Some interesting stuff about FM turn off.
Apologies for not sending a newsletter for a
long time, but as you'll no doubt have heard the
BBC bullies are trying to force DAB upon us (the
BBC lobbied the Government to set an early FM
switch-off date, so the Government merely did
what the BBC recommended, so the BBC is to
blame, IMO), so I think now would be a good time
to start sending newsletters again.
*** Mark Thompson to appear on The Media Show on
R4 tomorrow re FM switch-off ***
BBC Director-General Mark Thompson is appearing
on The Media Show tomorrow at 1.30pm where he
will apparently be answering questions about FM
switch off. So if you're not overly ecstatic
about the decision to inflict low audio quality
on the entire population via DAB, you can send
your views to The Media Show via the following web contact form:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/the-media-show/contact/
*** Radio 4 Feedback asking for listeners' comments on FM switch-off ***
In the latest edition of Feedback on Radio 4,
they also asked people to send their views about the plans to switch off FM.
Feedback has continually ignored the fact that
there's a problem with DAB's sound quality over
the last few years, either because they don't
realise that the poor audio quality is an
entirely separate issue to that of having poor
reception quality, or they've simply swallowed
the BBC's dishonest spin on the subject. So now
would be a good time to remind them that there is still a problem.
You can send your messages to Feedback via this web form:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/feedback/contact/
*** FM switch-off on You Yours ***
If you're not already peed off about FM being
switched off, the following recording of an
interview with the chief exec of the DRDB
(Digital Radio Development Bureau) Tony Moretta,
promoting DAB and justifying why it's fine to
switch off FM in 2015, will likely do the trick.
His interview starts 34 mins 40 seconds into the programme on the iPlayer:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00l36gn/You_and_Yours_23_06_2009/
The DRDB is co-funded by the BBC, and the BBC's
Director of Radio Tim Davie is the Vice Chair of
the DRDB, yet this bloke seems to think that's
it's perfectly acceptable to lie on Radio 4 to
millions of listeners. For example, he claims
that DAB+ only offers very, very slightly
higher quality than DAB. That is simply a bare
faced lie. And when asked whether the UK is
using a less advanced system than the rest of
Europe, the first thing he says is that that's
an urban myth. Er, no, it seriously isn't an
urban myth, it is a stone cold fact of life. It
may be an uncomfortable truth for the DAB
supporters, but that's no excuse to lie on Radio
4, especially when the public are paying part of his wages.
Happy listening.
*** Save FM Campaign started ***
I'd also like to draw your attention to the new Save FM Campaign website:
http://www.savefm.org/
It's only just launched, so it only consists of
the home page at the moment, but more content will be added soon.
The main aim of the campaign is to stop the BBC
switching off its national FM stations, although
it will also be campaigning for the BBC to
switch from using DAB to DAB+ by the time FM is
switched off if the BBC does intend to switch
off its FM stations - by deinition the vast
majority of digital radios would support DAB+ by
then, so there is absolutely no justification to
continue broadcasting using a 20-year old system
- which would be around 30 years old by the time
FM could be switched off (I don't think FM could
be switched off until around 2020).
There is justifiably a lot of anger about the
plans to switch off FM, mainly because the vast
majority of people simply don't want it to
happen as they're perfectly happy with FM, plus
for a whole host of other reasons as well,
obviously including the fact that DAB provides
low audio quality. A few hundred people managed
to stop the BBC switching off its Radio 4 Long
Wave station, so given the number of listeners
who would be opposed to the BBC switching off
its national FM stations, hopefully it will be
possible to convince the BBC to leave its national FM stations broadcasting.
The FM stations only cost around £10 million per
annum to transmit, which is a small fraction of
what it will cost to broadcast DAB nationally,
and it's only 22 pence per adult per year, or
0.28% of the BBC's £3,600m annual revenue from
the licence-fee. £10m per annum may be a big
number when taken on its own, but it's peanuts to the BBC.
*** BBC's live Internet radio streams at higher quality than DAB DAB+ ***
And finally, some good news. The BBC has finally
launched its live AAC Internet radio streams,
and it using 192 kbps AAC for Radio 3 and 128
kbps AAC for the other stereo streams. The same
bit rates are being used for on-demand streams as for the live streams.
It's also possible to say that these streams
