News

The German/Swiss automotive workshop sponsored by Digital Radio Germany Initiative, the ARD Project Office for Digital Radio, and Swiss marketing company MCDT was held in Zurich yesterday with attendees from the Broadcast, Automotive, and Appliance industries. One of the many purposes of the workshop was the desire to establish common strategies to develop and promote DAB+ in the car.

The conference "DAB - Innovation Day - Radio in the 21st Century" took place in Prague today. One of the main issues summed up by Czech Radiokomunikace was that there is no plan for a transition from analog to digital.

Digging deeper into the numbers, one of the main catalysts for this growth has been digital radio – both in terms of listening via a digital platform and listener growth for digital only radio stations.

Dee Ford, Group Managing Director Radio, Bauer Media, said: “… To deliver almost half of listening through digital sources is a tremendous achievement, demonstrates our continued commitment to digital and it sets up our business extremely well with a strong and healthy digital future as DAB grows and we move towards switchover.”

Listening to radio on AM/FM in London has fallen below 50% for the first time (48.6%, down 10% year on year). 55% of Londoners listen to radio on a digital platform each week, and digital listening in London is now 44.1% of all radio listening hours, up 9% from 40.3% in Q1 2013.

27.1 million people now tune in to radio via a digitally enabled receiver - DAB radio, digital TV and online. In total, 25 million adults have access to a DAB receiver, up 10% year on year.

The Solar Condor DAB and FM radio is a pocket-sized portable radio, smaller than a box of cigarettes, with a slot for a TF card (a micro SD card). A TF card loaded with songs means at the click of a button, you can turn the radio into an MP3 player.

Czech Radiokomunikace has summed up the main issues discussed at the conference on digital terrestrial radio broadcasting, DAB - Innovation Day – Radio in the 21st Century, which took place in Prague on 13 May.

Today, Škoda presented an overview on which of their vehicles would be offering DAB radios.

The use of DAB+ digital radio in vehicles is incontrovertible, and a timetable for switching from VHF to DAB+ is essential. Speakers and experts were unanimous on this when they discussed the future development of DAB+ in cars in front of a 100-strong audience in May.