13 August 2017

Next Month DAB Radio in Hong Kong is All Gone

A digital terrestrial radio project became a seven year fiasco.
Public broadcaster RTHK will formally pull the plug on final digital radio services on September 3. Its analogue FM radio service will remain. The Commerce and Economic Development Bureau said in a press release However, the retreat of the three commercial DAB operators in a short period of time due to difficulties in their operation and the lack of a critical mass of audience demonstrated the exhaustion of interest in the services.

9 August 2017

Medium Waves Returning to Denmark

Analogue radio is still the backbone for terrestrial broadcasting.
Three new AM radio stations are due to launch in Copenhagen on medium wave within the next couple of months. No on air date has been decided yet. The stations NB24, World Music Radio and Radio 208 will be broadcasting on 846 kHz (300 W), 927 kHz (300 W) and 1440 kHz (power not yet confirmed). Two of the stations will be music based and the third station will be all talk according to Stig Hartvig Nielsen. - - The digital radio switch to DAB+ will make a lot of incompatible DAB receivers obolete. Some listeners might shift to their old receivers with AM and FM rather than upgrade to DAB+

3 August 2017

Two Out of Three Norwegians Are Dissatisfied With DAB Radio

"3 out of 5 slaughter DAB"
Popular resistance to FM closure bids for upcoming political problems.  
As the first and still only country in the world Norway is trying to replace FM radio with DAB+ by forcing the listeners over to this technology. This might end up as an embarrasing mistake by the politicians.
According to a survey commissioned by the newspaper Dagbladet, as many as 60 percent of the radio listeners are not satisfied with the transition to DAB. 16 percent said they do not know what they like about the transition, while 24 percent are satisfied. Dissatisfaction is widely distributed across the country. Also in areas where public broadcaster NRK has not yet closed the FM transmitters.

1 August 2017

Spotify Now With 60 million Subscribers Worldwide

Apple is outpaced. Broadcasters should beware of a changing music consumer pattern.
The Swedish company Spotify has added 20 million paid subscribers in less than a year, while it’s taken Apple Music more than a year and a half to make that progress. Spotify now has 60 million subscribers, compared to Apple Music’s 27 million. Together with the ad-supporter free service the total listening base for Spotify worldwide now is 140 million.

31 July 2017

Kids are still listening to the radio.

But radio’s future is multiplatform. Smartphones and tablets on top.
The latest British study published by RAJAR in addition to the quarterly radio figures, is the Junior Audio Measurement Joint Audience Research(JAMJAR).  74% of British kids 9-14 yrs listen to radio every week. But 60% listen to the “radio through radio” (AM and FM), as the research quaintly puts it, for a average of 10.7 hours a week.

8 July 2017

DAB Transition in Norway Heading For a Flop

"We will switch-off DAB"
Radio Norway loses half of its listeners. But all three nationwide losers. Continued DAB resistance. Many switch to local radio on FM.
The major radio channels is losing thousands of listeners when the FM network is step by step switched off. Nevertheless, the FM switch-off still remains in popular Oslo and Akershus County. For the country's major channel public service NRK P1, daily coverage fell by eight percent - from 1,517,000 in week 24 last year to 1,394,000 in the same week this year. The listeners leaving the NRK main channel have probably switched to FM local radio and on-line.