RAIN comes to you today from the balcony level of the Globe Bookstore & Coffeehouse in Prague, which offers one of the best beers in the world (Pilsner Urquell) for under $1 U.S. for a huge glass, great potato soup (pictured at left), and ethernet ports and power outlets at almost every table for high-speed Internet connectivity.

BY KURT HANSON
In a city of only 400,000 residents in the southeast quarter of the Czech Republic, Brno "family radio" broadcaster Radio VALC has over the past couple of years built an Internet radio offering that I believe puts the vast majority of US broadcasters to shame.

In addition to offering its live broadcast stream ("moderated radio," which refers to radio with live air personalities) in a choice of five different bitrates, from 10 kbps mono to 128 kbps stereo, Radio VALC also offers seven Internet- and cable-only channels, each of which is also available in either a low (dial-up) or high (CD-quality) bitrate stream.

And best of all, Radio VALC offers its listeners this variety of listening choices on a custom-designed player (see screenshot above) that does a superb job of using a car radio as the underlying analogy for its user interface.

Seventh webcast stream (Folk) added last month
I first stumbled across Radio VALC back in December, when they were one of only four or five webcasters worldwide who seemed to be making a significant effort to promote their Christmas music channel. (Specifically, Radio VALC had arranged for a listing in the "Holiday" section of Windows Media.com's radio guide, along with Radio Free Virgin, Moontaxi, RAIN's AccuRadio offering, and one soft A/C in, if I remember correctly, either Cincinnati or Cleveland.) And their Christmas music channel was a very appealing one!

Radio VALC's other Internet- (and cable-radio-) only channels at the time were Gold, Country, Hit, Rock, Classic (i.e., classical), and "Valcarcka" (which is positioned as a form of music you'll hear nowhere else). However, they debuted a seventh music channel last week -- featuring primarily Czech folk singers. (The difference between "country" and "folk" in the Czech Republic is about is significant as that difference is in the US -- which is to say significantly so.)

The "Hit," "Rock," and "Gold" channels are particularly fun to listen to from a US listener's perspective, I found, as you'll hear a decent amount of familiar product but also some unique surprises -- songs you haven't heard in years, cover versions (e.g., a rockin' cover of Roger Miller's "King of the Road" on the Gold channel and an excellent cover of Dream Academy's "Life in a Northern Town" on the Hit channel), and some totally European or even Central European tunes for local color.

"Car radio" analogy used elegantly
for player controls
Let's take another look at the player design that I mentioned earlier. Note how intuitive it is to use -- you don't need to speak a single word of Czech to figure out how to use it.

There's a display that shows you which channel you're listening to, there's a set of presets beneath the display, there are buttons in the upper-right corner to select either a dial-up or CD quality stream, there's a volume slider, and there are "play," "stop," and "mute" buttons. What could be easier?

One thing I really like about the main display (e.g., "Hit " above) is that it uses simulated LEDs for its typeface -- tiny little blue dots of light on top of a grid of dark blue (i.e., "off") LEDs. It's attractive, it's clever, and it sets up the car radio analogy quickly and clearly.

Note also that the Radio VALC player has one additional feature that a car radio couldn't offer and that US radio stations nowadays wouldn't take the time or effort to offer: A scrolling display of news and information relevant to that particular channel, with several different paragraphs listed in reverse chronological order. (The lead story on the "Hit" channel is "Does Britney have anyone?" Other channels scrolling information panels feature information that's more station-specific.)

The only thing missing is a "Now playing" display. It's frustrating to hear that great cover version of "Life in a Northern Town" and not be able to find out who the artist is.

Full-featured website
Note that the player is just part of a full-featured website, a screenshot of which follows immediately below:



Note that the top half-inch of the home page -- above the logo, even! -- gives the user immediate one-click access to their choice of any of the 19 available streams (again, live in five different bitrates and seven specialty channels in two different bitrates each).

In addition, the site has everything you'd expect or hope to find on a major-market radio station website -- station news, a poll, air personality profiles, and lots more.

One feature that's executed quite well is a "Hit Parade" page for each of the channels (see screenshot at right). Each one is a list of the station's top 10 plus generally a few "new" tracks, with radio buttons that let you vote for, request, or dedicate a song plus a speaker icon which lets you listen to the song in its entirely in the form of a 20 kbps Windows Media stream, which of course is going to serve more as a promotional vehicle for the purchase of the artist's CD than as a substitute for that purchase.

In short, Radio VALC is a superb example of how a single local broadcaster can use the Web both to (A) increase its role in its listeners' lives within its local market area (i.e., with its additional music formats) and to (B) expand its geographic scope beyond the coverage range of its FM signal (i.e., I assume into the much larger market of Prague and elsewhere in the region as well).

Thanks to our Russian friends in Prague, Sergei and Julia, for help translating the Radio VALC website.

SMS has a certain appeal! One modern trend that is popular elsewhere on the globe but not in the US (yet, anyway) is the use of SMS -- short message service -- on cell phones. I had the chance to be an SMS user for the past couple of days here in Prague and enjoyed it. Look for my report on the subject, coming soon in RAIN.

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: "Recent polls around the world are reporting strong disapproval and distrust of the United States. Executive summary: People in the rest of the world think we're acting like punks. However confident we may be in our own righteousness as a nation under attack taking reasonable actions to protect ourselves, we might still be curious why they think that...

"In case the rest of the world is seeing something it might benefit Americans to understand, perhaps we should spend some time listening to what the rest of the world is saying. Whether right or wrong, aren't you even a little bit curious about how everybody else in the world sees things?

"I spent most of last year listening to all the interesting radio stations I could find in the world, researching a book on Internet radio. I expected to find great cumbias in Colombia, hot dance music in the Caribbean, floaty mystical rhythms in the Middle East. And I was not disappointed. What I hadn't really imagined was the wealth of informational programming I would discover. Most countries offer an international service, and it is a matter of national pride to make this service in-depth, authoritative and comprehensive...

"Almost every country in the world has daily news available in English, and some of the news organizations have huge staffs and budgets that would surprise anyone used to US radio...

"Given current world events, the Korean Broadcasting System might be of particular interest. If you really want a change in viewpoint, tune into the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting World Service. But you don't have to go that far to see the world differently. Even Voice of Barbados seems to cover a different planet from the US media. You can quickly get to any of these stations using a search engine such as Google; I've also put together an index of their addresses on my Web site, www.heberlein.net...

"It's staggering how different the United States looks from the outside. And I can't help believing that if more Americans understood how their country looked to others, it would have to make things better for us all."

Read this entire article from Sunday's Post-Intelligencer here.