There’s been a lot of national press here in America about what’s happening to FM Radio in Norway. Norway is moving to digital broadcasting by shutting down its “national” FM radio broadcasts. That, of course, is followed with the question, could this happen in the U.S.A. NAB Chief Operating Officer Chris Ornelas took on that question in an NAB blog posted Thursday. Here’s his answer to that question.
Ornelas says the answer is no that will not happen here. “No. A thousand times – No. In fact, for American radio, this development is much ado about nothing. The difference between Norway radio and American radio is as stark as the Northern Lights versus fireworks on the Capitol Mall on the Fourth of July.”
Here’s why according to Ornelas. “Norway has 5 million radio listeners; there are 268 million listeners in the U.S. every week. Many of Norway’s radio stations are state-owned; in the U.S., commercial radio listening dominates the charts in most places. And, Norway is converting to digital radio using a completely different technology than we are in the U.S.
Ornelas says that last bullet point is especially important because Norway long ago adopted a digital radio transition plan completely at odds with the plan adopted in the U.S. “Norway requires two separate swaths of spectrum for radio – one for its FM stations and another for its digital radio channels. It costs the government (and broadcasters) extra money to run both services to deliver the same content. Turning off analog FM is apparently seen by the Norwegian parliament as a cost-saving efficiency – even though actual radio listeners in Norway are quite unhappy about losing this service.”
By contrast, we in the U.S. chose a different path to digital radio. “Our system, “in-band, on channel digital” – better known now as HD Radio – uses identical spectrum and the same channels for both analog and digital services. Thus, there’s no cost-saving advantage to shutting down analog FM services in America. More than 2,300 radio stations in the U.S. have converted to HD Radio, which improves the radio listening experience and affords American radio stations a remarkable array of advanced capabilities.”
Read the entire Ornelas blog HERE
I don’t know what all the fuss is about in Norway as NRK transmissions reach over 99% of their population and they have increased listener choice with its DAB+ transmissions over what it was offering on FM.
Fifty years ago, in the UK I had only three BBC stations and one off-shore ‘pop’ music station Radio 270 to which I could listen on either FM or MW/AM.
It was not until 1973 that the BBC’s monopoly in radio broadcasting was broken when London Broadcasting Company (LBC) began broadcasting on 8 October 1973 as a news/speech service closely followed by Capital Radio with a ‘pop’ music service.
Over half the FM band in the UK is still used to broadcast five national networks – four BBC and the commercial Classic FM – thus the availability of FM is severely limited mainly to local commercial ‘pop’ music stations and as well as some low-powered community services plus some ‘oldies’ services on MW/AM.
All this started to change in the UK with the introduction of Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) in 1995 which enabled the BBC to increase the number and variety of its national services from just 5 on analogue to 11 on DAB, including BBC World Service. Other countries such as Australia, Denmark, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Kuwait, Netherlands, Poland, Singapore and Switzerland are also now operating DAB+ services.
Today where I live in rural East Yorkshire thanks to the start of DAB/DAB+ transmissions I now have a wide range of choice of stations from the BBC National Multiplex (11 stations), two National Commercial Multiplexes (32 stations) and Local Multiplexes (15 stations) as well as 13 stations on analogue of which 12 are simulcasts of the DAB/DAB+ signals. This means that my range of listening on DAB/DAB+ now includes BBC 6Music, BBC Radio 4, Classic FM, LBC, Jazz FM Stereo, Magic Chilled, Premier Praise and Union JACK plus Yorkshire Coast Radio on FM.
UK Digital radio listening is now at 45.5% with digital reach at 59% of UK population with DAB/DAB+/FM/AM car radio in 86% of new cars. So our government has said that any FM switch-off of national radio is to be market-led so most people in the UK industry do not see that happening until after 2020 and many local and community stations will still stay on FM.
Such a difference between the way radio developed on both sides of the pond!