Digital radio takes to the road

While the transition of television to a digital technology with its improved picture and sound quality has been a much publicized and controversial process, radio, has stayed in the background. But in 2001, in the United States, radio broadcasting is making its own digital leap. Two start-ups are introducing a new type of radio broadcast-subscription-based digital audio sent from satellites. With satellite digital audio radio services (SDARS), listeners will be able to tune in to the same radio stations anywhere in the United States. SDARS differs from so-called digital music services, in which direct broadcast satellite or cable system operators provide digitized and compressed audio over their networks, both because of its programming and because SDARS can be received in a moving car, where much of today's radio listening takes place; existing digital audio services cannot. Meanwhile, the free, over-the-air terrestrial broadcasters are expected to choose digital audio broadcasting technologies for both the AM and FM bands by year-end.