Nicholas Lezard: Don't force digital radio on us
Once again 'choice' turns out to mean the opposite of how it is understood
Digg
del.icio.us
Facebook
Reddit
Google
Stumble Upon
Fark
Newsvine
YahooBuzz
Bebo
Twitter
Independent Minds
I once wrote an article, when I was the radio critic for The Independent on Sunday, in which I referred anxiously to plans to end FM transmissions of radio programmes and switch everything over to digital. I was reassured no such plans were in place. That more or less was the death-knell for FM radio, I thought – nothing like an official reassurance to set the mind ill at ease – and now it has been confirmed, with the target, set in the new report, Digital Britain, for a switchover to DAB to take place by 2015.
So what, you may ask. Well, here's so what. For a start, there is no reason for this to happen. I have read the relevant section of the report and it claims "the infrastructures which deliver analogue radio are decaying" (no evidence given) and would cost £200m to maintain a full national FM network over the next 20 years. This actually works out quite cheaply, you would have thought; and you might have thought it was one of the responsibilities of government to pay this small amount.
The costs of maintaining a full national digital network, on the other hand, are probably going to be rather more than that. But the main reason the proposal is being made, it would appear, is that some swivel-eyed wonk has been told to produce something uncritically in favour of digital broadcasting and, bearing in mind that he who pays the piper calls the tune, has declared, with the kind of mindless circularity of argument one would expect from such a document: "The biggest barrier to radio's digital future is a lack of clarity and commitment to the DAB platform." Fine, then. Let us assume DAB is an excellent and infallible means of delivering CD-quality audio to the entire nation. (It is none of these things, incidentally. Type "DAB sound quality" into a search engine and brace yourself for that outraged feeling you get when you discover you have been told a whopping great fib.)
What about the millions of FM sets that will have to be discarded? You will want to discard them, by the way. If the proposal goes ahead, the FM band will in future become home to a wide range of community and local stations, or, in other words, what is basically hospital radio on, for most of the time, a grander scale (who will fund these stations, by the way?) It will mean the end of the humble transistor radio, too. DAB eats up energy – if I remember rightly, about 15 times as much as FM radio.
That figure may go down but until it does there are going to be a lot more discarded batteries in landfills. As for the economic cost of refitting every car with DAB equipment – well, perhaps there is some collusion going on between government and industry; it would be nice to be told about it.
DAB can be great – being able to rewind and pause programmes as you can TV is wonderful. "Choice and functionality" are the buzzwords in the report; that's the functionality. But once again we're seeing the word "choice" used to mean the opposite of what is traditionally understood by the term. The old, the infirm, the blind are going to be hit, for no other reason than that "digital" is the mot du jour.
View all comments that have been posted about this article.
Offensive or abusive comments will be removed and your IP logged and may be used to prevent further submission. In submitting a comment to the site, you agree to be bound by the Independent Minds Terms of Service.
- Print Article
- Email Article
-
Click here for copyright permissions
Copyright 2009 Independent News and Media Limited
Comments
If the FM waveband is abandoned, it will be filled by the pirate stations. To stop this you would need a national network jamming this band. That would cost 200m over 20 years, (their figures), so why not keep using it in the first place.
As you can't have pirates on the digital network, then the aim is to lower transmissions costs, lower the transmissions quality, increase the channel revenues and increase consumer battery costs. The last item is because digital radios consume power at an eye watering rate, when compared to a very simple FM radio.
You forgot to mention the car. My only entertainment is a built in AM/FM, this is not replaceable or upgradeable. In 2015 the only thing I will be hearing is the engine. (No I do not want a device powered by the cigarette lighter, it is not connected to the built in speaker system.)
And given that car companies only recently appear to have started including radio/CD players as the 'default' choice, rather than as an upgrade from a radio/cassette player, how long will it be before DAB radios are included as standard?
The spec DAB uses a spec called MP2. This was obsolete in 1997 when it was selected. The DAB radio industry has promoted mercilessly the DAB cause without pointing out that, as you rightly point out, 99.9% of them cannot be upgraded. Considering the high price of DAB radio's already bought, the chances of being prepared to throw them away is low.
The writer takes issue with DAB sound quality. So, once again, here are the facts. 20,000 DAB owners surveyed. 88 per cent rate sound quality good to excellent. Separate research by Ofcom had a similar result. According to GfK sales data, high fidelity equipment makes up less than 1 per cent of the audio market. Bottom line is the majority of consumers are very happy with the sound quality of DAB.
On the issue of energy consumption, the article is out of date. The latest DAB radios consume less than 3.5W of electricity in on mode which, with three hours of listening a day and turned off the rest of the time, would cost 60p a year on the average energy tariff. A typical low energy bulb consumes around 13 to 18W, which would cost between 2.10 and 2.90 a year to run for the same number of hours a day on same the average energy tariff. And battery life is up to 150 hours plus.
As for discarding millions of FM sets, it has been estimated that in most homes there are already several unused FM sets gathering dust. Like digital TV, you can get adaptors that turn FM sets into DAB receivers, so we are not necessarily talking about throwing out old sets. Upgrading technology is a normal part of our purchasing cycle these days and we do not think twice about ditching our mobile phones for a new one each year, or buying a new computer or TV.
Not one station in the whole of the UK transmits full time in Stereo.
"And battery life is up to 150 hours plus." Are you insane!, 4 AA batteries would last about 5 hours with a 3W consumption.
electronic items and things generally.
Annual replacement of mobile phones generates an enormous amount of electronic wasted.
First I've heard of this. Perhaps the rather inappropriately named Ms Green would be good enough to list some products, their makers and technical specifications? Presumably these are devices which are in production, and not in development or it would have been rather disingenuous to write as if they were?
Perversely, I'm actually looking forward to it. The more off-grid we can go, the better as far as I'm concerned!
by embarking on a massive publicity campaign when the technology was immature and expensive and coverage was poor.
(Which it may still be in rural areas.) People were buying expensive sets and then telling their friends that performance was not up to the hype and left much to be desired. DAB lost its credibility then and it really has big problems winning that credibility back. It could try a campaign like the 'terminal five is working' campaign to redeem itself, but I think
the only hope now for DAB is to use brute force tactics such as legislation or getting major players like the BBC to pull the plug on FM transmission. Such brute force is not democratic.
I haven't noticed anything special about the freeview digi radio which after all I can only listen to with the TV switched on which is mostly thoroughly inconvenient.
I started by thinking how I could use some digi adaptor with my radios but it's impossible. I can't carry a miniature radio around with a socking great adaptor attached to it that doubtless will need mains power to work. How would one work in the car? I can't imagine they will bring out a digi adaptor for my windup radio which I bought at LIDL so cheaply. The adaptor for windup would probably hve low sales and cost the earth. I can't have digi adaptors all over the place, imagine the cost and the hassle carrying them about with a radio. How ludicrous.
I shall not waste my money on a DAB radio or its successor. The radio programmes i like to listen to I will listen to on the computer or tv freeview although it's hardly convenient on the TV. Doubtless the FM radio will still pick up sensible foreign stations. What about our car radios - car radios are expensive and ours have very good sound quality, we can't afford to bin it.. We aren't going to spend out on DAB ones.
So that's it for BBC radio. And I assume for Classic.
I was disgusted when I first heard the current DAB would be made obsolete but it was being pushed mercilessly. That hypocrisy is one reason I determined never to buy a digi radio. Let's forget about radio, which is a shame as BBC radio is far better than BBC tv on the whole, but the BBC and classic can blame the government for destroying their radio market.
This is not a matter of being sill or oldfashioned. It is a matter of economics and common sense. We DON'T NEED digi radio. Those that want it have access to it.
I assume my computer will still pick up the BBC radio. Any idea the govt might have that we'll all go out and spend a fortune on new DAB radios and batters - they can forgeet that idea now.