potential for high definition radio which will allow us to create new Networks — I dream of a Radio Four or Five — leveraging our content assets to provide Canadians with even better service and choice.

We’re also looking at new kinds of business models, because it’s important people out there understand that while our [over the air] radio service has to remain pure and non-commercial, we’ll have to look at partnerships to pay for providing the extra content, and we’ll have to make sure the partners don’t dilute the meaning of our brand. The public has to know we make the content and it’s not influenced by those partners. I mean, our podcast research shows demand. 1-milion downloads each month and growing. The research also demonstrates smart content appeals to a wide variety of age-groups and backgrounds’in Canada and around the world. We can provide that. A program like Ideas, for example, is finding a brand new audience — the average age [for Ideas podcast listeners] is in their mid-20s. Our content can live anywhere, but we have to get it there and it’s that delivery that’s costing us money from our program budgets. That’s a big challenge.

Now, Radio 3 has launched a full radio station that you can access — for free! — through any web browser or your favourite music player. All the great music you’ve come to expect from R3, but it’s now a living, breathing radio station including the hosts and editorial features.

CBC Radio 3′s blogger-in-residence, John Paolozzi, calls it “the most exciting development on this site since we re-launched Radio3 back in November of 2005,” and he’s right.
(This is not simply the same feed as channel 94 on Sirius, but a unique station created exclusively for the web.)

Have a listen and let me know what you think in the comments.

CBC Radio 3′s own blog post about it says:

We think it’s kind of huge, because it means that you basically get to program CBC Radio 3, and broadcast it to whomever you please. All of our audio content – including individual songs, concerts, sessions, interviews, and other special features – is available for you to plug into your personal playlist.

For instructions on how to install it, just follow the link below to keep reading.

The player works great, though the design is not customizable. It’d be even cooler if there were a version which looks a little more like the general Facebook look-and-feel (the R3 player kind of sticks out in a MySpace sort of way). Maybe version 2. Still, this is a great first step.

If you don’t have a playlist, or want to know more about how the player works, you should read our Media Player FAQ before taking another step.
Adding the Player to Facebook

Facebook users go to the CBC Radio 3 Player page and follow the instructions. Note that the system will automatically add the player in radio mode (the default stream that you see to your right, right here on this site). If you want to make your player play a specific playlist, you have to add the permalink for the playlist of your choice.

To find the permalink for your playlist, make sure you are signed into CBC Radio 3 and in playlist mode. You should see the word “permalink” in red, to the left of the rating area. Click and a box will appear with the permalink for the playlist currently playing, which you may copy and paste where needed.

Adding the Player to MySpace and Blogs

First off, please note that the player is 250 pixels wide, so you may have to tweak your page to make it fit nice and snug.

To add the player to MySpace and other blogs, first make sure you are signed into CBC Radio 3, and in playlist mode. Begin playing the playlist you want to add to your site and then click on the button that says “embed” on the player. Copy the html and paste it into the appropriate space on MySpace or your blog.

If you want to add the player to run in radio mode (no playlist attached), here is the html you’ll need to embed:

<object width=”250″ height=”450″><param name=”movie” value=”http://radio3.cbc.ca/web-templates/flashplayer/R3_EmbededPlayer.swf”></param><param name=”wmode” value=”transparent”></param><param name=”allowScriptAccess” value=”always”></param>

<embed src=”http://radio3.cbc.ca/web-templates/flashplayer/R3_EmbededPlayer.swf” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” wmode=”transparent” width=”250″ height=”450″ allowScriptAccess=”always”>

</embed></object>

I Want to Use Another User’s Playlist. Can I Do This?

Of course! But keep in mind the chosen playlist will continue to evolve over time, as that person may change it at any time. To use someone else’s playlist, you can browse the User Playlist section of the Radio 3 site, and choose whatever playlist you find in the ‘Browse all Playlists’ index. Same deal as before: launch the playlist in the player using the play button, and then click the permalink (for Facebook) or embed button (for MySpace or blogs) to get the html for your CBC Radio 3 Player.

I Want my Favourite Band to Play Instead, How Do I Set That Up?

First check to make sure your favourite band exists on New Music Canada. Once verified, go to their band page, and you will see a red link that says “play all tracks”, just to the right of the band’s name and city. Click on the link, and the band’s tracks should start playing. You can then go to the media player, and click the permalink (for Facebook) or embed button (for MySpace or blogs) to copy the html you need for your CBC Radio 3 Player.

How Do I Choose Only One Track to Play in My CBC Radio 3 Player?

To play only one track in your Facebook embedded player, simply mouse over the track that is playing in the media player, and click on the envelope symbol. A window will appear with the permalink. For MySpace or blog, just hit the embed button, and copy the html.

Having Problems? With the player I mean…

Whew! That’s a relief. I was losing sleep over those eight listeners who actually own digital radio receivers.

Digital radio, technically speaking, is considered superior in quality and reception. It exists on a separate frequency band (unlike the amusing but doomed “AM stereo” experiments from years back) and so you need special DAB (digital audio broadcasting) receivers to pick it up.

But good luck finding a receiver. Radio Sha…er, The Source… stopped selling them a couple of years ago. No buyers.

The Benefits Aren’t Compelling

Really, who could blame us consumers. There’s very little compelling reason to switch over to digital radio. The two reasons most industry enthusiasts point to for the DAB side:

1. You can stream data along with the audio. This lets you show the song name, etc.
2. The audio quality is better.

But nothing is ever as simple as that. In reality:

1. Data: There’s very little value-add for the listener. Sure, I can see the name of the song playing on the DAB receiver’s screen. Or I can wait until the DJ tells me the song name. Private radio got excited because they could, in theory, send driving directions to advertisers’ stores, or display an advertiser’s phone number during their ad. Big deal.
2. Quality: It’s not as good as they say. Yes, provided you’re in clear reception, it sounds amazing. But step behind a tall building or drive into a valley and you get the usual digital muddiness as the receiver struggles to figure out how to play decent quality with fewer compressed packets.

So really, why would I shell out for a digital radio receiver to listen to CBC Radio One, when I can pick it up just fine on my existing radios.
What We Should Do

Giving airtime to upcoming Canadian musicians is partly our mandate. While we do that through CBC Radio 3′s Sirius channel, satellite radio requires a monthly subscription, whereas DAB does not.

We should use our digital radio transmitters to broadcast CBC Radio 3. The R3 folks have proven themselves to be highly adaptive (dare I say — “flexible”?) and have an excellent track record at using early-stage technologies.

What do you think?

Craig’s List is featured each Tuesday on “The Happy Morning Funtime Show” on Sirius 94.