In a related issue (From Inside Radio):
With a format that we know from experience would get no audience in the US: "Leisure FM broadcast 24 hours per day and spans the music decades with air-play from the 1950’s to the present day."
Let alone advertisers. 'Wait, what's your target demographic?'
Exactly. Some smaller operators have tried something similar. All have failed.
I believe that would be called a Variety format in the United States, and yeah, most of the ones that are like Leisure FM are on non-commercial stations. Sounds like a fun format to me, but to agree with David, the money would be low.
This is what we often had in the distant past in smaller markets where there was just one station... block programming. As markets got two, three or thirty stations, each one carved out a piece for ownership.
Radio stations don't have "music consultants". Radio Consultants look at audience research to determine what the target listeners of a station want to hear.
Lemme' see... a town of about 50,000 and an immediate area of maybe 100,000. How many local commercial stations are there?
Except there are no major cities near Traverse City, MI. Braintree is about 35 miles from London.
The BBC is a government entity, finance principally by the tax levied on radios and TVs on pretty much every resident of the UK.
Yes, the government appointed administrators hire people to operate the stations, just like any government organization does. No different than the Army or the DOT or National Park Rangers.
And remember, the BBC would not program more than a tiny portion of its schedule with pop music in the later 50's and 60's. Earlier on, in the UK fans of that music had to listen to Radio Luxembourg on 1439 or long-wave. Later, we got Radio Caroline and a slew of stations in international waters broadcasting what tens of millions of Brits deeply wanted to hear.
Of course there is a big investment. They have an annual stipend provided by every radio and TV user in the nation. I could invest a lot in programming if I had those funds at my disposal.
Fascinating. In other words, if you don't have some sort of generator, you're SOL if the power outage lasts 30-40 hours -- or 8 days, as I experienced once in the 2010s.You're correct, but according to some statistics, fewer than 40% of households have a "landline" phone.
Infographic: Landline Phones Are a Dying Breed
This chart shows how landline phones are gradually losing relevance in the United States.www.statista.com
Also, and most importantly, many who have a landline "home phone", may no longer have hard-wired "POTS" copper lines that will work in cases of power failure. When my parents signed up for a plan to get internet and home phone under 1 package, AT&T went to their place and installed a modem which now feeds their home phone service as well as their internet. This meant they no longer had "hard wired" phone service that would work during a power outage. When they called the phone company to complain, they were told that reconnecting their POTS service was not possible. When they explained they needed phone service in cases of power outages, the phone company provided them a UPS unit to supply power to their phone/internet modem for a few hours. See below from AT&T's website:
Error 404
www.att.com
People were complaining about translators being used by religious broadcasters here on RD long before Trump, so I don't think Trump's Administration had anything to do with FM translator law or FCC translator policy, as stated upthread by Mr. Eduardo.
www.radioworld.com
Just as with here in the States, AM/MW is an expensive-to-operate form of media delivery, with severely declining audience and associated relevance. Also unlike here; since the BBC/government pays to keep these legacy transmission facilities running, it makes a lot of sense to plan for a sun-setting period. Besides utility and operations costs, most of the BBC MW stations are overdue for substantially expensive capital equipment replacement. The sunset timing of the band is no doubt timed to the calculated end of life for those old MW transmission systems.
As was stated in the link; smart speakers are WAY more popular than DAB these days, which when you think about it, makes a lot of sense. Especially around the holidays, smart speakers see a lot of growth as gifts because they do more than just play news or music, where DAB is relegated to just playing radio programming.
Partly true. A certain religious supercaster did apply for and received many many translators. Large Class B and C FM's were also allowed to expand beyond their primary radius while the rules prohibited the small FM's that needed a translator most from applying to do the same.
What are "mobile radio companies"? Do they mean cell phones? If so, MW doesn't seem like it would be very useful for that purpose anyway.
Shocking. The same thing happens here. Look at SiriusXM cramming so many channels into their limited bandwidth that the bitrate has become too low for anyone with a critical ear to tolerate. Similar situation with some HD FM stations and TV stations reducing bitrates to their minimums accommodate multiple subchannels, even cable TV providers reducing video bandwidth to cram more in. It always end up being quantity over quality. But...it's still no worse than MW so this argument holds no water.
Is this still true? That was the case with the first-generation HD Radio chipsets too, but the current chipsets are more efficiently designed and consume way less power. Is there something different about DAB where the chipsets haven't evolved the same way?
I don't know how it is in the UK, but we saw how ineffective radio was in an emergency during the Texas freeze when even the top "News Talk" stations stuck with their syndicated canned programming, had no news staff on hand to speak of, and broadcast no EAS alerts, even as people froze to death while the cell phone networks went down.
This is the #1 reason I've never subscribed to SiriusXM. The music channels sound so flat that it's almost unlistenable to me. Months ago they said they were launching new satellites and planning to offer better quality audio on at least some of their music stations, but each time they open the service and offer it free during a given weekend I'll tune in and give it a listen. From what I've heard it still can't hold up to FM or streaming from an audio quality standpoint.
It would be perfectly ironic if cell phone companies bought out medium wave spectrum only to discover *gasp* that there is too much RFI noise and so they petition the government to crack-down harder on it, hence circling back around to when MW was good. 😆
I tend to not notice the bitrate on the music, but it makes the announcer's voices sound so tinny. To me, that is not worth the $5 dollar subscription that will eventually jump into the double digits. And, I too will listen to SiriusXM on their free trial when it comes out (the nationwide coverage is nice), but yeah, the bitrate is a concern.
