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10 years after launching smoothfm Sydney and Melbourne, Nova Entertainment has announced that it is taking the brand national with live and local content in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth – supported by a multi-million dollar marketing campaign. The new stations and advertising campaign will start on 5 September 2022. Mediaweek spoke with Nova Entertainment’s chief growth officer, Adam Johnson, about why now was the right time to expand the smoothfm brand. “There is this feeling that unless you’ve got an AM or FM licence you can’t exist in people’s lives. That has been debunked,” said Johnson. “When you look at the growth of listening via DAB+ and digital, the product has clearly got appeal."

KRRiT announces a consultation on the draft position of the National Broadcasting Council on ceasing broadcasting radio stations in analogue technology in the FM band and setting a date for switching off analogue broadcasting of radio stations. "The National Broadcasting Council believes that the exclusion of analogue FM broadcasting should take place no earlier than December 31, 2026 and no later than December 31, 2030."

Divicon Media Holding GmbH, nationwide service provider and operator of numerous radio networks in the private and public sector, will be the platform operator of all DAB+ regional and local muxes in Saxony. The choice of platform operator was made for the first time on the basis of the amended Telecommunications Act (TKG) by the organisers themselves; a call for tenders is no longer required under the new version with unanimity. This clears the way for a comprehensive DAB+ station offering from many established radio brands around the Saxony locations of Chemnitz, Dresden, Freiberg and Leipzig.

For the first time, more than half of the radio listening in cars in Switzerland is digital. 12% of total radio use is in the car – and DAB+ now takes 51% of this, up from 48% last year. The new data was announced at SwissRadioDay, which took place in Zurich's Kaufleuten. Speaking at the event, the Director of OFCOM Switzerland, Bernard Maissen, said the FM shutdown at the end of 2024 was binding, and that an extension of the licences would be legally impossible. He argued that that audiences are digital, and quickly find alternatives to FM – seeking relevant, innovative, courageous and creative content. “Foreign FM competition is overestimated; the course is set for DAB+,” he said.

Switching off VHF seems to have been occupying the radio industry for what feels like an eternity. After some back and forth, it will definitely be over at the end of 2024. From now on, radio stations can only be received digitally – via DAB+ or streaming. A further extension is out of the question, said Bernard Maissen, Director of the Federal Office of Communications (Ofcom), on Thursday morning in the Zurich Kaufleuten, which was filled to capacity, on the 23rd SwissRadioDay.

The Virgin Radio Switzerland image campaign started this week, with the aim of further consolidating the DAB+ station as "Switzerland's rock station". The CH Media radio station received prominent support from Imagine Dragons for the national campaign. The successful US rock band is used as a testimonial for the large-scale campaign. In addition, the Virgin Radio Switzerland cult game "Virgin Radio Stripped Back" is celebrating its comeback this week.

As the market of DAB digital radio services diversifies, use cases for ensemble operators are getting more complex. Deployment of ensembles with increasing service count world-wide has shown that the rules of FIC repetition rates leave room for interpretation. WorldDAB has therefore now produced guidance addressing best practice in FIC scheduling when the number of services in an ensemble is more than 20. Vice Chair of WorldDAB’s Technical Committee and Chair of the ETI Files Task Force, Andreas Gorsak of JVCKENWOOD, said: “I’d like to thank the ETI Files Task Force members who have worked with me to develop these guidelines with the motivation to improve the listener experience. We hope it will assist manufacturers of multiplexing equipment, operators of ensembles with more than 20 services in them, and broadcasters with services in these ensembles.”

Commercial radio achieved another best-ever result in GfK Survey 5, with weekly listeners up 8% year on year to more than 12 million people across the five metro capitals. The result was boosted by increased in-car listening and a surge in younger listeners. Commercial DAB+ stations, which include 80s, 90s, hip hop, country and heavy metal music formats, enjoyed a 41% year on year increase to 2.6 million weekly listeners.

Norddeutsche Rundfunk (NDR) is planning new transmitters and enhancements for digital radio DAB+ in Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. This emerges from the planning documents of the Federal Network Agency.

AirZen, the first “100% positive” radio station dedicated to wellness, and the only new national French radio station licensed by the CSA in 20 years, launched on Oct. 12, 2021. It was the brainchild of Mediameeting Group founders, Anne-Marie de Couvreur, Frédéric Courtine and Jean-Louis Simonet, as an incentive to help French people live better. AirZen set up its main facility in Bordeaux to broadcast on the DAB+ M1 Multiplex that covers the area from Paris to Nice, including Dijon, Lyon, Marseille and Avignon. Towercast and TDF are its broadcast operators, and it also streams via the web. For its DAB+ broadcasting, the encoding starts from the offices in Bordeaux and is sent via optical fiber by Towercast to the Paris headend.