For years, the only way a station might know if their analog and HD Radio digital signals were out of alignment was if a listener called to complain something didn’t sound right. In addition, there might be an issue with the station’s power levels, signal quality or data services.
Or, the listener might call an advertising car dealership with their complaint instead. The dealer, in turn, would contact iBiquity so the tech developer could get in touch with the station. That system is still in place.
But now iBiquity has launched a monitoring network to help resolve station operations issues faster. “We’re now in a lot of cars and we want to make sure HD Radio is a good consumer experience,” iBiquity Digital President/CEO Bob Struble tells Radio World.
“We can’t rely on spot checks. We don’t want to see Led Zeppelin’s name displayed for five songs” in a row on the receiver, he explained.
The network is operational in the top 10 radio markets, Las Vegas and Detroit. During a demo, Struble said information is gathered from a network of remote listening stations and fed into a central data analysis platform that iBiquity developed.
Data funneled into the platform will also feed www.hdradio.com and the HD Radio Guide App.
IBiquity has partnered with DaySequerra for the field monitors, featuring automated error correction, that have been deployed and Media Monitors for monitor installation and maintenance.
