Eeek, stay away, you with your red pens, you markers!

I still have time >huff, huff< for one final >huuff< post >wheeeze< !
I've been a busy boy. I just reinterviewed the station manager at Zed about the digital future of our little station and...she doesn't know.
Once again, paying the powerbill has taken on the kind of urgency that shuts out such silly, irrelevant concerns as getting left behind by the rest of the broadcasting world. Actually, that's not fair at all: There's always a million things to be done at a station that can't really afford staff (not to mention the 'things' and the 'doing').
The manager is actually going to sit down with our broadcast techie (well, not ours we borrowed him - um, paid someone else's a lot of money), who's just finishing re-fitting our broadcast studio (with still, largely, analogue - sigh - equipment) and they're gonna talk digi-future. I hope I have time to chat with him before I finish up the assignment.
What I do know is that the CBAA (the community radio peak body), whose chapter on digital radio - previously hidden behind this impenetrable 'members only' link - I have just read, says that any broadcaster wanting to convert to digital is looking at installation costs alone of $150,000 dollars. Comparitive to an FM tower that isn't very much, yet, if you don't have any money in the first place... This is why the head of the CBAA asked the federal government for $20,000,000 in 2002(?) for full digital conversion of all existing community broadcasters (with some regional, rural aggregations). The fed.s aren't saying anything. Oh well.
It's very different from the 70s. The then conversion to FM was spearheaded by government and tertiary institutions, commercial radio didn't want anything to do with FM: Fear of the value-shedding of the new. Right now two major commercial interests (CRA and BA) are the key players working with the government on the Sydney and Melbourne, respectively, digital radio trials. They are watching very closely what works and what doesn't. They've learnt from what has been described as 'the train wreck of digital television' in Oz - very high cost (for broadcasters and consumers) and very few takers. The original date for turning on digital radio was 2001, but in mid-2004 everyone is still in the early stages of the pre-turn on development phase.
I think the reason for this is combinative of several issues:
- Nobody wanted what happened with digital televsion - fair enough. However, the costs for digital radio and the consumer appeal of the product are actually not so bad. What's really going on?
- The fed. government has been spruicking digital (to their preferred players, of course, the commercials) very hard, and despite going along with this the commercials have finally put the brakes on. Again, why?
- What they really fear is, in the absence of solid legislation and spectrum allocation, being burned by the spectrum allocation (both what they get and the introduction of new players) and the consequent extra competition and devaluing of their marketshare. In these respects it's like the old days of FM conversion.
The US is even more old-school. The Eureka 147 platform for digital radio, now adopted by large chunks of Europe (including the UK) and also Canada and at the present time the one being trialled in Oz, in 1991 had its proposal to enter the US quashed by commercial broadcasters who feared the things I just mentioned. Rather than take it slow they stopped it all together. In the mean time a US consortium USA digital radio (USADR & now renamed Ibiquity) comprising Gannett & CBS/Westinghouse developed their own digital radio platform: IBOC (In band on channel) which means a piggy-backing of digital signal on existing analogue transmissions. This is very appealing to those same US broadcasters who told EU 147 'no thanks' - coz it offers a stepping stone 'tween digital and analogue. When the market reaches critical mass you can turn off analogue, but until then you don't have to incur half as much cost and risk (especially in terms of future spectrum allocation and -uggh- competition).
This, in turn, opens up an enormous risk for Australia - albeit a long way off. If the US adopts IBOC (and if you look again at the Ibiquity website, look at all those big US names like Clearchannel - those guys are like the Evil Galactic Empire of broadcasting, um 4ZzZ is Luke Skywalker, um, no probably R2D2, maybe a Jawa? - they really want IBOC) they may bully the rest of the world into following them and make everyone adopt their platform. That would be very bad for any broadcaster, but a community broadcaster, a ZzZ: They might not survive.
I guess I find all of this pretty interesting, coz it's all happening, right now, but, unless you look, kinda carefully, you might never know.
Linking it to ZzZ as a subculture has been difficult, but not impossible. I'm writing it in terms of how the members of what is a very distinctive subculture are responding to changes in technology and the mediasphere. ZzZ in it's earliest years was raised by a bunch of FM techno-guerillas and, as my first assignment showed (although I didn't talk much about the identity of those earliest folk) that identity mutated into, first, politicos and then a subculture of music fanatics. The responses of the members of that subculture to these issues has been, to my eyes, diverse and interesting. Well, I have to say that, don't I :) Still, from anarchist show web streamers, to underground file-sharing computer techs, future-concerned station staff and their arsenal of broadcast techs and even complete luddites (oh, look, that'd be me then), Zed is making a lot of different moves in the face of these issues & that is what I'll write about.

Eesh, how pompous - oh well, no time to change it. Thanku to those folk who have made this class a very interesting place to be. I'll endeavour to keep in touch, tho I can't say it's my forte.

Ciao,

C.

Just finished up the last lecture for MSTU2000, no tute, so, I thought I'd come and do a little post 'fore dashing off to the radio.

First of all, I must apologise to anyone, especially a marker going thru this blog, for my use of leet. Until a couple of days ago I didn't know that it is, not only hard to understand (well I knew that, so I was kinda sparing with it), but also, now, incredibly uncool. I've remained blissfully unaware, coz, not being a real internet kiddy, I only know about leet thru Megatokyo, a webcomic where one of the characters (a crazed, misogynistic, gamer-alcoholic named Largo) and if you look at the earlier points in the archive, nearly everyone - speaks leet. Megatokyo in itself, is very cool, but how was I to know their leet is now exclusively ironic?
It used to be the case, as the Wikipedia link, above, mentions, that all cool kids would adorn their sentence structure with leet. Now, it seems, only pimply fifteen yearolds and I do. Well, red-faced with embarassment, I never wanted to 0\/\/nz0r ny0n3'z /\/\07h3r and so I will refrain from now on.
Isn't it interesting how internet community develops? Somehow I still feel like a lost pilgrim, searching for my binary Mecca.

Before I go, I discovered something interesting at my radio station the other day. Here am I doing an assignment on new radio technology and how little there seems to be going around at Zed and what should pop up, but all the anarchkidies - who I always assumed were the most luddite of all - and they're turning into techno-guerillas, streaming their radical radio on the net. Just look here and here are the people helping them do it.
Maybe the spirit of '75 is still alive at Zed.
I'm going to have to get in touch with them and find out more about this.

So see you soon.

I'm sure I'm spending w4y too much t1me on dis blog - but hey, I'm starting to lyk3 it.
I was just reading another intensive piece by the Consumationist - oh lewk, he linked me too - what a nice young man.
Well I dunno, I still feel irreprably local - not very global at all. I like the netskills this course is teaching - but it feels isolated none the less, maybe a, >pause for horrorfying expression< group project might get those dried up networking glands pumping again (eww).
Well, Mr. Consumationist has listed just about every (good) band in Oz. BTW Curse of dialect, of which that crazy little bloke, below, is a member - click on it, cl1([< 0n 1t! I do pictures now!


Yip, they're just about my favourite Ozzie outfit; certainly my favourite hiphoppers & they're 3veryth1ng 1 think h1ph0p should be.
This, down here, is their amazing record - touch it...NOW!

One of the few Oz artists Paul didn't mention iz perhaps the leading bloke in Brizzie's electro (also techno, IDM, etc) scene - hiz stuff and he is variously the Nam shub of enki, Kiki Ill & is part of a band that have just debuted: The monster zoku ensembe - lewk they're in Zed's top 20. The record cover for 'fuck piece' is below, perhaps his best known (cuz actually commercially released) record

- still available, I theenk, thru Demon Tea. Here's what they had to say 'bout the Shub, way back when:

"Fuck Piece" is the long awaited second album of talented Brisbane artist, The Nam Shub Of Enki. He has combined aspects of many styles of music into a melting pot of psychdelic breakbeat and trance, with a distinct industrial feel. In doing this he has achieved a style never before explored, whilst keeping a fun psychedelic edge that never takes itself too seriously.
Nam Shub Of Enki has been one of Brisbane's favourite underground Electronic artists for the past few years, playing at too many festivals, outdoor parties, and club events to count.
His unique style has attracted fans from many different musical backgrounds, including trance, techno, and even rock!
He has had releases on Weird Music Society(Australia), Equinox Production (Japan) Surreal Audio (Finland).

He was even kinda psychedelic trance, too. A great and largely unknown Briz artist. I think he tried to go global, but ended up sueing a Swedish label that got his stuff and sat on it. Well he's done the next best thing & moved to Melbourne.

Speaking of which I must g0 t0o.

Cyoo,

Soon.