HFU HF Underground
General Category => General Radio Discussion => Topic started by: Fansome on December 14, 2017, 0211 UTC
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Norway becomes first country to switch off FM radio
13 December 2017
16:58 CET+01:00
Norway on Wednesday completed its transition to digital radio, becoming the first country in the world to shut down national broadcasts of its FM radio network despite some grumblings.
As scheduled, the country's most northern regions and the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic switched to Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) in the late morning, said Digitalradio Norge (DRN) which groups Norway's public and commercial radio.
The transition, which began on January 11th, allows for better sound quality, a greater number of channels and more functions, all at a cost eight times lower than FM radio, according to authorities.
The move has however been met with some criticism linked to technical incidents and claims that there is not sufficient DAB coverage across the country.
In addition, radio users have complained about the cost of having to buy new receivers or adapters, usually priced around 100 to 200 euros.
Currently, fewer than half of motorists (49 percent) are able to listen to DAB in their cars, according to DRN figures.
According to a study cited by local media, the share of Norwegians who listen to the radio on a daily basis has dropped by 10 percent in one year, and public broadcaster NRK has lost 21 percent of its audience.
"It's a big change and we have to give listeners time to adapt to digital radio," the head of DRN, Ole Jørgen Torvmark, said in a statement.
"After each shutdown (in a region), we noticed that the audience first dropped but then rose again," he added.
The transition concerns only national radio channels. Most local stations continue to broadcast in FM.
Other countries like Switzerland, Britain and Denmark are due to follow suit in the coming years.
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The irony is that they are the richest country in the world, and have no need to drop all FM for their NRK (and other nationally delivered) broadcasts -- it's not like the country is hurting for money.
They could have kept some FM on in places to fill holes in the DAB reception.
To their credit, like Iceland, they still have Longwave on in the north for mariners and oil riggers to hear the NRK.
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Now if they could only figure out a way to shut off Fansome's.
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She told me she worked in the morning
And started to laugh
I told her I didn't
And crawled off to sleep in the bath
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I've heard about that. I told one of your women it was nothing tossing a plugged in blow dryer into the tub wouldn't fix. I can't remember if it was Cathy or Patty? Identical twin cousins are tough to tell apart.
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In the USA its a vast waste of spectrum. religious freaks in sheets and crazy crap. Music generally is horrible. NPR sucks because its biased by the left elite. The news stories are not of any real interest.
Indeed the web seems the only place to get what u want. I can tune almost any station half a world away in India or Japan without interference or fade outs. Its a new World that some have lots of trouble admitting is the future.
Both AM and FM radio are largely dinosaurs :-\
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In the USA its a vast waste of spectrum. religious freaks in sheets and crazy crap. Music generally is horrible. NPR sucks because its biased by the left elite. The news stories are not of any real interest.
Indeed the web seems the only place to get what u want. I can tune almost any station half a world away in India or Japan without interference or fade outs. Its a new World that some have lots of trouble admitting is the future.
Both AM and FM radio are largely dinosaurs :-\
All I can say is enjoy that online radio while you can, before it's all geo-blocked. The BBC already geo-blocks much of its output. Most FM stations (and many AM stations) in the US geo-block their streams also. Geo-blocking appears to be the trend, at least for most commercial (and some government) stations, due to streaming and royalty costs.
If AM and FM are dinosaurs, so is free broadcast listening. :-)