Public broadcaster ABC National Radio is again testing in DRM mode A on 747 kHz, from the Broadcast Australia Site at Dockers Plains, Victoria. Although DAB+ is established in the five metro cities the government policy is to retain both AM and FM in order to secure a national and countryside coverage for emergency alert systems (EAS).
There are several hundred medium wave AM stations in Australia for public, community and commercial broadcasting.
FM will remain as the basic platform with DAB+ as an option.
There will be no transition to digital radio broadcasting in the Czech Republic according to the Ministry of Culture. There is no plans to switch exclusively to digital signal distribution in the DAB+ standard. Asked by the online publication Televizníweb.cz, Petra Hrušová at the Ministry said a draft of the government's Strategy for the Development of Terrestrial Digital Radio in the Czech Republic will be submitted by the end of this year. This approach has also a strong support in the Parliament.
A magical limit for a referendum reached. Former media minister steps on the brakes.
 |
| Photo: Britta Gut |
The online petition rettetukw.ch has now reached 50,000 signatures which - albeit with a full address - are needed in Switzerland for a referendum. This is a clear and impressive statement from consumers, according to the initiator and Radio 1 boss Roger Schawinski: FM must stay. Shutting down all channels soon would have dramatic effects and would be a huge mistake. This opinion is now also shared by former Federal Councilor Doris Leuthard, who, as Media Minister in 2016, strongly advocated a shutdown. Now she demands a longer “march stop”.
"You don't want to admit that DAB was a mistake, and now you try the crowbar”
Political resistance against the proposed FM switch-off is mounting. And the Zurich media pioneer and Radio 1 CEO Roger Schawinski wants to prevent the forced shutdown of FM. At the beginning of May he launched the petition “Save FM” and announced a complaint to the Federal Administrative Court. Already 21.500 people have signed the petition "Rettet UKW". In an interview in Neue Züricher Zeitung Schawinski says that thanks to IP and 5G, all applications will soon only run on a single platform. All except DAB +. Because it is a 35 year old intermediate technology. It needs its own terrestrial infrastructure, and consumers need their own devices. This is complete nonsense.
A desperate Government attempt to save the DAB radio project
In a consultation proposal, the Ministry of Culture proposes that local FM radio stations in Oslo and four other metro cities should not be allowed to continue broadcasting commercials. - The purpose of the license condition is to protect the Parliament's previous conditions that these radio stations must have a non-commercial operating base. During the current period, the Norwegian media authority has experienced that the permit condition has been circumvented through market adjustments in order to be able to include analogue broadcast blocks in the switch-off areas in advertising sales, the ministry writes and believes that a ban on advertising is better. - But what is the real story here?