THE ROLE OF MULTIMEDIA in
ON-LINE BROADCASTING
by Russell Naughton
On-Line Services Co-ordinator, Radio Australia
also Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Visual Communication, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
A presentation to the Honourable Mr. Alan Stockdale, Treasurer of Victoria and Minister for Multimedia and Honourable Ministers of the Victorian Government on May 7, 1998.
Radio Australia is the international arm of the ABC and provides news and information 24 hours a day to Asia and the Pacific via satellite, Europe and the USA by Satellite and cable and for just on 60 years now, globally, via short wave radio. Added to these services and since early 1996, Radio Australia has operated a Melbourne based, dedicated World Wide Web site as part of the larger ABC On-Line operation, primarily based in Sydney and run by the ABC's Multimedia Unit.
Radio Australia On-Line is one of the three largest sub-sites of the some 50 or so that comprise ABC On-Line. The ABC Internet site collectively receives around one million accesses per week and Radio Australia itself about 50 to 60 thousand. ABC News and Triple J, the other two prime sub-sites, each receive around 100,000 accesses per week.
Radio Australia first went to air in December 1939 as 'Australia Calling'. There had been international transmissions, both amateur and 'official', the so called 'Empire Broadcasts' in and out of Australia since the late 1920s but 'Australia Calling', a military initiative when the airwaves were awash with mis-information was, as Sir Robert Menzies put it, [to enable us] "to have our own voice."
After the war the station was renamed 'Radio Australia' and for the next 50 or so years (along with the BBC World Service, Radio Nederlands and Deutche Welle to name but a few), has provided authoritative and reliable news and information world wide on what was then and still is, one of the most user friendly news and information dissemination processes available - short wave radio.
Sadly and not to make to light of the fact, federal and subsequent internal ABC budgetary constraints in 1996/97 led to the closure of two out of our three transmitter sites and to a large extent silenced our short wave voice into the far east, the USA and Europe. Along with our transmitters and some 60 percent of our staff we also were forced to close our Cantonese, Thai and French services.
Fortunately in the late 1980's, we had begun to employ other methods of transmission namely satellite and cable which in some way compensated for the reduction in our short wave output. Today we still are able to offer, as well as English, limited services in Indonesian, Mandarin Chinese, Tok Pisin (for our closest neighbour New Guinea) plus Vietnamese and Khmer (the language of Cambodia).
In early 1996 the decision was made to add a specific Radio Australia site to the still fledgling ABC Internet service. In May 1996 Radio Australia On-Line was launched onto the 'web' and what had been for some months a seldom visited area of ABC On-Line, (frankly there was not much to see - virtually only a 'corporate' statement - the yes, we also have an international radio service), started to make its own mark.
Within a few months the service grew from a few accesses a week to hundreds and now in 1998, around eight to ten thousand every day. Initially the service was more an adjunct to our traditional output - program guides, frequency schedules etc., but from the start plans were being laid to also develop the service to provide information only deliverable by the Internet and specifically via 'narrowcasting'.
Broadcasting in its simplest state is simply one to many and at a time chosen by the provider. Narrowcasting on the other hand is just the reverse - 'one to one' and somewhat akin to a telephone call - 'user one' contacts 'user two' and 'user two' responds. The key factor here is that contact is made when 'user one' wishes - a 'what you want and when you want it' process rather than here it is and if you hear it that's fine if you didn't - sorry, you missed it !
In late 1996 an English text news service was added to the site based on what had been originally an 'in-house' system for ABC journalists spread far and wide. Soon after other roman character based languages were added, Indonesian, and Tok Pisin and in mid 1997, as part of the ABC coverage of the Hong Kong handover, Radio Australia On-Line launched a 24 hour 'Real Audio' transmission in English.
'Real Audio' has become the somewhat 'generic' name for what is in fact a proprietary file compression and expansion format to transmit and receive audio programming across the Internet . Developed by 'Progressive Networks', now `Real Media' it has become the defacto standard for such transmission.
The next challenge was to offer news services in the non-roman character based languages, Chinese, Vietnamese and Khmer. After months of research and with the assistance of the ABC's information technology division, Radio Australia beat all other international stations to the punch launching daily news bulletins in these, up till then, web un-friendly languages.
Somewhat compressing the complexity and the time scale here, the process evolved from our already established roman character based news services with some fancy computing to convert the complex characters of say the Khmer language into a format able to be interpreted by a standard 'web browser'.
In 1998 the Radio Australia site has now matured. The site has in some ways outgrown itself to the extent where it now needs to become more closely integrated with the wider aims of the so called 'One ABC' and in doing so enhancing the opportunity of adding its special 'ingredients' to the larger ABC On-Line 'cake'.
The new Radio National/Radio Australia co production 'Asia Pacific', the co-production arrangement with Monash University for on-line education and further implementation of Real Audio for our non-English services are just some of the latest initiatives.
© Russell Naughton,1988
eMail: naughton.russell@a2.abc.net.au