[cma-l] FM is NOT being switched off - Government confirms

[Two Lochs Radio]

But no-one ever said FM as such was going to be switched off, did they?

The big worry was (/is) that if the majority of listening to BBC and big 
commercial stations becomes digital, there will be an inevitable 
'second-class service' aura gradually attaching to FM, no matter how 
unwarranted.

Despite the proposal to include FM in the station guide, an the Minister's 
assurances, I believe there will still be be a tendency for non-digital 
stations to become somewhat 'ghettoized'. People will have a natural 
tendency if they have shelled out for a shiny new digital set to want to use 
it on digital stations.

The move to include FM stations in the digital radio EPG is a very good move 
to mitigate this effect, but not really a big step - I think FM should be 
fully integrated, including supporting text and 'on now' messages, which is 
technically trivial to implement through RDS. And on radios tat offer 
live-pause/rewind, they should offer this for FM as well - again technically 
easy and has been done by some pocket MP3 players for years.

I'm sorry to say I think CMA sold the family silver for sixpence when it 
agreed to allow its invaluable endorsement of  the reprehensible Digital 
Economy Bill (and by extension DAB) to be used  by in return for the 
commitment to an expanded EPG. It should have held out at the very least for 
radiotext and rewind/pause parity as well to have any hope of escaping the 
FM ghetto risk.

There are some other big holes in Ed Vaizey's 'issues still to be 
addressed' - notably "C" - capacity(or its corollary, quality). DAB simply 
does not have the capacity to provide expanded choice economically in less 
heavily populated areas where there is only one multplex (if any!). Indeed 
in most of Scotland it provides considerably reduced choice from FM.

Alex

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jaqui Devereux" <jaqui.devereux at commedia.org.uk>
To: "'CMA-L'" <cma-l at commedia.org.uk>
Sent: Friday, July 09, 2010 10:18 AM
Subject: [cma-l] FM is NOT being switched off - Government confirms


> Dear all
>
> Below extracts from Ed Vaizey's speech yesterday, confirming what we
> have been telling you for a while!
>
> Best wishes
>
> Jaqui
>
>
> "And we will not switch off FM, FM will remain a platform for small
> local and community radio for as long as these services want it."
>
>