Working group: Turn off analogue radio

In its interim report published on the 23rd of June the Digital Radio Working Group (DRWG) says that a long term plan should be developed to move all radio services across to digital. The DRWG was set up by the government Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in November of 2007.

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In the medium term the group recommends migrating all national, regional and large local stations to Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB), with FM continuing to be used by small local and community radio stations. Government should set out the conditions which must be met before this change could be achieved, and which would trigger migration. Fundamental to this will be an assessment of the extent to which listeners have adopted digital radio, particularly DAB, as well as levels of coverage. Current estimates are that the BBC provides around 85 per cent coverage of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The DRWG report identified gaps in coverage, and signal strength within covered areas as potential barriers to take up from listeners. It says that for DAB to be a realistic replacement for analogue radio, the current reach of DAB networks to 90 per cent of the population must increase, as must the robustness of the signal. The group also notes that whilst considerable progress has already been made in identifying the key barriers to the take-up of digital radio by the automotive industry, a clear plan is needed to encourage car manufacturers to fit digital radio as standard.

It is doubtful if digital radio will ever equal the 98 per cent coverage of FM radio, due to the diminishing returns of the cost of installing transmitters. However digital radio is available over the internet, extending the coverage area.

Chairman of the DRWG Barry Cox said: "At the end of May this year, sales of DAB sets exceeded seven million. We believe radio must have a digital future and that this will benefit both listeners and industry. Audiences will be able to enjoy increased functionality and more choice of channels, while the industry will no longer have to sustain the increased transmission costs of broadcasting on multiple platforms."

"If these benefits are to be achieved, then action must be taken to address the significant challenges which threaten the future growth of the market. There is a great deal to be done to address these issues, and I hope that this interim report will stimulate debate on how to achieve a digital future."

In contrast to the DRWG report some critics are even predicting the end of DAB. A report from the BBC dated the 11th of February 2008 says that DAB is being portrayed in some quarters as 'the 21st century's version of Betamax' a remark apparently made by Richard Wheatley, chief executive of The Local Radio Company. According to the BBC report GCap Media, the UK's biggest commercial radio broadcaster and owner of Classic FM, is to close two digital radio stations The Jazz and Planet Rock. It also plans to sell its stake in Digital One, a national broadcasting platform for digital stations. These commercial operators see the future of digital radio lying entirely with broadband as a distribution medium.

Although digital radio can potentially produce very high quality, wide band audio, with excellent noise rejection, it has repeatedly been criticised for poor quality transmissions. This is because the digital format provides broadcasters with fine control over quality versus bandwidth by using different bit rates. This is supposed to allow economic use of the available bandwidth by using more bandwidth for the broadcasts that need high quality, such as classical music broadcasts and less bandwidth for talk shows. According to the BBC its DAB broadcasts currently use between 128 kbps and 48 kbps. In practice, the temptation is to pack in a large number of digital channels, all using low bit rates, particularly for commercial broadcasts. There are parallels between the quality concerns for digital radio and those for MP3 music files.

(Terry Relph-Knight)

(trk)