FM closing?

[MurphyNut]

I'm amazed we still have MW and LW so I suspect FM will keep going and see us out!

[Argus25]

It is not just FM radio that is going down the tubes, I recently heard that they are planning to close down radio Australia's shortwave service. The drive is to have all internet based communications. But there are many poor countries in the South Pacific that don't have internet and rely on shortwave radio for news and other information. It is part of a new trend.

AM radio & FM radio will all be gone in the future (just like analog TV) in favor of digital radio and internet connectivity. Apart from selling off the spectrum, a lot of it comes down to creative billing systems possible with digital. With digital the billing can be interactive and the user can buy various extra services, programs etc. With AM & FM radio and analog TV the broadcasters don't know who is listening/watching and the billing systems are far more limited.

Despite the marketing of the "super sound of digital" radio, I believe that its audio quality has already been proven to be inferior to standard FM ?

Also as I understand it, the synchronous demodulator IC's in digital radios and tv's and cell phones need a reasonable carrier level to lock on to, they don't go down into the snow like the analog radios/TV's and cells phones did. So the signal just "drops out" when the carrier gets low making the range is more limited with digital services for the same transmission powers.

[arjoll]

Originally Posted by Argus25

I recently heard that they are planning to close down radio Australia's shortwave service.

That's true - they shut down at the end of January, replacing with in-country broadcasting in Fiji, satellite (although it's IS18 C-band, so not the easiest to pick up - you'd probably need a 2m dish at least) or streaming.

At least RNZI shortwave is still there, with no plans to shut down the AM and DRM services to the pacific.

[stevehertz]

To many of us FM is a lifeline to good sound quality music over the airwaves. I can receiver DAB where I live, but I do get bubbling mud occasionally, and blackouts too. For me personally, there's also the fact that my latest 'version' of this hobby is collecting, restoring and using large, high powered, receivers from the late 70s. A lot of these receivers don't come cheap (to put it mildly), and to think that I/we only have a couple of years more use out of them - listing to 'live' FM broadcasts that is - is very disappointing. Seems like we'll be using pantry FM transmitters, as I use a pantry transmitter now for some of my AM radios. But it's far less fun tuning your dial to one frequency and letting it just sit there while you make station choices up front through a modern receiver. I like to spin that weighted tuning knob and fine tune the signal strength and centre meters! Progress eh?!

[wireless_john]

The BBC are pushing it at the moment. I've been painting and decorating over the last few days and listening to Radio 5 and every now and then <sigh> there's an 'advert' for DAB radio! </sigh>

[stevehertz]

In my opinion - ands this is not just wishful thinking - there are quite a few years left in FM broadcasting in the UK yet.

Out of interest, if/when the BBC cease FM broadcasts, I guess that will be be the death knell for all the other FM broadcasters too on the basis that the government have made their blanket decision? So there'll be a defined end date I guess?

[Junk Box Nick]

There was a very interesting piece on the Norway FM close down on the 6pm BBC News on R4 on Friday.

As I have always understood it, and from the available official documents I have read, the intention is for national services to leave FM once DAB coverage is sufficient to near enough mirror the existing FM coverage, leaving the FM band for local services. There is some logic to this considering how much of the FM band is occupied by the various transmitters of Radios 1, 2, 3 & 4 to cover different regions.

The BBC news report seemed to imply a different scenario from the one I understood to be the plan, which, let's just say, raised my eyebrows more than a little...

However, as the advertising cake is now spread so thin, commercial radio stations are in a fight for every last listener and given the number of cars there are on the road that do not have DAB radios and the millions of existing radios that work perfectly well on FM I cannot see the commercial broadcasters agreeing to an FM switch off anytime soon.

I was tempted to post here as soon as I heard the news item. I suggest a listen to the iplayer and see what you make of it.

[Nuvistor]

Hi Nick,
I think the term " Digital" has always meant as far as Ofcom are concerned, any digital platform, DAB, Internet, Freeview etc.
This is from 2007, 10 years ago and they used that language then.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultatio...eradio/summary

The above document implies a review in 2012, I don't know if that occurred.

Frank

[Radio Wrangler]

If they pull FM in the near future there will still be a lot of cars around without DAB radios and lots of people driving through areas with poor coverage, and all those people have votes and voices. This may prove a more limiting factor than domestic radios.

On the other hand, I've recently bought and restored an expensive tuner, so that's asking for it.

David

[Junk Box Nick]

This is what Joe Public knows:

FM will be switched off. It will be like the TV switch-over in 2012.

Digital is better quality than FM.

FM is old-fashioned - digital is modern.

If I was in the business of selling DAB radios I would not wish to disabuse Joe Public in any way.

(Digital quality - well of course it depends. Massive bandwidth or a 64k DAB transmission...)

[stevehertz]

Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler

On the other hand, I've recently bought and restored an expensive tuner, so that's asking for it.

Me too David. Well, a receiver.

[Edward Huggins]

Norway have now turned off FM transmissions as from 2017 and the news now is that the UK's national FM service may end in 2020.
So what to do with our lovely Scott, Quad and Marantz Tuners?
I guess the answer may be some form of DAC, but what degradation would be incurred unless the resultant DAB services allowed a choice of user-selectable Bitrates??

[dglcomp]

Whilst I agree that digital has it's benefits I think FM should stay for a good while yet, whilst digital can use it's bandwidth more effectively and therefore can reduce the amount of transmitting power needed, FM receivers use less power and already have a large installed user base and a lot of new stereos only come with a FM/AM tuner and unless the government is going to subsidise the replacement of radios then radio listenership could fall dramatically esp. in cars where have a decent quality (both in reception and audio reproduction) is not generally a customer fit item and so a lot of listeners won't bother.

Converting TV to digital was a completely different affair as with the proliferation of LCD TV's a lot of people were digital ready already and adding DTV to a non DTV TV is less likely to need a complete replacement of the TV whereas for radio is most cases (esp. with portable radios/boomboxes) the whole radio needs replacing.

My other theory is that if there was ever an emergency an FM/AM receiver should not only last longer on temporary power but be more reliable, and is the reason why in my own personal opinion R4 LW should be kept running as it's one of the only options for self contained broadcasting to most of the UK.

[Karen O]

I read something years ago, at a time when the future of the FM service was being discussed. The opinion of the piece was that, should commercial FM stations close, the band will flood with pirates thereby making it unsaleable. Strange to think that we might owe the continued existence of the FM band to pirates!

[Nuvistor]

There is so much going on in government circles at the moment perhaps the FM switch off will slip their mind.

[Radio Wrangler]

Good thought, Karen. If they do pull the plug there will still be an immense number of perfectly good receivers out there, fertile ground indeed.

For me, it's a mixed blessing/curse. 200kHz away from an FM broadcast channel I have a instrument landing system channel for the day-job.

David

[julie_m]

But what are they going to do with just 20 MHz of "3m" band, if not broadcasting?

The only thing I can think of would be short-range (it would have to be short range, for anything sufficiently small), device-to-device communication; and even that would be better handed off to a purpose-designed wireless network.

[Junk Box Nick]

I'm sure that when I read the official releases some time (years) back one of the attractive things about going DAB in the London area was the problem of the plethora of pirate stations that infest the crowded FM band in the capital disrupting listening to legal FM stations. As a publicly funded broadcaster the BBC faces no financial penalty by going exclusively DAB. It's a different matter for the commercials - perhaps they would be left to slug it out with the pirates?

However, much radio listening is done in cars and these days a car can easily remain on the for road twenty years or more so it will be years and before the majority of the cars on the road will be DAB enabled. Few of those running older cars will bother with the expense of upgrading to DAB.* FM is proven technology and is an efficient delivery system for a local broadcaster and the commercial stations know this - in the dog-eat-dog world of advertising they are not going to deliberately exclude audience. FM will be around for a while yet.

*I'm way behind the curve. My 'new' car is the first one I've owned with a CD player. FM reception is fine but AM reception is disappointing...

[whyperion]

It would be nice if BBC invested back into its local programming, stuffing Radio 5 on after midnight on BBC Radio <anytown> really annoys me when driving, as the local content used to be more interesting than the commercial stations carrying 'music' at this time, or the bland R2 programmes at this time.

[Radio Wrangler]

If there is a market, commercial pressures, as said, will impel commercial stations to serve it. That means that maybe their mix of styles will have to change. And the BBC is definitely not immune to this. They compete just like the commercial stations, though not so directly for income, but they need listeners to justify their existence and to justify licence income.

If enough listeners are there, the stations will come.

There seems to be a slight feeling of desperation in the BBC adverts for DAB. It has grown, but at nothing like the rate they originally hoped for, otherwise the intensity of the pushing would have backed-off. They seem to be trying everything short of "Change to DAB now or the cute little kitten gets it!" They really won't want to have to pay contractors for running both systems in parallel any longer than they have to.

David