Everybody’s name was in lights at the dmg launch of their two new digital channels. Literally! Instead of the usual printed name tags, everyone got this little battery operated LED display to stick on their chest, each programmed to show the wearers name in a pull-through animation. How cool is that? And that was just the entrée as assembled media was ushered into the uber-trendy Steel Bar strewn with way cool Apple iPhones, iPods, iMacs and MacBooks to demonstrate how these new channels sound on the platforms for which they were created. Not a digital radio in sight.
You can listen to novanation and Koffee right now on the net. What distinguishes them from the myriad internet stations already on offer is sound quality. Encoding is similar to songs you’d download from iTunes proving CD quality – okay, near CD quality for the purists.
By next week you’ll be able to get a free app for your iPhone and listen to the streamed programs through that. Meanwhile, the propeller heads at dmg are working on a version for Nokia phones.
In January, Fairfax Radio launched its iPhone app that allows instant access to that network’s three minute news bulletins. If downloads continue at the rapid rate they have, soon there could be more people listening to, say, 2UE News through iPhones than on the Radio.
Management at dmg are under no illusion about how long the uptake of digital radio might be. That’s why they’re concentrating on the her and now. They and their competitors all agree that ultimately it will be new and innovative programming that will entice punters to part with the cash required for a shiny new digital box.
With the launch of Koffe, novanation and Austereo’s Radar, the new programming is already here. And so is the iPhone, potentially able to do everything that a digital radio set can do and then some.
Are these new programs strong enough to drive consumers into Harvey Norman to buy the hardware? Or could it be that digital radio programs will succeed without digital radio sets? What do you think?
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