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RDS Disappearing?

E

ElCheapo

Guest
I was reading a discussion about RDS on one of the state boards and it made me wonder...

Are all of the automakers phasing out RDS - and if so, why?

I just bought a new Toyota 4Runner. I assumed it would have RDS, as the 2005 models did (mine is a brand new 2006.) Nope!

I have a company ride at work - a 2005 GMC pickup. Again, no RDS. The friggin' GMC doesn't even have a stereo indicator!

Are all the major automakers phasing RDS out? If so, why?

The conspiracy theorist in me suspects it has something to do with their revenue sharing contracts with XM and Sirius - make terrestrial broadcasts appear inferior by removing some of their functionality.

Perhaps it has something to do with licensing or chipset costs?
 
Don't know about "revenue sharing" but auto makers own big pieces of XM and Sirius. It's GM and Honda with XM, Ford and Nissan with Sirius, I think.

That's part of why I think in the long run the auto makers will own them. Also how subscriber #'s keep rising--they're in over a million new cars a year each and counted as new subscribers as I recall.
 
ElCheapo said:
I was reading a discussion about RDS on one of the state boards and it made me wonder...

Are all of the automakers phasing out RDS - and if so, why?

I just bought a new Toyota 4Runner. I assumed it would have RDS, as the 2005 models did (mine is a brand new 2006.) Nope!

I have a company ride at work - a 2005 GMC pickup. Again, no RDS. The friggin' GMC doesn't even have a stereo indicator!

Are all the major automakers phasing RDS out? If so, why?

The conspiracy theorist in me suspects it has something to do with their revenue sharing contracts with XM and Sirius - make terrestrial broadcasts appear inferior by removing some of their functionality.

Perhaps it has something to do with licensing or chipset costs?
Click to expand...

I haevnt heard of anybody taking RDS out. There is no reason why XM or Sirius would care if a radio had RDS or not.

From my point of view, if the car has the lowest end radio it will not have RDS. Something above that will have RDS.
 
It also might have something to do with lack of implementation of RDS by penny pinching broadcasters.

Some of the stations in NC that have RDS do nothing with it except put up their call letters or nickname:

"Big Dawg 92.1"

Wow, why invest in the equipment if that is all you are going to do.

Very few stations in this area have utilized RDS, including the CC owned stations. It's a shame, almost like AM Stereo, but that is another topic.
 
It's all about the Benjamins baby...

How can you monetize RDS? I've seen very few stations try to capitalize on it.

Personally, I think it's a nice community service to provide artist & title info via RDS - especially when radio is becoming less and less likely to provide it via talent - either over the air or on the phone - but does providing RDS do anything to help boost stock prices? Not really...

If radio wants to not just survive but flourish, we're going to have to get over that mentality and start innovating again - at least on some level.

Some would probably point to HD Radio as an example of that innovation - and personally I think multicasting is great - but which makes more sense - dropping a few hundred thousand dollars to outfit a station with a technology that few can experience as yet or dropping a few thousand to implement a technology that almost anyone (except me in my 2006 4Runner) can experience?
 
I think it's kind of hit and miss with the RDS.

I'm in the Peoria, IL Market (#148) and I have 13 stations that use RDS, including about 7 with Artist/Title.
Most stations in the Bloomington, IL market (#241) have it and a couple are doing Artist/Title.
Most stations in the Champaign, IL market (#220) have it, including 4 with Artist/Title.
5 or 6 in the LaSalle/Peru, IL market (#246) have it..
5 stations in Galesburg, IL have it...that area has about 35,000 people. 3 of those are planning to do Artist/Title in the coming months.
Both FM stations in Kewanee, IL have it...

...but then you get to the Quad Cities market (#141).... a big whopping ZERO stations have it...

It seems like more and more stations are adding it here in Illinois and hopefully it will be a LOT more!!

I know a lot of this information since I operate RDSList.com (I'm also a big radio geek!)...so if you have stations with RDS in your area could you please submit your stations to my list?? I also wanted to mention that I get quite a bit of questions via e-mail from stations wanting to add RDS to their stations.

Thanks!

;D

Chris
 
I'm from Iowa. What's RDS? ::)


Actually I'm from NY but in Iowa, and yeah. FM is the worst here. I seriously think 80%+ of all the sticks here are mono ISDN DJless CC feeds &/or some speech synthesizer repeating the price soybeans are trading at over & over.

The other 20% arn't even worth talking about. :-X
 
RDS as a stock ticker on business talk radio?

Have any business talk FM stations ever piped the running stock market ticker over their RDS? That would make it a value-added feature.

While it might cause problems with people paying too much attention to it rather than to the road while driving, it should be technically do-able.

-- Jason
 
When I was in Canada in 2003 a lot of the stations would have news headlines and current weather conditions/temperature on their Radio Text.

Also 104.5 CHUM-FM's radio text would say:

"NOW PLAYING SONG BY ARTIST" and it would also say "COMING UP SONG BY ARTIST". I thought that was pretty cool. Of course nobody was using Dynamic PS at the time. They were using radio text like it's meant to be used.

Quite a few stations don't even use radio text. WBNQ comes to mind. The PS displays Artist/Title and I wish it was in the radio text also. My car radio displays the PS on the 1st line and on the 2nd line it has radio text. It's much easier to read the Artist/Title in the radio text than scrolling 8-characters at a time on the PS.

:)

Chris
 
netchris said:
When I was in Canada in 2003 a lot of the stations would have news headlines and current weather conditions/temperature on their Radio Text.

Also 104.5 CHUM-FM's radio text would say:

"NOW PLAYING SONG BY ARTIST" and it would also say "COMING UP SONG BY ARTIST". I thought that was pretty cool. Of course nobody was using Dynamic PS at the time. They were using radio text like it's meant to be used.

Quite a few stations don't even use radio text. WBNQ comes to mind. The PS displays Artist/Title and I wish it was in the radio text also. My car radio displays the PS on the 1st line and on the 2nd line it has radio text. It's much easier to read the Artist/Title in the radio text than scrolling 8-characters at a time on the PS.

:)

Chris
Click to expand...

That sounds exactly like the way it's done in Japan, where RDS is called "Visible Radio." On the PBS Television program "Today's Japan" a few years ago, a report on Visible Radio showed FM radios displaying the currently playing artist/title on one part of the LCD display, with scrolling news on the other part. They also showed a scrolling earthquake alert test (like EBS/EAS in print, one might say). As a song neared its end, the current artist & title alternated with the next artist & title.

It's a shame that this technology is so under-utilized here.

-- Jason
 
We're using RadioText for a simultaneous display of Artist and Title and program info.

Unfortunately almost no one can see it because few car radios support RadioText.

However our Denon monitor lets you see it in the studio...
 
I have a 06 Lexus with RDS, but PS only, no Radio Text. What is cool is that next to each station's virtual push button on the touch screen, is the RDS window, but limited to 8 char. Then when you select a station, the PS then appears in the upper portion of the screen. If your station sends format information on the RDS data, the radio will place it into a category, and you can have the radio search by format.
 
RDS is stagnant/dead here in Australia :(. It is mainly found on some big city Commercial FMs only. However I run it on my little station, GT-FM 87.6 showing PS/CT/PTY/RT/PI. I have Slogan, Weather & song/artist on the R/T only.
I'm certainly a big fan of RDS. I believe all FM stations should have it.

As to receivers - they are on the increase here. Even appearing on some el-cheepo AV Surround receivers & car stereos. You can see what's available by searching on Ebay Australia & searching RDS (tick the box "search title & description").

dxer2_2000
 
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