This week’s Mediaguardian has two articles that are worth commenting on regarding radio.
The first is a piece on the future of DAB. It focuses on the recent decision, since reversed, to lower the Radio 3 DAB bandwidth from 192kbps to 160kbps. A further drop in bit-rate occurs when either Radio 4 or Radio Five Live has an opt-out that requires additional bandwidth. The BBC had tried some new encoding technology to see if they could squeeze more out of the limited resources they have on their DAB multiplex.
And that’s the main problem. DAB has used additional services to drive take-up – and it’s a tactic that’s worked enormously well. But a disappointingly high proportion of these services are at some very low bit-rates, with music services being offered in mono. We’ve had stereo FM services since the 60s, so forty years later, it would seem to be something of a step backwards.
Sadly most people don’t seem to care about audio quality. This is bizarre, since at the same time they’re spending more and more money on home cinema systems that can play back their Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS DVDs.
It is true that much of the world has not adopted DAB as the default radio format, but frankly there’s nothing that really looks like it’s going to takeover worldwide like FM and AM did.
Sadly DAB is not really future proofed – there’s no possibility to update codecs and squeeze more out of the available bandwidth.
Meanwhile Steve Ackerman of Somethin’ Else, the radio indie, writes about the ridiculous state of affairs that’s seen UKRD hand back their Stroud licence. Is local radio over-regulated? Well, if UKRD didn’t want the Stroud licence, they were no obligation to take it on. Most stations are pretty free to play want they want in regards to music – but it’s local programming that these groups are trying to wriggle out of. They want to regionalise as much as possible, and then run “syndicated” national programming. But they bought licences that are enshrined in law to offer local radio services. Like ITV, when it moans about having to offer children’s programming, despite it always being in the licence requirements, I have little to no sympathy. And they only need to look to the likes of Radio Pembrokeshire to watch an efficient and effective way to make small stations pay the way and achieve large audiences.