9 November 2017

DAB in Norway: Public Radio Losing One Fifth of Its Listeners

FM switch-off continues to hit NRK. P3 losing its young listenership.
AS the public service NRK has closed its FM transmitters in most of Norway, more than 20% of their listeners lost. This is evidenced by the latest listening poll from Kantar TNS. NRK had a total of 39.6% this week compared with 49.9 one year ago. It represents a decrease of over 20% in a year. The youth channel NRK P3 now has a share of 5.9%, which is half compared with a year ago.

8 November 2017

Problems With Many DAB Radio Adaptors in Norway

Adaptors for DAB + can transmit on FM far beyond the inside of car.
DAB adaptors can be used in cars that originally lack a built-in DAB radio. They receive the DAB signal and transmit to the car stereo system either via line input (AUX) or via the adaptor that transfers the sound to the car stereo via FM. Many DAB adaptors can connect to someone else's phone call in the car. Now it turns out that this can happen even at relatively long distances from the car.  Now many in cars rather switch to local radio on FM or listen on-line than trying to get a decent reception via an adaptor.

3 November 2017

Soon Everybody Owns a Smartphone - But FM Radio Will Stay On

The global system change might kill terrestrial digital broadcasting
In 2025 it is predicted that all young people and adults in the world will own a smartphone, which will replace other devices as stand-alone radio- and tv-receivers. As the number of internet-connected devices continues to grow exponentially, smartphone ownership now is virtually universal. On-line digital radio and FM will become the future listening platforms. The billion sets markets will rule, not the million sets markets.

31 October 2017

Sweden Licensing Three Nationwide FM Networks for Commercial Radio

35 regional licenses are also upcoming.  Withering future for DAB.
The media authority has now issued national licenses for analog commercial radio. In order to improve commercial conditions radio companies have long been asking for wider broadcast areas,. Not unexpectedly, the licenses were awarded to three already well-established actors in Sweden; German owned Bauer (Network 1), French NRJ (Network 2) and Swedish MTG (Network 3). The licenses are valid from 1 August 2018 to 31 July 2026.

Norwegian Radio Market Faces Dramatic Changes. Local Radio Up on FM

Listeners abandoning national channels as DAB is not living up to its promises.  
Thanks to the fact that the national channels (with public broadcaster NRK in the lead) are leaving FM, many local radio stations are increasing their audiences. It shows the listening polls for the third quarter. The two most outstanding counties (fylken) is Hedmark and Telemark, but also in the other counties the increase is pronounced. Several reports show a clear trend that large-scale listeners will remain on FM while many also complement and expand their channel selection with radio via mobile broadband even by car. 

19 October 2017

Mobile Broadband Opening for Broadcast Radio and Television.


LTE Broadcast Development Success Reported by the BBC.
BBC R&D has experimented with the eMBMS technology over the last few years, the latest release of mobile standards adds support for broadcast services. This means content can be distributed between large numbers of users at the same time over mobile networks, rather than users receiving the content individually. - According to other reports full scale applications are expected to be in operation in some countries 2020-2022.