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In the coming months, France Bleu's DAB+ broadcasting will be gradually extended to new stations in the network, including France Bleu Armorique, France Bleu Béarn, France Bleu Besançon, France Bleu Breiz Izel, France Bleu Limousin, France Bleu Lorraine Nord, France Bleu Pays Basque, France Bleu Pays d'Auvergne and France Bleu Sud Lorraine. Since 1 March 2023, France Bleu Champagne Ardenne has been available on DAB+ with 7 new transmitters for nearly 858,000 inhabitants. This new broadcasting of this network station allows France Bleu to be received in DAB+ digital radio by nearly 28 million inhabitants, i.e. 42.9% of the French metropolitan population.

On Wednesday 1 March, TDF is launching the broadcasting of DAB+ digital radio at its transmission sites in Reims-ville (Marne), Troyes-Saint-André-les-Vergers (Aube), Sompuis (Marne) and Berru (Marne). These four TDF sites cover the Reims conurbation, the towns of Troyes and Vitry-le-François and, more widely, the A26 motorway for reception in cars. A fifth TDF broadcasting site will be brought into service by the summer to cover the town of Château-Thierry and the A4 motorway to Reims. The population in this area will eventually be able to receive thirteen radio stations in digital quality.

In order to ensure the journalistic diversity of commercial radio stations in the Free State of Saxony and to further promote the migration from FM to DAB+, the Media Council of the Saxony Media Authority (SLM) agreed in its meeting on 28 February 2023 on funding for simulcast broadcasting and adopted a corresponding statute. Funding is available to broadcasters of commercial radio stations based in Saxony who, on the basis of corresponding licences from the SLM, broadcast their programmes simultaneously in digital terrestrial (DAB+) and analogue terrestrial (FM) via transmitter sites located in Saxony.

The Media Council of the Saxony Media Authority (SLM) yesterday decided on the tendering of remaining transmission capacities in the local DAB+ multiplexes in Chemnitz, Dresden and Freiberg. The decision was preceded by expressions of interest from commercial radio broadcasters who want to broadcast their programmes via local DAB+.

The DAB multiplex covering the Channel Islands has been acquired by Tindle CI Broadcasting from Nation Broadcasting. Tindle CI Broadcasting Pan-island Managing Director James Keen said: “In less than a year, DAB’s reach in the Channel Islands has grown by more than a third with one in three people now using the platform every week. “Nation Broadcasting has delivered a large and diverse selection of radio stations to people in Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney and we look forward to building on their early success in years to come.”

The new DAB+ transmitter in Zwickau, which was already planned for 2022, is soon to go online with the first, national DAB+ multiplex. "The construction work at the Zwickau site is currently still underway, and the switch-on is expected to take place in the 2nd quarter of 2023," the press spokesman for network operator Media Broadcast, Manfred Hermann, told SatelliFax. In addition, further locations are planned for 2023.

The cost of keeping AM services running has surged since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which sent global energy prices soaring. Climbing electricity costs have forced some stations to reassess whether they really need AM channels anymore. Around three-quarters of energy use in the UK radio industry comes from power-hungry analogue broadcasts, despite the fact that the majority of listening is digital. Radio expert James Cridland says TalkSport’s AM transmission in London uses 100 times more energy than that of Capital FM, for example. Estimations of how much transmitters cost to run vary, but Absolute is thought to be saving at least £1m a year by shutting down its AM service.

maRadio.be, the cooperative in charge of the digital transition of Belgian French-speaking radio stations, recently presented the results of its fifth annual IPSOS study on the consumption of digital radio in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. Faced with an ultra-competitive audiovisual offering, radio consumption remains very positive. Nevertheless, it is necessary to qualify this: the 'traditional' consumption of the medium via FM is gradually diminishing, to the benefit of the digital technologies that have been developing in recent years. DAB+ and streaming have the wind in their sails and continue to progress in the French-speaking Belgian landscape.

The private music station ZUN has added the RadioDNS service to its signal on the DAB+ digital radio network. Players that support the technology can switch from DAB+ to an internet stream if required. The RadioDNS hybrid radio technology enriches the player with web links, traffic information, camera footage or even sports scores. Information about programmes, station names, logos and format descriptions are also displayed. Additional data is transmitted via LTE or 5G mobile network. In Audi, Volkswagen, Porsche or BMW cars, the car radio switches to the internet stream as soon as the car leaves the DAB+ coverage area.

Wendelstein is to enable reception of the second nationwide DAB+ multiplex in large parts of Upper and Lower Bavaria for the first time this year. According to a list from the Federal Network Agency, the site is to receive more power for this purpose. Previously planned with a power of only 2 kW, as with Bundesmux 1, an increase to 5 kW is now being coordinated.