What is the history of the Radio Data System?
RDS was developed in Europe in the early 1980s, with service beginning there between 1984 and 1987. By the mid-1990s, nearly every FM station in Europe had implemented RDS. Today there is hardly a station in Europe that does not broadcast RDS. Even low-power “local radio” services have this feature. RDS was evaluated for use in the US about this same time. The National Radio Systems Committee (NRSC) drafted a US standard as early as 1992, naming the service “Radio Broadcast Data System,” or RBDS, to distinguish it from the European standard. By 1998 both the European and US RadioData standards had been revised to minimize the difference between the two. In all common and practical applications, RBDS and RDS can be considered the same thing. If RDS is so widespread in Europe, why has it taken so long to catch on here? For two primary reasons. First, there is a big difference between broadcast practices between Europe and the US. In contrast with the US, Europe utilizes a large number of
