News

In this series of interviews with WorldDAB members, Pascal Olivier explains how DIGIDIA has helped support the successful and rapid rollout of DAB+ services in France in recent years. With more than 350 digital radio systems deployed worldwide, including Saudi Arabia, Monaco, Uganda and Ukraine, DIGIDIA is one of the leading companies for digital radio transmission equipment.

BCAST, the Polish alternative broadcasting operator, has gained a new shareholder, Cyfrowy Polsat. The new partner will bring extensive technological facilities and extensive know-how in the field of telecommunications to BCAST. The cooperation of both entities will have a technological dimension, but also a business one, opening up new market opportunities and development prospects for BCAST.

French radio station Pi-node has launched a new program dedicated to broadcasting information on the Covid-19 pandemic. Based in Alsace, northeastern France, the station now broadcasts its increasingly popular Antivirus program from midday to midnight.

Digital Radio UK’s Ford Ennals and Yvette Dore discuss digital radio in the UK, including an update on the latest radio listening data for Q1 2020 published by RAJAR today. In the UK, radio has been playing an increasingly important role during the Covid-19 pandemic, with broadcasters and Digital Radio UK working on reinforcing the messaging that now is the time to listen to radio and discover all the new stations available to consumers on digital radio.

Rajar results show UK’s Commercial radio’s share of listening has increased from 45.7% in Q1 2019 to 47.8%. These results are boosted by a higher than average share of digital listening. Digital – including DAB, online and apps – now makes up 61.6% of listening, reflecting the success of brand extensions and new services that stations are offering their listeners.

According to RAJAR Q1 2020 data released today, listening via DAB now accounts for 40% of all listening and 69% of digital listening in the UK. Digital listening in the UK has increased to a new record of 58.6% up from 56.4% in Q1 2019 - representing a 4% growth in share percentage.

Canberra’s additional DAB+ digital radio stations attract an audience of 54,000 listeners every week, according to GfK’s latest Canberra radio ratings survey. Audiences are spending 4 hours and 47 minutes listening to the DAB+ stations in an average week, the survey data shows.“This is a great result since permanent digital radio services were switched on in Canberra in July, and shows the potential of DAB+ to attract more listening to radio,” said CRA chief executive officer Joan Warner.

NENT has helped drive the development of DAB+ in Sweden, having first launched 13 DAB+ stations in July 2018 in Stockholm, Gävle and Uppsala. This was then followed by Swedish Radio's application for a DAB+ permit in November 2019, and Bauer Media in February 2020, which is set to start DAB+ services in Sweden in the summer of 2020.

Plans have been finalised for small-scale DAB radio licensing in the United Kingdom, where the new licenses will be made available in batches. “This is good news for radio and good news for listeners, as the expansion of small-scale DAB gives listeners a wider range of smaller stations available on DAB and gives small local stations a path to a digital future”, said Digital Radio UK CEO Ford Ennals.

In this series of interviews with WorldDAB members, Joseph D'Angelo from XPERI explains what markets and solutions are supported by XPERI, as well as highlighting some of the projects recently carried out by the company.