Public radio engineers arrive early here in Las Vegas for their own conference activities; but the Public Radio Satellite System, managed by NPR, also plans a major presence at the NAB Show itself that’s about to get underway.
That presence includes involvement in an engineering session on “Improving HD Radio.” Representatives of the PRSS’ NPR Satellite Services will also be present. The PRSS and San Francisco public radio station KQED(FM) will make a presentation about Program Services Data Sunday afternoon.
As RW has reported, Bruce Wahl, PRSS senior solutions architect, and Dan Mansergh, director of engineering at KQED, will discuss recent efforts by the PSD Task Force of the iBiquity Public Radio Advisory Board. PSD is broadcast data transmitted via HD Radio and satellite radio receivers that describe the program, including, for example, a song title, artist name, music genre or other descriptors.
They will detail the PSD Task Force’s plan to develop a method to enable program producers to provide a standard XML package of metadata through the program audio delivery channel. This would allow semi-automated creation of PSD feeds in sync with a station’s broadcast schedule.
“In the course of fulfilling our mission to distribute public radio programming to our community of stations, we’ve been exploring several processes to help move HD Radio technology forward,” said Pete Loewenstein, vice president of NPR Distribution.
In addition, representatives from NPR Satellite Services, which shares excess PRSS satellite bandwidth to public and commercial clients, will be attending the show.
