Radio broadcasting is one of the most important and influential methods of mass communication ever developed.  Analog radio broadcast technology has roots from the very dawn of the electrical age and evolved to successfully compete with television in the second half of the twentieth century.  In the 1990s, digital radio broadcasting emerged and strives to become the successful replacement to analog AM and FM radio.  With the proliferation of mobile broadband services today, radio broadcasters have new ways to reach audiences and also new forms of competition.

In this lecture, Mr. Layer will provide a brief history of the development of digital radio services and their status, and then discuss the various competitive, broadband-based technologies that are becoming more prevalent and which offer an alternative for delivery of audio content to listeners.  This presentation will include an up-to-date analysis of the various options that radio broadcasters have for competing with the plethora of streaming audio options now available to consumers.  Mr. Layer will encourage feedback and discourse with the audience and ample time for questions and answers will be provided.

About the presenter

David Layer is Vice President, Advanced Engineering in the Science & Technology Department of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), located in Washington, DC.  He is a senior member of the IEEE and has served four terms on the AdCom of the IEEE BTS.  He was IEEE Broadcast Symposium chair from 2002-04 and recently served as co-chair for the 2011-13 and 2016 Symposia.

David has been with NAB since 1995, and has been very active in the radio standards setting area.  He is the primary NAB staff person on NAB’s Radio Technology Committee and the National Radio Systems Committee (NRSC), a technical standards setting body co-sponsored by NAB and the Consumer Technology Association. His current principal responsibilities include serving as a project manager for technology projects being conducted by PILOT (formerly NAB Labs).

Within NAB, David’s duties are varied and broad.  He provides technical expertise to NAB’s Government Relations and Legal departments on regulatory and legislative matters which pertain to the broadcasting industry.  He is also actively involved in NAB's technical conference planning and technical publication activities, and has been an author and contributing author for numerous technical publications, including IEEE Spectrum magazine, the McGraw-Hill Yearbook of Science and Technology, and the 9th, 10th and 11th editions of the NAB Engineering Handbook.

David was the recipient of Radio World’s 2015 Excellence in Engineering Award and was recognized by Radio Ink Magazine in November 2010 as among the top ten best engineers in radio. In 2014 David received the Consumer Electronics Association Technology Leadership Award. The IEEE BTS awarded David the Matti Siukola Memorial Award for the Best Paper of the 2014 IEEE Broadcast Symposium.