Hello from England!

[Miss Tuned]

Hi everyone,

I've been here a little while but thought I'd introduce myself. I'm in my 30s and spent a large part of my early career working in production, presentation and news on local radio stations here in the United Kingdom. The industry has changed a lot since the days of multiple small stations in each town - it became clear that it wasn't going to be a viable long-term career and I now work outside radio, in the far more stable education field.

I've lived all over the place - including a stint in northern Indiana, which is where I got interested in U.S. radio - but now live back in the northern part of England, and currently preparing for a long awaited move over the border to Scotland, where my family originates, at the end of summer!

I still find the U.S. radio industry more varied and lively and interesting than our own domestic radio industry, which these days is dominated by two major network players plus the BBC and has little of interest to discuss. On the other hand, radio over here is technologically more interesting, with lots of DAB and DAB+ signals to seek out, and our AM band can be fun to DX at night, with plenty of interesting signals from far-flung parts of Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

I hope I can make some valuable contributions!

 

[itsTheRolyPoly]

I've always been fascinated with how radio works there, especially with DAB and DAB+ since its probably so different from our HD Radio standard.

Glad you are on here!

 

[Miss Tuned]

I've always been fascinated with how radio works there, especially with DAB and DAB+ since its probably so different from our HD Radio standard.

Glad you are on here!

It's totally different! It uses a completely separate frequency band (around 200MHz) and the stations are all transmitted together as part of one digital stream. There are three nationwide DAB networks (the BBC and two commercial ones) and a bunch of local ones, normally one for each city or region carrying all that area's local stations (with London having three).

The single-frequency network makes it interesting, too - you can drive from one end of the country to the other without retuning at all, not because the radio tunes automatically like RDS, but because all the signals are perfectly timed together and simulcast on one single frequency everywhere. It makes for a more stable listener experience especially in mountainous or built-up areas where multipath is common on analog FM.

 

[itsTheRolyPoly]

It's totally different! It uses a completely separate frequency band (around 200MHz) and the stations are all transmitted together as part of one digital stream. There are three nationwide DAB networks (the BBC and two commercial ones) and a bunch of local ones, normally one for each city or region carrying all that area's local stations (with London having three).

The single-frequency network makes it interesting, too - you can drive from one end of the country to the other without retuning at all, not because the radio tunes automatically like RDS, but because all the signals are perfectly timed together and simulcast on one single frequency everywhere. It makes for a more stable listener experience especially in mountainous or built-up areas where multipath is common on analog FM.

Huh?! Wow. The latter is what drives it interesting.