Norway to shut down FM radio in favour of digital in bold move

[SCPD]

That's just it: consumers aren't buying new radios, at least here in the states. If FM goes away, most of the population won't care.

Radio in general is moving online and mobile listening is being done over cellular networks more and more.

The last "technology refresh" OTA radio got in North America was the adoption of a proprietary, feeble, expensive and utterly useless implementation of digital known as HD radio from your friends at iBiquity,

How many people are running out to buy them? very few, so few, consumer electronics stores and mass retailers like Wal-Mart don't even carry them.

Your right about that. Radio is this country is just a few heartbeats from being dead. With Ipods, MP3 players, satellite radio, etc. there is so much more to listen to then the radio. Stop sets with 6 or longer minutes of commercials drive listeners nuts and having an alternate source of entertainment is a nail in the coffin for stations here in the USA. AM radio is just about history, even with AM revitalization clogging the FM band with their low power translators is too little too late. HD radio is nothing big, it's known as high dollar radio or half a$$ digital. Stations are not adopting it very fast with the cost of the equipment and paying high licensing fees to DTS (DTS purchased iBiquity last year) and audio quality at least in my opinion is not the greatest, better than Sirius XM but not much better when multiple streams are in the mux.

My car has a built in HD radio and can be configured to automatically use the HD signal first but dropouts are numerous and the diversity delay for the analog signal to match the HD audio is off and causing terrible blending when the HD signal drops out. Some of the problem is stations are cutting back on engineers to make sure both signals are up to par, quality suffers. I worked in radio many years ago when it was profitable with live DJ's and no voice tracking that is so present today. I have disabled the auto HD signal detect and listen to good old analog FM broadcasting and when properly engineered sounds fantastic.

 

[Boombox]

Over the air radio isn't going away, and AM radio will be with us for a long time because of population growth and saturation of the radio marketplace -- there are fewer FM slots available, and even HD is full in some metros. Ethnic and niche programming goes on AM. Some stations will be culled (they stop making money), others will survive.

RE: programming: everyone complains about FM but I recall hearing the same complaints 20 years ago and it's still here, and it still has an audience. Radio listening hasn't dropped that much over the past 10 years. Online radio isn't 100% portable and then you've got issues with geo-fencing, stations that don't broadcast sports events over their online streams, digital broadcast royalty costs skyrocketing, etc.

As for Norway, I think getting rid of their NRK FM networks is a poor move but it's their country, let them deal with it. DAB probably sounds great if you're in the city but away from the cities it may be a dicey proposition due to the nature of DAB reception and Norway being a very mountainous territory.

What they should do is keep the FM network transmitters up and open them up for more commercial FM broadcasters, lease them out that way. Everybody wins. Maybe they will do that. They're not stupid -- they have a high standard of living for a reason, and it's not just because of the oil.

 

[SCPD]

Digital

Not really. A lot of radios sold in Europe have DAB+ tuners in them. Honestly I love DAB+, Hi-Fi audio plus artist and track info at 256Kbps waaaayyy better than satellite radio. Plus no manual tuning, It's all done automatically.

This wont work in America,they're scared we wont buy compact discs or ipods if it sounds too good,We here in the USA are stuck with HD radio and Sirius which is stretched to its band limits with too many channels and sounds worse than a cassette tape that was left in the sun! FM radio has more fidelity and thats not saying much.....We wish we had DAB+! Hopefully FM radio isnt going anywhere in the states but I am positive FM pirates will take over for the corporate powerhouses when that happens both in the states and overseas.