Reaction to Digital Britain - Broadcasting World

Reaction to Digital Britain
June 22, 2009 - Posted By James

So I'm going to have to throw out all my radio sets in 2015? Just one typical reaction from a typical listener after Tuesday's Digital Britain report.

Other industry reaction comes in many shapes and sizes, including from the minds of our industries regular bloggers.

Digital Radio is the topic of interest for us, and the main headline is that the FM waveband will be cleared - for more radio stations. By 2015, as long as 50 per cent of listening is digital, and that digital has 90 per cent coverage of the population and all major roads, then a two year notice will be served on national and regional radio stations that their licence only has two years left to run.

Of the blogs published so far, Nick Piggott highlights the DAB+ element to the master plan. "There it is, snuck away in 3b.20 - receivers sold in the UK should be at least WorldDMB Profile 1 compliant. The box on the following page is a little more explicit in saying that we are giving ourselves a migration path to DAB+, which is the smart thing to do." Read more here.

Absolute Radio's Adam Bowie writes, in his own words: "Overall, I think that this is massively encouraging for radio. There are certainly going to be issues along the way, and obviously key to all of this is getting DAB coverage improved to meet current FM coverage. In particular, that means ensuring that DAB sets work satisfactorily indoors. Anyone who has tried using a DAB set in a modern office, often acting as a massive Faraday cage, will know what I mean."

To delve deeper in to the thoughts of the report, Twazzup has the ability to track the comments of Twitter users.