News

Local radio station and pioneer Radio Flensburg is planning to broadcast from German soil for the first time. As the provider announces, "a new opportunity has arisen to bring Radio Flensburg to the antenna. We are now taking advantage of this opportunity". This probably means broadcasting via digital radio DAB+. Among other things, a regional mux for the region around Flensburg and the North Frisian islands is to start in 2023.

Radio listeners between Strasburg, Feldberger Seenlandschaft, Neubrandenburg and Friedland will now receive their NDR stations in even better quality. This is because NDR is putting another DAB+ transmitter in Block 10C (213.360 MHz) into operation at the Helpterberg site. The DAB+ station range continues to include the NDR programmes also broadcast on FM, such as NDR 1 Radio MV, NDR 2, NDR Kultur, NDR Info and N-JOY. In addition, NDR Schlager, NDR Blue and NDR Info Spezial can be heard exclusively on digital radio.

Radio Radio has been connected to DAB+ in several Italian regions in recent days. The Roman talk-radio is present, almost everywhere, in the MediaDab or SpaceDab muxes. From Turin to Genoa, from Florence to Bari, there are several locations where it is now broadcasting.

The new radio programme NRW1 can be heard statewide via DAB+ from 31 October. This completes the audio platform's digital and analogue playout channels to reach young adults between the ages of 20 and 39 throughout North Rhine-Westphalia. With DAB+, NRW1 is developing from a state-wide FM station with numerous frequencies between Erkelenz and Bielefeld to a nationwide audio platform. "DAB+, app and web are already the future-oriented channels through which more and more young listeners are tuning in to us in addition to FM," say managing directors Harald Gehrung and Felix Kovac.

ŠKODA’s audio experts are happy to share their top tips so you get the best out of your car’s sound system. DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting), which was made mandatory in new cars by the EU two years ago, is becoming the dominant player in electromagnetic radio transmission. It offers recipients a clean, noise-free listening experience in digital quality. And we shouldn’t forget the accompanying data, such as images for individual songs (known as slide shows) and up to 128 characters of text (DLS). This data is transmitted together with the audio. This function can be used to show a track’s title and author. Needless to say, modern ŠKODA infotainment systems can receive both AM/FM and DAB/DAB+ with all of the aforesaid features.

We're delighted that Lindsay Cornell, who chairs WorldDAB's Technical Committee, has been awarded an ETSI Fellowship. The ETSI Fellowship programme rewards individuals who have made an outstanding personal contribution to ETSI, to building the work of ETSI, or raising its reputation in specific sectors of standardisation. ETSI says: "Lindsay has been involved in radio broadcasting throughout his career and is a pioneer of digital broadcasting technologies. He began his involvement in ETSI as Chair of STF-84 in 1997, developing the standard interfaces for the nascent Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) transmission equipment. Through his careful consensus building approach, Lindsay has led the work to produce numerous digital radio standards."

WorldDAB is renewing the call for DAB broadcasters to make sure their station branding looks good in all car screens in the dashboard, by providing high quality “metadata” alongside the audio stream. Metadata enables the visual information, text and graphics - such as the station name and logo, presenter, song title and album artwork - to be displayed while a station is playing. Stations produce the visuals which are essential for the car to make DAB radio stations look as good as they sound.

A new media outlet is entering the French-speaking market on Monday. Based in Crissier (VD) and headed by presenter Philippe Morax, M Le Média will offer a morning show combining radio and television. After several years on air at LFM, but also at RTN, Rouge FM and NRJ, Philippe Morax took over the management of Millennium Média Groupe in 2021. His new radio station M, which is purely musical, has been broadcasting since last November. After the morning show, M Le Média will continue to broadcast music on the DAB+ network and in pictures on its website. Another presenter will then return to the set for a new show between 16:00 and 20:00.

The Media Council of the Bavarian Regulatory Authority for Commercial Broadcasting (BLM) decided in its meeting on 26 October 2022 to standardise the capacities in the DAB network Upper Franconia 10B. The capacities will be increased by six capacity units (CU) for this purpose. This is the result of an agreement with Bayerischer Rundfunk in the course of a pilot project to adjust error protection and data rates.

The latest U.K. radio audience research shows that 66% of weekly listening hours are consumed digitally. Listening via DAB has a 39% share of listening, Online has a 24% share and DTV is 4%. AM/FM listening hours are just over a third with a share of 34%. The new figures from RAJAR, covering the third quarter of 2022 reveal that in an average week, digital listening accounts for 674 million hours; DAB has a 59% share of digital listening hours, DTV 5%, Website/Apps 15%, Smart Speaker 20%. In terms of reach, 41 million adults aged 15+ are now tuning in to radio via a digitally enabled platform (DAB, DTV, Online, App, Smart Speaker) each week. 66% of the population claim to own or have access to a DAB radio.