[cma-l] by the way - Eddie on DAB vs FM

Fri Sep 4 08:19:11 BST 2015

Glynn / Eddie / / Bill / Dom / James et al

Come on guys give us a break   LOL    we have been operating as a gang of
merry-men / women since 2001/02   we have become experts in quite a number
of things and for obvious reasons struggled in other areas .....I would
however say that one expertise we have nailed and nobbled is how to play on
and uneven playing field ... it has NEVER been a level playing surface and
possibly never will be as long as you have certain sectors in the Radio
Brotherhood looking over their shoulders thinking that somehow Community
Radio is some kind of threat ??

This is actually my question to Bill and Dom and James / Ian etc and you
guys ... if for example we were to run a DAB / FM service, let's get down to
the nitty gritty      HOW MUCH ?

Of course there's the Ofcom licence .. Do you need two ?

Then there's the cost of the equipment and maintainence ?

Then there's the P   a   r   a   s   i   t   e fees . do these apply twice ?
I seem to recall that on these trials one them is not charging and one of
them is .. I find this quite bizarre to be honest as I am unaware of anyone
who listens to DAB and FM at the same time .. It's only one person, the same
person listening to either / or and not (as well as)    so why the extra
charge?

If we roll all this up into one ... come on chaps = ball park figure ??    I
think this is what everyone wants to know ... perhaps all will be revealed
on the 12th with Lawrie Hallet ... (Bill, I take it there'll be a round up
for us to read ?)

I think James was hinting run with both ?  do we have the finances and the
luxury to run with both ?

I'm just scratching my head at the moment as to which section this gets put
into .. ??    does it go into the Valid point section ?  the nonsense
section ?  or the anon tweeters rant section ?   personally, I don't mind
which ? Just adding my input that's all.

Keep up the good work and keep the advice flowing

One final question re the actual discussion (apologies for being a numpty on
these matters)   are we saying that the Radio would actually auto tune to
the particular Station  ie:- in our case Canalside .. grabbing whichever
signal is the strongest and clearest FM / DAB ??  or am I off with the
fairies again ?

Are there any Community Stations looking to go onto DAB and they themselves
come off FM or ought we all be looking to run with both ?

Onwards and Upwards

Regards

Nick

  _____  

From: cma-l-bounces at mailman.commedia.org.uk
[mailto:cma-l-bounces at mailman.commedia.org.uk] On Behalf Of Two Lochs Radio
Sent: 03 September 2015 18:34
To: The Community Media Association Discussion List
Subject: Re: [cma-l] by the way - Eddie on DAB vs FM

Exactly Glyn, but that isn't the situation unfortunately.

When the '50% of all listening digital' and the DAB 'tick mark' criteria
were being consulted on, I submitted that it should also be a requirement
that all radios tune by default using the names of available stations,
regardless of whether they were on FM or DAB, but this has not been done, so
there will an increasingly tilted playing field.

As you know, there is no reason any FM radio shouldn't tune by name just
like DAB (using RDS to get the names). My old car radio does this by default
as well as showing current show titles. 

There's also no technical reason, and only a tiny financial one, why
pause/rewind/programme info, even 'playing now', shouldn't be supported on
FM reception just as well as on DAB. I have a 12 year old pocket MP3 player
with FM radio that offers record/pause/rewind on FM and the whole thing cost
only $10 even then.

Given the extra production costs would be tiny compared with the larger
profit margins on DAB sets compared to commodity FM sets, an obvious reason
for why DAB set manufacturers don't generally do these things is that it
would take some of the shine of the supposed benefits of DAB! The government
should have mandated it if it was serious about a level playing field for FM
and DAB.

Alex

----- Original Message ----- 

From: Associated Broadcast <mailto:info at a-bc.co.uk>  Consultants 

To: The Community Media Association Discussion
<mailto:cma-l at mailman.commedia.org.uk>  List 

Sent: Thursday, September 03, 2015 11:16 AM

Subject: Re: [cma-l] by the way - Eddie on DAB vs FM

Eddie,  In a true multi-platform future that James envisages, the radios
will tune independently of channel - ie: in theory all DAB and FM (and
possibly internet) stations in one list.  The listener should not need to
know about the underlying technology delivering the services. 

Big "IF" - IF the manufacturers implement multi-platform properly.

Glyn

  _____  

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