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

[Two Lochs Radio]

Thanks, that's makes things a lot clearer and we can share at least most of our hymn sheets now!

"DAB was designed for clarity", sure, but that was 30 years ago with the thought of putting a maximum of 4 'CD-quality' or 6 'FM-quality' national channels on a multiplex, not the current 10 of the Arqiva/BBC multiplex, with only one service (R3) broadly matching FM-quality. Once the multi-channel alternatives of piling 'em high and setting the bit rate low was realized, quality had to take a back seat of course. 

The system was also attractive to the BBC as it came along in the mid-80s just as the perceived threat to the corporation from local commercials was becoming a major concern - operated as an SFN it was seen by some suits in the BBC as a bit of a 'local radio killer', the BBC's 'new weapon in the war'. I remember an Ariel  article in the late 1980s making an oblique reference to the same point.  In Scotland the BBC has no local radio, but DAB has proved a problem for its Scottish national channels just the same way. So it's not surprising there's some consumer resistance.

As I mentioned, a clear possibility for sorting things out in remote areas while sticking to DAB- is for the BBC to pay community-owned local multiplex operators for carriage of the missing BBC channels and local fill-ins signals that aren't provided by the Arqiva network (the law prohibits the BBC from owning/operating its own multiplexes directly, so it would have to be with some third party in any event). This could make local small-scale DAB sustainable for remote areas in a way that it doesn't currently appear to be.

DAB+ could be a more cost-effective solutio to this problem, but if our authorities remain set against that, then the locla DAB multiplex seems the only answer - or I guess requiring the BBC and national commercials to maitain their FM coverage of remote areas indefinitely.

Ineresting also to note that the very first duty placed upon Ofcom by the law in relation to licensing broadcast radio is to "... do all that they [sic] can to secure the provision within the United Kingdom of a diversity of national services each catering for tastes and interests different from those catered for by the others." And the second key duty is to do the same for "a diversity of local services". Those are pretty comprehensive objectives, and how better to satisfy those obligations in remote areas than to promote a means by which the BBC's nations service can be carried on DAB alongside small-scale local services?

Re the auto FM/DAB/IP switching, yes of course there are practical difficulties, especially the latency one, but it just needs a modest  degree of intelligence in the switching logic, for example avoiding frequent switching back and forth unless an alternative source has provided a cleaner source over some useful period (maybe a variable period related to the difference in latencies), but switching immediately if the current source becomes unusuable. 

So it's not rocket science, just some relatively simple logic. Much more I guess it's a market choice by the receiver makers and broadcasters - in that light what you say about the former BBC services is interesting.

We have an area locally where car receivers flick back and forth several times between three BBC FM ransmitters as one drives along a five mile stretch of road, but of course as they are all FM there aren't such issues of latency (there some however, owing to the use of satellite feed versus off-air relays). None of the DAB multiplexes coming from the same transmitters are receivable at all in that area. 

Cheers

Alex


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: James Cridland 
  To: tlr at gairloch.co.uk ; The Community Media Association Discussion List 
  Sent: Monday, November 17, 2014 10:18 AM
  Subject: Re: [cma-l] Community & Local Radio - the Digital Issue


  Thanks for this, Alex.



  My "DRM+" comment was because the initial document in this thread recommended it as a solution. It's a great technical solution, but it isn't a good fit when you consider the market....
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