Irish Republic Definitely in Retrograde

[Ai4i]

As the world transitions toward digital radio, "they" just turned all their DAB bouquets off.

 

[Mediafrog+]

And yet, bizarrely, RTE continues to operate a longwave transmitter on 252 kHz, whose only listeners appear to be a tiny number of Irish expats in the UK.

RTE appears to have Ireland adequately covered by FM, so DAB might be a redundant expense.

 

[davideduardo]

As the world transitions toward digital radio, "they" just turned all their DAB bouquets off.

Canada did the same thing as well. Transition to DAB operations seems to succeed only in countries where a significant portion of broadcast activity is controlled by the government and it comes as a mandate. This is a case of bureaucrats deciding what people "want" and "need".

See this from a major newspaper in Ireland: Farewell DAB, the radio technology we didn’t need

I have several friends in the UK who don't live in major metro areas who say that the DAB service is dreadful in many places. Examples are poor or no coverage in hilly areas of smaller towns or on the first floor level of a flat in an urban area where the signal at ground level just does not make it. Rural coverage is spotty and inconsistent.

In these cases, this is sort of like a camel: a camel is a horse designed by a government committee.

 

[Ai4i]

A camel is a horse designed by a government committee.

Fortunately for Eihab (spelling correction)
Clyde was not a more traditional horse:

 

[Miss Tuned]

And yet, bizarrely, RTE continues to operate a longwave transmitter on 252 kHz, whose only listeners appear to be a tiny number of Irish expats in the UK.

RTE appears to have Ireland adequately covered by FM, so DAB might be a redundant expense.

You have hit the nail on the head here. RTÉ's FM coverage is fine all over Ireland. There are no resources within RTÉ to start a bunch of extra services beyond Radio 1 (speech), 2FM (hot AC/light speech), Lyric FM (classical/jazz) and RnaG (Irish language). So the benefit of DAB is minimal - just an additional platform for existing stations which are already available.

For commercial radio, Ireland is a small market. Most areas outside Dublin have a duopoly - a long-established full service local station with local news, call-in shows, oldies/country music and general local gossip; and a "youth" station added in the 2000s with CHR music and youth-targeted speech. Adding a bouquet of additional services beyond that would splinter the market and endanger the viability of expensive full service local radio.

Dublin has a healthy selection of "format" stations - a couple of CHRs and ACs, classic hits, classic rock, youth/dance, talk. The most likely outcome of DAB rollout in Ireland would be to extend these stations nationally and eat the audience of the existing stations. No one in the industry wants that - it would lead to job losses and closures.

 

[Ai4i]

No one in the industry wants that - it would lead to job losses and closures.

Is capitalism based on what the industry wants?

 

[Miss Tuned]

Is capitalism based on what the industry wants?

The Irish radio industry has always been very heavily regulated. If you have the license to operate the soft AC station in Dublin, you have the license to operate the soft AC station. You can't flip to rock, or CHR, or country, or religion. When your license comes up for renewal, people will bid against you - but only to operate the soft AC station. The licenses are effectively franchises. The government decides what formats should be available in each area, and issues licenses to operators to run those formats for them.

Stations have expensive full-service programming obligations set out by the government - even CHRs have to have so many hours of speech, a fully-staffed regional news service, and so on. In exchange for meeting these public service requirements, you get a virtual monopoly - there's no one else but RTÉ and you on FM in your county, you aren't competing for billing against anyone else. Launching a whole bunch of additional services into areas like this would break one half of that "deal" and render existing stations unviable.

For better or worse, the Irish radio industry's relationship to capitalism as the US radio industry knows it is tenuous at best.

 

[Ai4i]

No direct competition between stations sounds bad to me, but I like the Idea of having serious competition at license renewal time every few years.

 

[Miss Tuned]

No direct competition between stations sounds bad to me, but I like the Idea of having serious competition at license renewal time every few years.

One issue is that it's such a small market that it has become saturated. A few years ago, the station with the license to run the alternative station in Dublin ceased broadcasting - when the license was advertised for reissue no one applied, because no one could make the numbers stack up. The frequency (105.2) is still blank to this day - it gets used from time to time for "pop up" temporary services, but no one wants to run an alt-rock station with expensive government-mandated speech requirements.

An interesting factor in the Irish radio market is that pirates are largely tolerated. Dublin has quite a number of unlicensed stations running at high power, and other parts of the country also have long-running pirates on FM and AM. For many years, unlicensed border blasters operated with antennas in Ireland aimed at Northern Ireland. There are even a few pirate DAB transmitters - see FreeDAB Digital broadcasting which operates on an unlicensed basis among others.

 

[Mido3737]

Living in Ireland can tell you state radio is a shambles.Radio is stale and boring and run by The Wireless Group and Bauer .Need I say anymore not well paid and the future is voice tracking. Dab has no future in Ireland .More and more stations will be bought out in future the big players.

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

One issue is that it's such a small market that it has become saturated. A few years ago, the station with the license to run the alternative station in Dublin ceased broadcasting - when the license was advertised for reissue no one applied, because no one could make the numbers stack up. The frequency (105.2) is still blank to this day - it gets used from time to time for "pop up" temporary services, but no one wants to run an alt-rock station with expensive government-mandated speech requirements.

An interesting factor in the Irish radio market is that pirates are largely tolerated. Dublin has quite a number of unlicensed stations running at high power, and other parts of the country also have long-running pirates on FM and AM. For many years, unlicensed border blasters operated with antennas in Ireland aimed at Northern Ireland. There are even a few pirate DAB transmitters - see FreeDAB Digital broadcasting which operates on an unlicensed basis among others.

Magic 105 was one of the more popular, powerful FM border blasters in recent times about a decade ago

There's also an AM.. on 846.. i think.. thats a pirate and its been around forever