BBM says the increase is because the new meters can capture passive viewing, particularly viewing outside the home.

This came out a presentation yesterday at Advertising Week by Kathy Gardner, SVP of strategic insight and research at Canwest Broadcasting, and Rob Dilworth, VP of research at CTV Television. They also said PPM has the potential to measure other types of video and audio content, like video on demand, online clips, and commercials.

e-Radio-Inc. (ERI) and CBC/Radio-Canada today announced that they have successfully tested a new technology that could revolutionize the way electricity is consumed across Canada and around the world.

What? The CBC is revolutionizing “the way electricity is consumed?” I started wondering if Red Green had duct taped together a cold fusion reactor. But no, it turns out that the CBC has partnered with this company, e-Radio-Inc, to broadcast instructions that make your home appliances much more miserly by consuming cheaper electricity, saving you money, and helping the environment. They successfully tested the system today.

Intrigued?

Here’s how it works.

The company embeds inaudible signals in radio broadcasts. In the test they used a Radio 2 broadcast. Little receivers – they’re size of a dime – in household appliances listen for, and interpret, the signals. The signals contain data on things like the state of the electrical grid, such as the current price of electricity or when the grid is getting overloaded. Kind of like a newscast for your dishwasher.

The appliances then listen to those ‘newscasts’ and decides what do, based criteria that you’ve inputted. So say you program your thermostat to turn off your when the price of electricity starts spiking on hot summer days. The receiver in the thermostat listens to the ‘newscast’ for the price of electricity, and once it gets too high, it turns down your air conditioner. That saves you money and helps the environment.

The technology is part of global movement towards making electrical grids more efficient, called smart grids.

Right now in cities across the countries electrical utilities are installing smart electrical meters that allow consumers to monitor their electrical use and alter when they use their appliances. This technology allows consumers to essentially train their appliances to do the same task.

Jackson Wang, the president of e-Radio says that with the technology will have both financial and environmental benefits, “there’s no silver bullet in the smart grid but this is pretty close.” Wang said this afternoon he’s aiming for a “10 to 25 per cent reductions in electrical use.”

Right now the technology is being tested with various appliances, including dishwashers, fridges, washer/dryers, stoves, microwaves and hot water heaters.

He decided the CBC was the perfect partner for the technology because it’s the only broadcaster with national radio coverage. CBC/Radio-Canada’s FM signals reach close to 99% of Canadians. He added using radio has advantages over using the internet because it doesn’t bog down from high traffic. “Radio is like a dedicated channel, radio can’t be knocked out by congestion, it’s a direct communication,”  he said. “An IP based solution is actually quite fragile.”

“This is an innovative way for CBC/Radio-Canada to maximize the use of its radio infrastructure for the benefit of both Canadian consumers and the environment,” said Michel Tremblay, Senior Vice-President, Corporate Strategy & Business Partnerships at the ceeb, said in the press release this afternoon.

Wang says he hopes the technology will cover the entire country to 2011, and first products based on this technology, smart electrical thermostats will hit the market later this year.

Sorry about the short notice, but at 12:00 noon (ET) today, the Radio World magazine will hold a webinar called “Audio Over IP for Broadcast?: Learn from the Experts.”

Among the items they’ll cover:

• What Quality of Service is Required?
• Can I Use the Public Internet?
• What Bandwidth Will I Need?
• What Packet Size Should I Use?
• How Can I Deal With Network Jitter?
• Is Delay Inevitable?
• Should I Use Multicasting or Unicasting?
• What Algorithm Should I Use?
• What Is SIP? Why Might I Need It?
• How Can I Build-In Redundancy To My Link?
• What Pitfalls Should I Be Aware of?

It’s free (and probably slightly promotional in nature) and you need to pre-register.

Burns used to place his horse bets with Hastings Racecourse live on air.

Somehow, it was endearing.

I lit a candle for Burns when he died.

Listening to AM radio as a kid convinced me. I had to go into radio. I wanted desperately to be one of those people.

Technically speaking, the AM signal is the true ambassador of radio. It can snake around buildings and hills (FM is primarily line-of-sight) and bounce off the ionosphere. I can still occasionally pick up San Fransisco superstation KGO just with a regular AM Radio. You could even rock the dial slightly off-frequency to improve the treble response of the signal.

Sadly, though, over the years AM radio has become the bastard child of, well, all broadcast media. It’s resigned to primarily talk formats — hard to argue considering music sounds awful on AM, and it’s mono only (unless you count the crazy-ass attempt at AM Stereo some years ago).

But even some AM stations, notably the ones past about AM 1000, sound okay. Everything below that sounds like it’s been scrubbed in mud before being aired.

And that’s where CBC Radio One in Vancouver languishes. We’ve been at AM 690 since the Stone Age. And, despite excellent work from our technicians and engineers, the transmitter’s signal just sounds… well, muddy. There’s no treble at all and for many people in apartment or condo building, they can’t even pick up much of the signal at all, owing to AM’s hate of cement and steel.

But now, CBC Radio in Vancouver is trying to change that. CBC Radio has asked the CRTC for permission to move its signal to the FM band. And we need your help.

We’ve asked the CRTC to broadcast at 88.1 FM in the Vancouver area. Like most other FM stations, we’d put our transmitter on Mt. Seymour. Hell, Radio One is currently available on FM in every major city in Canada except Vancouver. This transition to FM is loooong overdue.

Here’s why we want to do it:

• We asked Radio One listeners in Vancouver (Foundation Research, 2004) if they had problems picking up our AM signal — nearly 40% of respondents had problems picking up the signal at home, at work or in their car. Not cool.
• Tuning to the AM band is in decline and has been for years. Four out of ten Vancouver radio listeners do not listen to the AM band at all. Making the move to FM is an investment in Radio One’s future.

But we need your help to make this happen. We can’t just string up a transmitter. We have to get permission of the CRTC which regulates (for good reason) the public airwaves.

How You Can Help

Tell the CRTC you want to listen to CBC Radio Vancouver on the FM band. The easiest way to do this is through their web site.

1. Go here.

2. Click on the button that reads

3. Put a checkmark in the box at then click “Next” at the bottom of the screen. Make sure you’re putting a checkmark beside 200714239. (Hey, they’re the CRTC’s rules, not ours! {grin} )

4. Pull down the menu and select “Support”:

5. Type your comments into the form below and click Next. You can click Next through the next three screens if you don’t want to appear before the CRTC.

If you want, you can also write a letter and fax it to the Secretary General at 819-994-0218, or mail it to CRTC, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0N2.

Whatever you do, please copy us on your intervention by email at REGULATORYAFFAIRS@CBC.CA.

UPDATE: In a caffeine-overloaded day of blogging yesterday, I accidentally wrote Brockton instead of Brockville in the headline. Thanks to Neil for pointing it out.

He started it when CBC dropped Saturday Afternoon at the Opera from its AM broadcast. “That’s the only show that I listen to religiously,” he told a local paper. “So I got pissed off and bought a radio transmitter and a satellite dish.”

Pearson used to operate the station from his home, but later moved it to improve the signal’s reach. Still, on rainy days, some people in Iqaluit have trouble picking up the signal. It operates on only 1.8 watts of power, although the actual broadcasting licence he has is for 1/600th of a watt. “The same as your toaster,” he lamented.

Pearson says he’s never been hassled about the station, despite it being illegal.

CBC Radio now has a new station in Iqaluit, at 88.3 FM. Pearson says he’ll leave his station running anyway.

CBC recently wrapped up a successful mobile broadcast multimedia field trial using “T-DMB” technology in the Greater Montreal area. The trial broadcasted two live TV services and multiple live radio services within its existing digital radio broadcasting channel.

T-DMB is one of the technologies that permits the delivery of multimedia content to mobile and handheld devices for multiple simultaneous users using a hybrid broadcast/cellular network. A news release from CBC said the trial was “a good example of how CBC/Radio-Canada will make more efficient use of its digital radio transmitter network, frequencies and licences in the future.”

Many industry analysts believe that live multimedia represents the next growth area in mobile convergence. There are a number of systems for delivery of multimedia content to mobile users in development and CBC/Radio-Canada is carefully monitoring trials in this area, including T-DMB.

T-DMB, which is based on an extension of the “DAB” digital radio system, allows delivery of television as well as radio. Now commercially available in South Korea and Germany, T-DMB has proven to be a very efficient means of broadcasting live TV, multimedia and digital radio content to mobile users. It can significantly reduce the network congestion issues associated with some existing mobile TV services which use conventional cellular networks, and it allows an unlimited number of users at any one time to access live digital TV and digital radio via mobile and handheld devices.

The broadcasting infrastructure and frequencies for “DAB” digital radio are already in place in many countries. It is robust and reliable, and can be easily extended to deliver multimedia and video in a spectrum-efficient way. There is also the synergy of being able to deliver digital radio programs to the same receivers, which appears to be popular with users.

A commercial radio station in Vancouver has applied to the CRTC to use the frequency CBC Radio One wants for a new FM transmitter in Nanaimo.

Ted Kennedy, chief of staff for CBC English radio, told a local paper the application could squelch the CBC’s plans.

Earlier this year, the CBC applied for a spot on the FM dial to rebroadcast programming from its Victoria station. Eventually, the CBC wants to put a full station in the central Vancouver Island city.

But last week, the CRTC said an unnamed private station in Vancouver has applied for the same frequency that the CBC has in mind.

The CRTC will continue to accept other applications for the signal space until October 9.

I know, you totally didn’t see that coming.

Doug Bingley, Rock 95′s general manager said “I don’t know if there is a need for it. I think the local stations do a good job covering the local issues.”

He added that he doesn’t consider CBC Radio to be a threat to his business. (It was not immediately clear if he was crossing his fingers behind his back when he said it.)

At least one counsellor, Michael Prowse, sides with the commercial stations. “I’m not opposed to the CBC, but I do feel that we currently have several privately owned/operated radio stations currently servicing the city, and I would not want to be seen as supporting a corporation paid for by taxpayers over the private operators who do not operate using tax dollars.”

(CBC Radio One already reaches Barrie listeners, but nearly all of the content comes from Toronto.)

The region is one of more than a dozen communities across Canada that could get its own CBC Radio station. The plan would create 15 production centres, expand coverage for five existing small stations, and the form eight new bureaus.

On a side note, Simcoe’s Spirit Catcher, pictured above, might make a good radio tower. I’m just sayin’.

The problem of local radio reception was made worse last year when the Island’s last AM station, CFCY, switched to the FM band. That meant people in both the eastern and western ends of the province were unable to pick up any local radio signals.

The CRTC has already approved an application for new transmitter in western P.E.I., and Coffin is impatient for a new signal to reach into eastern Kings County.

The CBC hopes to have new transmitters up in the eastern and western ends of the province by the summer of 2008.

Bill Dunphy wants the broadcast transmitter in Mulgrave to be switched from Halifax programming to Cape Breton programming. (The Mulgrave transmitter is actually on the mainland, but the local community has an affinity to Cape Breton Island.)

* Note: The photograph of Cape Breton in this image has been digitally altered.

The story ran without CBC comment, saying they couldn’t reach the CBC when they called last night. (Note to self: When I do my “Leonard Asper Eats Baby Kittens” article, be sure to call at night so I can’t reach his spokesperson and then run the story without his comment.)

Here’s some background to fill in the details, as provided to me by CBC Communications folk:

About thirty years ago, the federal government provided funding to CBC/Radio-Canada to extend its over-the-air transmission of television and radio to smaller communities. The 650-television-transmitter system disseminates CBC/Radio-Canada television services to 98 per cent of the population.

A transmitter has a lifespan of about 30 years, and we are now looking at having to replace them. As well, as the world moves to HD/digital transmission, we need to consider replacing analog towers with digital ones, making the transition even more costly. We need to balance reaching the most Canadians possible with responsible use of our resources.

Last fall, in our proposal to the CRTC, we put forward a hybrid approach for digital/HD television: 44 over-the-air digital transmitters that would reach 80 per cent of the Canadian population. The vast majority of that remaining 20 per cent subscribe to satellite television services. The remaining few add up to less than two per cent of Canadians, and is roughly the same number of people who currently do not have access to CBC/Radio-Canada.

Of course, it would be great if the federal government ponied up more cash for us to outfit every small town with every CBC service available, but clearly that’s not a good use of taxpayer money.

Knowing the background, do you think we’ve struck the right balance with this decision?

This is the last of my three-part video series taking you, literally, inside the CBC. I’d like to know if you would like more of this kind of material — not sure how well it went over.

Attention CBC folks: Anything interesting or newsworthy happening in your region? Be sure to let me know so you can share it with your colleagues across the country.