The Union Internationale de Radiodiffusion (UIR founded 1925) efficiently acted to clear the sky, a "Policeman of Ether" within the Intergovernmental International Telecommunications Union, the global watchdog of the electromagnetic spectrum. That UIR also played an important role in defining the social remit of sound broadcasting, well in advance of UN and UNESCO recommendations, for instance...

11. Technical advances never stopped. A technical, apparently minor progress but fraught with social consequences for the success of radio, appeared in the late twenties with receivers directly connected to the mains, thus freed from heavy lead acid batteries. Powerful loud speakers were not less important to make of radio a family device freed from headphones....

12. The 1930-40 decade conferred to sound broadcasting a global power statute with all its political implications and influence. Again during WW 2 radio was to play a major role, this time extended to civilian population submitted to a strong propaganda by all belligerents. Technically mastering short waves broadcasts proved a key factor in waging audiovisual war. Marconi has had a good vision of the short-wave potentialities.

13. In 1948 a major step forward occurred again: the invention of the transistor by Bardeen, Brattain to be improved later on, by Shockley.A fine team of scientists fully aware of the most recent advances in fundamental physics, including quantum theory. They carried out their research at the Bell Laboratories. They opened the way to the progeny of semi-conductors, a prerequisite to digital radio, thus allowing cost-effective devices throughout the whole networks.

14. Meantime, back in early thirties, another epoch-making invention by Major Edwin Armstrong- -the Frequency Modulation-proved to be a major step forward in terms of quality, and better use of the frequency spectrum, i.e. operating on metric wavelengths. All the engineering talents were constantly called for to improve "spectrum efficiency'.

15. All necessary factors were then available for developing digital radio. Integrated circuits, elaborate software, completely change the radio systems abandoning conventional amplitude and/or frequency modulation. However, radio broadcasting was already intensively using digital technologies for the electro acoustics segment (Low-Frequency) of the 'chain of value", also in Direct Broadcast Satellites. (DBS)

16. "One of the advantages of digital radio content is that it occupies comparatively small amounts of capacity and can easily be delivered through a wide range of digital technologies"Digital Britain. Radio: going digital, BIS & DCMS, June 2009

17. It so happens that television was to be first in the race to a fully digitized broadcasting world. This is a strange story of "technical inversion... while the sound always comes first because it's easier", market forces pushed television at center-stage claiming more and more spectrum space from the regulators, while broadcasters have not been too keen on developing sound radio...

Technically, the bit rates required for television, i.e. after "compression", is over 8 Mb/s (270 Mb/s before compression) as compared with the bit rate for sound radio, 1. 5 Mb/s But it doesn't at all mean that digital radio is that simple! For instance, in order to ensuring a high quality level, the protection against spurious signals in a sound digital channel requires a much lower level of those spurious signals than is the case for digital images. By and many physiologist phenomena in human hearing process are involved with digitized radio. By and large, if DTT has been to television what FM was to radio, what may Digital Radio be to analogue radio? It offers a defined space where radio can be master of its own destiny and have the freedom to take risks.Télévision Numérique Terrestre, Bernard Denis Laroque, Dunod 2005 / Digital Britain, Radio going digital, Barry Cox, 2009

18. People like the idea that DTT-Digital Terrestrial Television- operates through a miraculous process involving "1" and "0" so that TV images are duly "compressed "so permitting any channel to carry five or more programmes instead of a single one with analogue technology. Amusing to note, there still are some "analogical-dependent" viewers after switch-off on full DTT coverage...Inventing Digital Television, Martin L. Bell, The London Press, 2006

(Note)The vision of a "compressed TV image', of course is false but popular... The real DTT process consists (a) in eliminating redundancies in a pertinent way, and (b) resorting to software, both operations being based on highly refined " algorithms"

19. Digital Radio had to wait its turn. It still has to demonstrate how it can supplant present FM networks in a sound economy. Its best trump is likely to be the abundance of channels that comes first before enhanced quality, the latter already reaching a satisfactory level for the average listener via FM networks. Collateral advantages could also be found in entirely new services such as fixed or slow motion image, sophisticated traffic information.

20. Two major points are most favourable: no problem of frequency allocations as the Band III will be freed with analogue FM networks switch -over on digital networks. Managing the spectrum is quite manageable as forecast by experts. Second point: Digital Radio can and will ensure complete coverage of the territory. Regulatory Authorities should prove a fair degree of flexibility in granting broadcast licences. Malthus time is finished!Each and every stakeholder, broadcasters, transmitter and receiver vendors, imaginative content producers, spectrum and standard planners, regulators and law-makers are got to be able to cope with the massive, fundamental shifts that are going on. That requires at least a partially new mindset.Desperate Networks, Television, RTS magazine, October 2009

What future for Digital Terrestrial Sound Broadcasting?

The Comité d'Histoire de la Radiodiffusion CHR - enjoys a thorough expertise in telling stories of the never-ending broadcasting saga. Today, not everybody seems convinced there is a need for digitalized radio when the FM networks apparently do so pretty well their job !

However, it is interesting clearly to show how constantly techno sciences, the prime mover, industrial developers, broadcasting institutions both public service and commercial channels, lawmakers and regulators have been closely inter related with each other. But André Levy-Lang could write (in La Lettre d'Illissos, N°67) “So far, we have neglected the third factor of growth (alongside with financial and economic policy factors) all that feeds innovation, productivity, ideas and TECHNIQUES."

Radio, first of all, is a matter of programme. We'll always find where to buy transmitters and other gear. However, good advances in technology certainly help produce good and innovative programmes. René Duval President CHR"I have always preferred radio to television. Its screen is larger ». Jean Paul Sartre

As well as being a flexible medium, radio appeal to the listener is that it is more than simply a stream of audio: it is an intimate, portable and ambient medium; and it is a very personal medium: the pictures that it forms inside our heads are different for every listener (...) Whatever the convergence of broadcasting, telecoms and the Internet, Sound Radio will keep a platform of its own where it can be master of its own destiny and have the freedom to take risks. Digital Britain, Radio: going digital, Barry Cox

As concluding remarks and forecast: Sound broadcasting will stay in its unassailable position. As compared with its media companions, radio needs no special regulation to prevent harmful content or to protect minors... as television and the Internet cruelly need.

SOUND RADIO BROADCASTING, A Short History of a Long Journey. Pierre Braillard, Délégué Général - International Institute of Communications, Comité d'Histoire de la Radiodiffusion (CHR), a presentation at GRER (Groupe de Recherches et d'Etudes sur la Radio) Seminar 26, 27 28 November 2009 held at Sorbonne University and INA.