A Visionary Man

How long have you been involved with DRM?

When the Iron Curtain fell at the beginning of the 90s, the armed forces began releasing their technologies for civilian purposes. A digital standard was developed from three different suggestions. Deutsche Welle, along with other international broadcasters, approached this issue at a meeting in Paris around that time, but it took quite a while before the consortium was founded.

The name DRM has existed since 1988; it was only shortly before the consortium of the same name formed that we found that out. It had to have a connection to digital radio and reflect the internationality of the project, so we combined English and French and came up with Digital Radio Mondiale, in short DRM.

Did you see the new standard's potential right there and then?

Of course. At that time, I was a member of the steering committee for World DAB, responsible for the satellite group. We accompanied and analyzed the German “Mediastar” project and saw that the digital technology was capable of rendering good results when used for broadcasting from orbit.

It was just a question of logic to find out if it couldn't also be used for the classical short wave, i.e. the reflection by the ionosphere. We gathered experts from research facilities, the industry and radio stations and examined the analog system and determined that the application of digital technology would work. Today we know: it works perfectly!

What does this new technology mean for increasing reach and thus for possible markets?

For the listeners, numbering a few hundred million people all over the world, listening to us and other international stations, it means a quantum leap in terms of reception quality. DRM almost reaches FM quality, i.e. interference-free reception. For the broadcasters, it means lower costs, as the costs for transmitter power supply are reduced considerably.

In the meantime, commercial broadcasters like RTL from Luxembourg have started to engage in DRM, as selling advertising airtime on DRM programs is seen as a good way to earn money. Should RTL be successful, this will surely become a worldwide procedure, as short wave can cover large areas over long distances and does not depend on national regulations.

We think that this system will also play an important role for local radio with its high demand for frequencies. With DRM, frequencies can be used that formerly were not meant for this range of broadcasting. A 26 MHz frequency, one small 100W-transmitter and an antenna that only broadcasts ground waves can transmit local radio in stereo quality covering an area of 100-200 km in diameter.

The term "quantum leap" is often used with regard to quality. Do you think that this is appropriate?

Many people, who listen to a DRM broadcast for the first time and compare digital to analog, have exactly this impression. The change from medium wave to FM in the 50s was - in today's words - a "CD leap". With digital broadcasts on medium, long and short wave, we cannot quite achieve this, but what we do achieve is a leap in audio quality from 4.5 to nearly 15 kHz.

In addition, the improvement in reception quality will be enormous: the noise, the fading and the interference will cease to exist with digital technology.

Up to now, with analog short wave, little mistakes were more or less allowed. This will clearly change with DRM.

I hope we never thought that! I think the quality of our radio programs is very high, especially in view of the fact that they have not been produced for short wave only for quite some time now. Our programs are transmitted via satellite in almost studio quality to re-broadcasting FM stations and cable networks or are compressed for the Internet.

Does the new transmission path also mean additional costs for Deutsche Welle?

During the first few years, additional costs will arise based on the necessity to broadcast in analog as well as in digital mode at the same time. What we have to do in view of the costs is to be as exact as possible with our estimates of the amount of time for parallel transmissions. Therefore, we have set some benchmarks for ourselves.

A positive example in this field of activity can be seen in Germany today with the introduction of terrestrial digital TV. The transitional phase is just half a year, so six months after the start of the digital transmissions the analog transmissions are shut down.

A negative example is the introduction of DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) in some countries. DAB was originally meant as a substitution for FM broadcasts, but it does not work too well and people are not confident.

We at Deutsche Welle have high hopes that DRM will be established successfully on the market and that the development will be faster than with DAB.

There surely is ground for hope: comparing FM with DAB and analog short wave with DRM, the difference in quality in the latter case is much more evident.

DAB sounds better than FM. Especially the multiple-path disturbances of FM broadcasts no longer exist. After all, that is what the DAB system was developed for and it works exactly as planned. However, the difference is not that enormously evident, so the listeners are ready to do without this “small” improvement in quality.

The reactions to the comparison between analog and digital short, medium and long wave are, on the other hand, very positive – which we saw at the IFA in Berlin. I am sure that the listeners who tune in to Deutsche Welle, the BBC or other broadcasters regularly will have and spend the money to listen to their favorite programs in a much better quality.

Our programs’ contents and a more modern program design are our second area of activity. There will be a “European Channel” (a draft title only) which will carry a newly designed program schedule: part German, part English, part music. With that, we hope to be able to offer our listeners an even more attractive program.

How high will the costs for DRM be for the listener? Can you already say?

Unfortunately, I cannot make any predictions right now, as the industry is still keeping a low profile. It will, at any rate, be a receiver capable of not only receiving DRM transmissions, but also analog (short, medium and long wave) as well as FM and possibly even DAB. Another prerequisite is that the receiver should be portable. A car radio and a so-called “kitchen radio” are also in the works, but I cannot as yet say which firm will be building the receiver and what the price will be.

What does the “roadmap” for DRM look like, regarding coverage areas?

After extensive considerations, the DRM Consortium agreed upon Europe as the first market to tackle. One reason is that many members of the Consortium are from European countries. A second lies in the fact that many European broadcasters are, in the true sense of the word, the DRM forerunners. This includes us, Deutsche Welle, BBC World, DeutschlandRadio, RTL as one of the big commercial broadcasters, and others.

If the European market accepts DRM, others will follow. It is not yet clear in what order this will happen, but countries in the Middle East and in Asia are surely among the first candidates. China, Russia and perhaps India are already ready to introduce the system and with falling receiver prices, Latin America and Africa will follow suit.

At present, our resources and financial means are limited, so we are concentrating on Europe, but Deutsche Welle is already participating in DRM broadcasts directed towards Russia, Asia and above all to North America, where there seems to be a very high interest in DRM.

Deutsche Welle will proceed here and soon start transmitting a one-hour program to China, where we intend to be working towards establishing a local market. Hopefully, we will find enough national broadcasters willing to cooperate, as these stations are naturally more suitable for introducing something new to the local market than an international broadcaster like Deutsche Welle could ever be.

When do you think will Deutsche Welle be transmitting in digital mode only?

My guess is that between 2015 and 2020, analog transmissions will cease for good and be replaced by a worldwide digital broadcasting system.