Talking Voices Ireland

quick round up of news from the Talking Voices team in Ireland,

[update] I forgot to mention we are proud to be associated with downloadmusic.ie USB album thingie, where Brian is on the  judging panel.

Talking Voices were recently re commissioned to record another 10 podcast episodes for RaboDirect.ie a part of the Rabo Bank group. The 10 are in post production and the first 2 have been published. download here

Our breakfast briefing series of podcasts for the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland (ICAI) enters its 2nd year now and hot on the heals of the January property forecast last Friday at the Hilton Hotel Dublin we recorded and published the second briefing of 2008 titled Lending - what the Banks look for (speakers from AIB) check the podcasts out at http://www.icai.ie

Brian has been busy working along side the Emigrant Advice Network and Irish Overseas Broadcasting who together are highlighting the plight of medium wave radio audiences who face a cessation of service from RTE Radio 1 on 567kHz on March 24th . Next week we meet with the department of communication in an attempt to highlight the concerns of listerners and the business & technical reasons why this is a very bad move. more details from http://www.ean.ie/category/radio

Finally a critique of Digital Terrestrial Television and the potential Free To Air components with in it, DTT TV is about to be rolled out in Ireland, this is a good time to ponder, will Ireland repeat the mistakes of ONdigital or embrace the openness of FreeView. http://www.rte2fta.com/

For radio to succeed in a digital world, its a no brain’er that ‘radio must go’ digital, signs from the UK are that this is happening, while the 5  Irish national radio channels are now on digital satellite on the astra2d footprint and DAB is on trial on the east coast and RTE completed DRM trials on LW this week. What is also visible is that podcasting can hold its own and also grow with minutes listened up and the content on offer increasing and out matching traditional radio. What is a challenge is how to measure this digital soup. We know they listen, but when or where we can’t be sure, as once you go online your listeners can be anywhere, and with Internet Radio units going sub €100 (£65) for the first time in Ireland this week the future is radio’s if it can switch over. The first UK analogue switch off is in Whitehaven Cumbria in October. Are we ready?

John Plunkett writes in the Guardian 17/08/2007

In a world of digital TV, video-on-demand and the iPod, radio risked being left behind. There is something rather old-fashioned about switching on your “wireless”, a term more likely to refer to broadband internet these days.

…

Another 2.7 million of us listen to podcasts downloaded on to our iPod or other MP3 player, up from 1.9 million. It is radio, but not as we once knew it.

radio is staggering but at least its still moving. we read in the Guardian [free sub] that Radio 4 (BBC) is making a 90 minute movie to sit along side two 45 minute audio pieces. The film is to be made by director Conor Lennon.

Mr Lennon said the project aimed to invert the relationship between sound and vision and provide a “vision track” to the spoken material.

When it is broadcast, Radio 4 will have a red button service for digital TV transmission enabling viewers to see the visual material, the first time the station has shown a feature-style film to accompany spoken material.

“Radio is very excited about introducing visual material because of new technology,” Mr Lennon said. “In Korea they are developing Eye River radio sets which can transmit images to accompany the sound and Radio 4 wants to be a part of this multiplatform revolution.

bhg says — did they mean iRiver ? DRM will have images too! and DRM+ will have mobile TV “radio - i get the picture”