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A final decision will be taken on which scenario will be adopted by 2021. The first scenario is that there will be an FM shutdown in 2022/2023, with the public broadcaster SRG turning off its FM stations in the second half of 2022, and the private radio stations in early 2023. The second option provides that FM would be switched off by the end of 2024, as stated in the DigiMig report, with all radios switching off FM at the same time.

Radio programs in Switzerland will only be available via FM until the end of 2024 according to Bernard Maissen, OFCOM's deputy director, on the occasion of the Swiss Radio Day in Zurich. As at end June 2019, only 17% of listeners use FM on an exclusive basis.

BBC Radio 2 will celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ Abbey Road album with Radio 2 Beatles, a four-day pop-up DAB radio station. Radio 2 Beatles follows other pop up DAB’s from the station, including Radio 2 Eurovision (2014 and 2015) and Radio 2 Country (2015, 2016 and 2017).

In this series of interviews on WorldDAB members exhibiting at IBC, Wolfgang Peters of AVT explains how he sees the digital radio industry evolving in the coming years, and tells us about the DAB+ products AVT will showcase at this year’s event.

UK's largest commercial radio group Global is transforming its Heart 90s playlist *service* into a full national radio station on DAB+. It is the first of five new services all going national on DAB - all brand extensions to Global's current services.

CEO Grant Blackley advised that the SCA strategy of keeping advertisers locked in by offering access to the SCA "digital stack" combining FM and DAB+ audiences. He also announced SCA will shortly launch two new DAB+ radio brands.

Slovenian telecoms and media regulator AKOS has launched a public consultation on a second national DAB+ network, and will hold a public meeting at AKOS offices on 12 September. Licences for the remaining spaces on the R1 national multiplex were greatly oversubscribed.

Coles Radio retains the top spot on the DAB+ survey with 270,000 listeners Australia wide.

In the keynote opening, said Joan Warner of CRA: “In one day, a listener can wake up to breakfast radio, listen in the car using DAB+, follow a radio show page on Facebook, listen on-demand to a radio podcast, use a mobile app or listen on a smart speaker such as an Amazon Echo using voice technology. To make all this happen, radio has forged new partnerships with global giants and utilised our deep content expertise to create new customer experiences."

When it came to metro performance, SCA chief executive Grant Blackley told Radio Today there are three key factors underpinning this year’s performance - one of which is the continued maturity of SCA's DAB brands, which are now interwoven across SCA's entire radio platform.