FM RDS Transmission Audit

[WHJ]

What do you miss when your just DX stations transmitting RDS data? The NAB prepared a detailed report on FM digital dashboard best practices which indirectly answers that question. See: NAB_DigitalDash_RecommendedBestPractices_1023.pdf

An example of a market with very limited RDS transmission was Little Rock, Arkansas. 56% of the stations there were not transmitting any RDS information at all.

[Mike-CT]

One thing I see that they are not happy with, is scrolling PS. Instead of the scrolling, they would rather see it displayed in "chunks". That would be an improvement. A better improvement would be using their callsigns, or branding at the minimum.

[antennanut]

Pitiful results. Broadcasters don't seem to embrace anything that doesn't add to the bottom line. I hate to say they should be forced by the FCC, but that seems to be the only way.

[WHJ]

The Little Rock RDS audit was in a bad market for RDS use. However, some smaller markets are probably worse due to their low budgets.

The NAB ratings were chosen by a radio programmer rather than a DXer. I thought that I would do an Eastern Nebraska audit using DXer rating groups for comparison. Today's RDS monitoring produced the following results.



The iHeart rating means that instead of using an accurate PI code iHeart changed the first digit to a 1 and registered that change. They registered a change like that for KISO. However, they instead are transmitting their actual 2702 PI code. Because of that my TEF6686 radio could not determine the call of that station which caused me to rate KISO as having an Incorrect RDS instead of an iHeart modified one.

Xlator Source means that the station is using the PI of the station that they are translating rather than the translator's actual PI code.

Intentional means that they are intentionally using an incorrect PI. An example of that is both K240FD and K278CI transmit a PI of 366F so that instead of their actual call, their "KOOL" slogan shows up.

Incorrect means that they are using an inaccurate (or no) PI for reasons that I do not know.