[cma-l] Community & Local Radio - the Digital Issue

[tlr at gairloch.co.uk]

Thank you James - I too appreciate appropriate use of the ancient art of
rhetoric in discussion (though I suspect you weren't intending it as a
complement).
 
For the record, I wasn't in any way promoting the use of DRM+ for UK community
radio, so I'm not clear why you referred to it in replying to my posting. I note
you also implied in another reply that Phil Dawson had said Radio 6 Music was
available only on DAB, which he hadn't. Perhaps you prefer misdirection to
rhetoric in discussion!
 
Thank you also for clarifying your personal use of the term "market-led" - I had
misunderstood you to mean "consumer-led"/"listener-led", but I guess you were
meaning more what I would have called "industry-led". FM radio, vinyl records,
cassette tapes and CDs were all technological shifts in consumer media that had
similar technology market issues as DAB has, but all four of those were devised
by technologists as market responses deficiencies in the existing technologies
perceived by the users as well as the industry ("build a better mousetrap and
the world will beat a path to your door"). DAB on the other hand came about in
response to perceived economic advantages to the industry, and not in response
to any direct consumer desire or call for improvements to existing services.
Whilst its advantages are incremental (more channels in dense markets), it's
adoption by consumers requires a step change (new radios). 
 
But back to the point at issue - I was distinguishing DAB and DAB+. Since the
term "DAB" may refer to either, for the sake of clarity, I'll refer to the
original MP2-based system as DAB- and the newer aac-based system as DAB+.
 
My point was, and remains, that I believe the DCMS/BBC/Ofcom (and many industry
pundits/DAB- proponents - you know who you are) seriously mis-served the UK
listening public by doggedly pursuing a purely DAB - strategy over the last 6
year or so since the advantages of DAB+ and the certainty of multi-standard
receivers became overwhelmingly apparent.
 
There was an argument at the time that a 'mixed message' created by any talk of
a newer system could damage a fledgling industry, but that seemed at the time,
and still does, to be a false worry, because (a) there was a strong drive
already to the production of DAB-/DAM+ multistandard receivers, and (b) there
was an opportunity to introduce DAB+ first in 'virgin territory', where there
was, naturally, no significant existing installed base of older DAB--only
receivers that would be made obsolete, and also where there was a clear need for
BBC/community multiplexes with greater channel capacity as there were unlikely
to be additional commercial multiplexes interested in serving many of these
areas - as has proved to be the case so far. 
 
As an aside, we have 13 in-use FM receivers in the household (not at all unusual
when you tot them all up), and only one is capable of receiving DAB. The radios
range in ages from 2-30 years, and all can receive more stations on FM than on
DAB, so DAB offers us little enticement at the moment. With DAB+ and a more
comprehensive set of services it might have been more attractive.  
 
I agree about the value of the 'hybrid radio' concept. Throughout the recent DAB
era there has been no technological barrier to making radios that offer just the
same features on FM as they can on DAB (tuning by station name, live
record/pause/replay, 'now playing' display etc) - all of this has been well
within the capability of standard FM+RDS since the inception of DAB, and cheap
chipsets have been there to support it for at least a decade (as evidence I have
a 12-year-old cheapo "MP3 player" that has FM radio with record and replay built
in). It is a shame that, with a very few notable exceptions, the industry has
failed to produce services and receivers that provide a uniform set of features
for listeners, regardless of whether the source is FM or DAB. I'm not aware of
any radios that even offer the obvious option of switching between FM and DAB
(and network/DTV as well I guess) according to which is giving the best
reception of a chosen programme service.
 
Alex
 

> On 16 November 2014 at 16:38 James Cridland <james at cridland.net> wrote:
> 
>  Not sure you've understood what I was saying, but thanks for lots of anti-DAB
> technology rhetoric.
> 
>  By "market-led", I'm talking about the international market, including
> receiver availability and market conditions as well as technology - things
> that this paper ignores. I love DRM+ as a technology - though there's not much
> wrong with FM, either. The bald facts are that there are no DRM+ receivers
> available anywhere in the world at any volume; and as for DVB-T Lite, that's
> fanciful nonsense, requiring an entirely new transmitter network. Meanwhile,
> DAB+ has wide take up across Europe and Australia, and is now in (so they say)
> 70% of all new cars as standard bought in the UK. It is nonsense to expect
> community radio to willingly accept DRM+ as a future standard if there are no
> receivers out there.
> 
>  I remain against any government-mandated switchover, and point to the future
> of radio as being multiplatform. Community radio would do well to pressure
> receiver manufacturers to be platform agnostic and embrace the benefits of
> hybrid radio, which would then enable a level playing-field for all
> broadcasters, irrespective of chosen platform.
> 
> 
> http://www.mediauk.com/article/34394/radioplayer-on-a-radio-a-user-experience-triumph
> shows just one example of a platform-agnostic radio. Now, why can't we have
> more of them?
> 
>  <http://james.cridland.net>
> 
 
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