Blogging Nick Piggott

Radio Festival – the three days where the entire UK radio industry gathers to discuss the future of the radio industry, address the topics of the day, and indulge in the unprecedented transfer of value from wallets to bars. (Although this year’s free bars have been widely praised).

So where and how did Digital feature in this celebration of radio, and what did Lesley Douglas (Controller, BBC Radio 2) say that was the most insightful and valuable contribution of the whole event?

Twelve years ago, DAB warranted a token primer session in Techcon. (”Here is a picture of a mul-ti-plex. You can transmit many stations on one mul-ti-plex. It uses au-dio en-cod-ing called Emm-Peg Two”). I drove people around Birmingham in a Black Thunder demonstrating a DAB radio the size of a small beer fridge.

This year, ITIS and Fraunhofer presented useful and interesting applications for DAB. ITIS explained the many varied uses of TPEG, including the very topical FPI (Fuel Pricing Information) service (complete with early 2008 diagrams with references to sub £1/litre fuel – how we sniggered). If GPS mapping is the next big thing in terms of mobile technologies, then DAB allows those maps to be populated with large amounts of really useful real-time data. My hunch is that POI (Points of Interest) will itself become a Point of Significantly Valuable Commercial Interest to commercial radio stations (can I register the acronym POSVCI? No?). Fraunhofer demo’ed their Journaline applications, which is a lightweight browseable text service, something like a RSS Reader but delivered over DAB. Neat, but I wonder if it’s aiming at a class of radio (simple text display) that the radio industry is trying to get beyond now?

Festival proper started on Tuesday, with brilliantly produced an fabulously creative session on the Digital Radio Working Group (producer, Nick Piggott, GCap Media plc). Ahem. Look, it was never going to wow people when the report had already been out a week. The discussion (when it finally got going – the crowd took time to warm up this year) focused a lot on in-car receivers, and I felt that Peter Davies got away rather too easily with side-stepping the question about what to do about the punitively high transmission costs being suffered by commercial broadcasters at the moment. There also wasn’t enough discussion about coverage strengthening. But then, it was the first session, and the bar had been open the night before.

There was the obligatory session on music rights, where PPL and PRS/MCPS explain that they’re really only trying to help, but then get nailed (quite rightly) by everyone who asks a question from the crowd, and big kudos to Jay Crawford for exposing the levels of desperation to claw money from people to such an extent that they set up call centres to do mass enforcements of “workplace” music licences. A quick conversation with the landlord of the local hostelry confirmed that he’d been strong-armed into getting a licence because his chef occasionally has the radio on in the kitchen. Madness, from the people who brought you “let’s sue 12 year olds”.

But the really interesting thing about Festival now is that Digital crops up everywhere. It’s just part of life. (I don’t think it got mentioned in Matthew Bannister’s amusing session on compliance, made even more hysterical by Muff Murfin using at least three words from the seriously banned list unaware that two school kids had been ushered into the hall behind him for the next session).

On Wednesday, we had a session on visualising radio, which just served to highlight the commonality of the vision for radio in the future. I was on the panel next to Ben Chapman (Radio 1), and the fact is that we pretty much agree. Ben’s got different ideas on what his visuals will be, and in that respect it’s the very embodiment of “agree on technology, compete on content”. Radio is going to visualise, so the race is on to see who does it first, and who does it best (clearly, GCap will do both). There were some slightly random contributions from Westwood about his YouTube successes. (I wonder if he’s called that because of Westwood Hill, Sydenham, SE26). Chris North of Wise Buddah reminded us (as only an agent can) that artistes have finite time, so we need to bear that in mind when we come up with endless digital extensions to work on.

However, it was Lesley Douglas who really contributed significantly to the digital debate this year, in the dying moments of the festival. In a session where a panel of key industry people (Andrew Harrison, Tony Moretta, Lesley Douglas) take questions from the audience, one question prompted the discussion “has the UK picked an out of date digital technology?”. The conclusion, as usual, is no – when you properly consider all the elements that lead to success, there’s no better choice than DAB/Eureka 147. But Lesley closed the panel by saying something along the lines of:

I hope that this is the last year we have to discuss the technology, and that next year we’ll be talking much more about the content of digital radio, which is what matters far more to listeners.

I couldn’t agree more.

Of all the questions surrounding the DAB strategy, the “How do we get DAB in-car?” must surely be one of the most contentious (along with “Do we need to set an analogue switch-off date?”).

I must admit, I don’t share some of my colleagues’ concerns about the progress of DAB towards being a standard line-fit item on Europe’s cars. I remember how long it took CD players to be ubiquitous in cars, almost a decade after we all had them in our houses (and quite a few of us had them to carry around). I think the evidence is there that things are moving along OK, and once there’s a more defined commitment to DAB from Germany, France, Scandinavia et al., the market-size requirements seem to be fulfilled.

But now I’m a bit more concerned that the automotive industry is making decisions based on incorrect research, to the extent that they might well be getting a completely inaccurate picture of people’s desire to have DAB in their cars.

About a year ago, I bought a new car. Nothing remarkable, a particularly dull brand and a particularly dull model. Of course, I asked if DAB was a dealer fit option. The dealer said that wasn’t possible, but that he’d had a lot of people asking about it. (Good sign). Annoyingly, it’s one of those “fully integrated” dashboards, which makes it virtually impossible to fit a radio myself. Thankfully the PURE Highway arrived, and that solved that problem rather neatly.

Now, a year on, I’ve received a JD Power survey to complete. If you’re not aware, the JD Power survey is the Gold Standard of car surveys, and it is relentlessly thorough. (If timing had been better, I would have scanned the blank one in). It’s clear that a lot of the data goes straight back to the manufacturers.

So let’s be clear; a UK based survey company (Guildford), sends a UK based customer a survey form about a UK purchased and registered car.

To say I was taken aback by Question 14.7 would be an understatement

Does your NEW vehicle have…

Satellite Radio : (factory/dealer fit OR aftermarket installed)

After diligently crossing “Satellite” out and writing in “DAB Digital”, I ticked the “aftermarket installed” box.

Then there are hundreds of questions about every aspect of the car, has it ever gone wrong, do it like it, could I like it more. And towards the end, another killer question:

Q30 Features and Options

Please mark the factory installed features you have on your NEW vehicle now and those you want on your next vehicle (my emphasis)

[massive list of items - DVD players, Sat Nav systems, Extra bottle holders, Power sliding doors, remote keyless entry, memory seats, headlamp washers]

27. Satellite Radio : I HAVE it now (Y/N) I WANT IT on my next radio (Y/N)

What does this mean in the UK? Clearly, they’ve cut’n'pasted the US questionnaire, but what on earth does a UK consumer write here, and more interestingly, how are these answers interpreted by the car companies deciding whether to fit DAB Digital Radio into cars in Europe?

In the worst-case scenario, poor confused UK customer says un-equivocally “NO I don’t have Satellite Radio, and NO I Don’t Want One in my next car…. because I’ve never heard of ‘Satellite Radio’ and I want a DAB one, please”. Of course, there’s no way of capturing the second part of that statement. The form just says “Do you have one – NO, (never heard of it) ; Do you want one – NO (ditto)”.

So under what heading does that answer appear as in the cross-tabs presented to the manufacturer. Does it even make it there if nobody says they’re interested? When running the “Top 10 most demanded features on your next car”, satellite radio isn’t going to rate, but neither is DAB.

Next time a manufacturer tells me there’s no evidence of demand for digital radios in cars, I shall point them at the JD Power survey. In the meantime, I’ve written a letter to JD Power asking them what it’s all about; if I get a reply, I’ll post it here.

(Update – miraculously, I received another, blank, questionnaire today – so I’ve replaced the one I’d scribbled all over).

Any security expert worth his salt will tell you that trying to achieve security by hiding things from people is doomed to failure. This week, I had a worrying reminder of how imperfect the security around banking can be.

I have been scanning in credit card receipts from a journey I made recently to a well-developed, technically advanced, Western country. Indeed, I was able to pay for absolutely everything on my plastic, hence the forest size collection of receipts.

Ironically, the trip started with a bump because my bank refused to authorise a withdrawal from a cash machine, necessitating a (long) phone call to their customer service department to get the mandatory foreign roaming block lifted. Apparently I have to do it every time I leave the country.

But it’s the credit card receipts which were most interesting. I’m not going to reproduce them here, because the security risks are extreme.

Once upon a time, all the digits of a credit card and its expiry date were visible on the receipt, which make it a fraudsters paradise. Simply by stealing a receipt, particularly one with a signature on, you could relatively easily make fraudulent transactions until the genuine cardholder noticed and called stop.

So, in the UK at least, the digits are now obscured. Only the last 4 digits remain visible, along with the expiry date, thus leaving somewhere around 50,000,000 permutations to guess my card details. (Assuming that there is a smaller subset of card issuer codes than the 9999 allocated, and that some cards will indeed share the same expiry date as mine). I find the last 4 digits invaluable to work out which card I’ve put something on, so I consider the risks acceptable for the benefit I gain, and obviously UK banks too. I’ve never seen a UK credit card receipt show anything other than last 4 digits and expiry date. (Let me know if you have seen different – excepting the old manually swipe receipts!).

Flicking through my foreign receipts, I noticed that the obfuscated digits varied from receipt to receipt. One of the showed last 4 digits. One blanked out 4 digits in the middle (starting at position 10) and another blanked out 4 digits (starting at position 12). So my three receipts looked like this:

XXXXXXXXXXXXDDDD
DDDDDDDDXXXXDDDD
DDDDDDDDDDXXXXDD

The observant of you will now have noticed that, by holding those three receipts, only TWO digits of my card remain unknown. That’s 100 guesses. And to add interest to the matter, credit cards use a CRC-style validation, so you wouldn’t need to crank this through much of a Visual Basic programme to find the unique number that matched that particular validation code.

I’m amazed that this obfuscation isn’t standardised to prevent this kind of risk occurring. I think that the second and third examples are hideously insecure anyway, giving away the type and issuer of the card (first four digits) allowing an attack on a wider number of vectors. Why does anyone need to see so many digits of a card number?

In none of the above cases was I asked for a PIN number, nor was the CVV of the card checked. Just a simple scribble on the paper copy of the receipt. It’s incredible.

There doesn’t seem to be much I can do to reduce this risk, other than keeping a very tight grip on my own receipts (which I do as a matter of course), and check my credit-card on-line every couple of days. But if those three merchants ever get together with my (and other peoples’) receipts, they could have a heck of a party.

I’ve watched Bristol Airport grow at an astonishing rate over the last decade. On my first flight from BRS, the terminal was a small bungalow, the gate had patio doors to the apron, and you walked to one of the handful of stands to hop on a small, often propeller, airplane.

Bristol has benefited from a low-cost airline explosion, with Easyjet making it their second largest base (something like 19 A319 aircraft are based here), and the terminal is now a mini-version of Stanstead. But whilst the “once a day” flights to places in Europe grew, the options for someone travelling on business were pretty limited, and became more so once BA hauled themselves out of the regions (and they call themselves “British Airways” – more like “London Heathrow Airlines”).

Those of us needing to fly on business (hoping, desperately, to do get out in the morning and back for bed) had to rely on KLM to Amsterdam (errmmmm) or Sabena to Brussels (er, no). After three cancelled flights in a row, KLM got in my bad books and I started heading off back down the M4 to Heathrow. That’s madness – creating unnecessary journeys to the world’s most turbulent airport. (And yes, I did have schadenfreude at BA’s T5 circus).

Slowly the airport has recognised that there are people other than those off to Prague to get plastered for 30p. The start of a Bristol-New York (Newark) route in 2005 opened up the Americas seriously, and I was lucky enough to be on the first CO77 flight back in May 2005. But we still lacked two things; a credible/reliable hub-operation, and a Star Alliance airline.

Now Bristol has both. Lufthansa have started flying 3 times daily out to Frankfurt, their main hub, from where it’s a skip out to most places in Europe and worldwide. I was one of the people who encouraged Lufty to see the benefits of Bristol, and I was very glad to be on the inaugural Bristol-Frankfurt flight on Sunday 30th March 2008.

People underestimate the benefits of hub flying. I would much rather pay £30 more to fly from Bristol, check my bags in in Bristol, have a short walk between gates at Frankfurt, and have the whole lot pop out again at my destination, than flog down the M4 to Heathrow, or even more ridiculously, go to Stansted! I put a real value of having a touchdown-to-front door time of 20 minutes. And it’s unrealistic to expect a place like Bristol to fill a 787 / A330 / 767 to places afar (and at Bristol, the runway is a tad short), so hubbing really does offer the best route availability.

I hope the route works out as planned. I’ll certainly be using it, but it does rely on people seeing the benefits (and relative reduction in pollution*) of flying from Bristol and hopping through Frankfurt.

* If you assume that you were going to fly anyway, the pollution of a short-haul in a small plane to FRA is less than the same journey combined with a round-trip of 240 miles to Heathrow and endless circling to land. But you may disagree with my initial assumption. I would also say that I rarely drive, walk to work every day, and am an enthusiastic user of public transport, so in every other respect I do my bit.

Disclaimer: I am a member of Lufthansa’s Frequent Flier programme “Miles and More”. I received (along with all the passengers on the first flight) a commemorative gift, and I took a complimentary upgrade to business class on the return trip from FRA-BRS.

I saw this poster on the way home, and immediately wondered which of the radio stations in Bristol was running a poster campaign. Local Radio stations seem to be unique in professing their love for their cities. Local newspapers do it tacitly on their mastheads every day, and of course there’s no local TV. (It’s not wise to profess your love for Bristol if you also cover Swindon, Chippenham, Bath, Taunton and all places in between).

So my immediate reaction isn’t really that surprising. Who else would be out there with gert big posters saying they love Bristol?

Much to my surprise, it’s an insurance company, Liverpool Victoria Equitable. They have a base in the city, right on the strip known locally as “The Centre”, and are one of a number of financial service companies based in and around the West.

So why the “We Love Bristol” poster (which, to be really authentic, ought to be “We luvs Brizzle!”)? They’re recruiting for their call centre, and I’ve subsequently seen national TV adverts touting the benefits of dealing with a company with UK based call centres. So I guess that would be Bristol (home of the high quality call centre).

It seems that local radio stations had better not assume they have the monopoly on expressing their love of life round here.