Clear Channel, plagued with financial issues in their radio division, is still up and running and adding new services in support of HD Radio. The company is introducing Total Traffic Plus for HD receivers and will now add Journaline, a new data application introduced for DAB and DRM digital radio systems. Journaline will add a news crawl to the service that already supplies traffic and other information.

Total Traffic Plus featuring Journaline features:

  • Hierarchical, categorized text messages
  • Specifically designed for digital broadcast services
  • Extremely low bit rate requirements
  • Import/transformation of existing broadcaster’s content sources based on standard formats like XML
  • Optimized for inexpensive consumer receivers
  • Very simple decoder resources and display hardware requirements for mobile receivers
  • Metadata Option for high quality text-to-speech playback
  • Hotkeys / station keys for quick access to favorite topics
  • Reception quality tolerant push & store service

Satellite Radio as well as Terrestrial Radio has long been streaming additional information to car receivers. With satellite radio, the information is streamed with the channel. Terrestrial radio has utilized the RDS system for similar services, but in the past the use of RDS was limited to song and artist information or a streaming identification of the station.

This article is not to debate the merits, success, or failure of HD Radio, nor Clear Channel. The satellite radio fan base seems to hate terrestrial radio with such a passion that they would ignore the significance of what is happening, and in doing so, miss what can only be seen as a distinct advantage for satellite radio.

What Clear Channel, and by extension HD Radio, is doing is proving that getting consumers as much information as possible is VERY IMPORTANT. With their bandwidth, Sirius XM has the capability to deliver all of this and more in a way that terrestrial radio is just beginning to do. Sirius XM can already offer consumers everything they want is audio and text directly from one united service.

Total Traffic and Total Traffic Plus should not be ignored. They already work closely with GPS mainstays Garmin and Tom Tom, as well as some auto manufacturers. The point here is that terrestrial radio (including HD) is doing their best to keep pace with satellite radio, and to be a viable competitor to service those who elect to not pay for audio entertainment.

Position – Long Sirius XM radio