News

Commercial Radio Australia CEO Joan Warner has told a Senate hearing on Australian broadcast content that commercial radio stations in the country would oppose any possible moves to mandate DAB+ stations broadcast a minimum of 25% music. The quota was proposed at the hearing by music charts association ARIA and music rights organisation APRA AMCOS. Ms. Warner said that any additional quotas should not be imposed until DAB+ station formats became more firmly established. "At the moment, the DAB+ stations are a little bit experimental in terms of what they’re used for and the formats. So we would say there needs to be an exemption until we see a significant uptake of the listening to those DAB+-only stations."

The Radio's Digital Strategy, organised by WorldDAB at IBC2018, explored how radio can deliver new content to the listener, in today’s new landscape that includes Google, Amazon, Sonos and Apple Music. The session featured European Broadcasting Union President Graham Dixon on how smart speakers can offer broadcasters the opportunity to bring radio back into the heart of the home, and in the car, as well as a panel discussion featuring VRT's Wim Moortgat and Commercial Radio Australia CEO Joan Warner on how broadcasters are adopting into its commercial business model.

The Broadcasting Corporation South Tyrol (RAS) is pushing ahead with the expansion of DAB+, and has connected 35 digital radio programmes in the Pfelders region of northern Italy. With the commissioning of the transmission blocks 10B, 10C and 10D, some German digital radio programmes from Deutschlandradio and Bayerische Rundfunk can be received in Pfelders.

Listeners in regions north of Hamburg can now receive DAB+ programming from Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), following the broadcaster switching on a new DAB+ transmitter in the town of Henstedt-Ulzburg.

As applications for small-scale DAB in the UK close on Thursday, a516 spoke to Ash Elford, who secured a pilot licence for Portsmouth's small-scale multiplex for an industry view. "Small-scale DAB can be very affordable for broadcasters, especially when you consider that broadcasting on all ten existing small-scale DAB multiplexes would still be cheaper than the ratecard fee for most local DAB multiplexes, yet would yield potential total population coverage of nearly four million adults," Mr Elford said. "From the moment Ofcom awarded our licence to today, we have always had more services asking for capacity than we can accommodate."

Listeners in regions north of Hamburg can now receive DAB+ programming from Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), following the broadcaster switching on a new DAB+ transmitter in the town of Henstedt-Ulzburg.

French radio station Radio FG will expand its DAB+ services to the Lens, Bethune, Arras and Douai regions from Friday. Currently, the station is broadcasting in Marseille, Lille and Nice.

The Maxiva XTE supports a full range of digital broadcast standards, including ATSC, DVB-T/H, DVB-T2, ISDB-T, DTMB, DAB/DAB+/DMB. It is upgradeable to future new modulations, including ATSC 3.0, as they become available.

Xperi will demo the DTS Connected Radio ecosystem at IBC2018 (Hall 14, A41). DTS Connected Radio is what the company describes as “a global hybrid radio solution” for automobiles. It uses an in-vehicle IP connection to deliver DAB, HD Radio and FM broadcasts paired with IP content.

2wcom is highlighting its FlexNsert and FlexXtract solutions for DAB and DAB+ over satellite at IBC2018. Already in operation at national broadcasters in Norway, Germany and the Netherlands, 2wcom says that when FlexNsert+ and FlexXtract+ are integrated into the DAB/DAB+ transmission chain, broadcasters can use existing legacy (ETI) as well as IP-capable transmitters (EDI).