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Originally published on 01/29/2002
I was in Las Vegas recently for the Consumer Electronics Show, and I must have dropped a business card. A day after I got back home, I got a strange phone call: "You don't know me, but my name is Sav and I was at CES, and I found your card on the floor. Me and my buddy thought you had a great name, and we carried your business card around like a good luck charm in the casinos."
This was shaping up to be one weird pitch. Sav went on, "Anyway, my buddy said that if he turned $100 into $1,000, he'd tattoo your name on his butt...."
Be thankful I am not posting the photos Sav sent me.
Sav Tropiano claims he didn't call to pitch me. But when I told him what I did, his tone quickly changed from frat boy to CEO, and he laid out his business for me. Sav's company, Zoopad, in Ontario, Canada, is planning on making a digital radio receiver for "Generation Y" consumers. Outside of the U.S., there's an accepted but slow-growing standard and spectrum for digital radio called Eureka 147, which Zoopad will use. The U.S. has an emerging industry standard, IBOC (In-Band On-Channel), that technology company iBiquity is pushing (it has support from several manufacturers and broadcasters). Future Zoopad products may work with IBOC. No matter the standard, all digital radio broadcasts will also carry data, like song information or electronic coupons.
Digital terrestrial radio is currently being overshadowed by the dueling satellite radio companies, XM and Sirius (more on them in a future column). And while I think it is too early to place bets on new consumer electronics companies like Zoopad, I remain more interested in digital terrestrial than satellite radio, because it is dramatically less expensive to roll out and support, and thus less expensive for consumers (XM and Sirius both charge subscription fees; digital terrestrial is ad-supported). Users won't get the coast-to-coast coverage they would with satellite radio, but they will get better sound quality and more features than with current radio, and the user experience -- and cost -- won't be dramatically different from what it is today.
- Rafe Needleman
email: rafe-needleman@catchoday.com
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