Media

Lords committee call for more clarity on digital radio switchover

By | Published on Wednesday 31 March 2010

The House Of Lords’ Communications Committee earlier this week published a report on the much previously reported plan to move most of the FM radio network over to the DAB digital radio network in 2015, leaving just a handful of local and community stations on the analogue radio platform, which would eventually be turned off.

As previously reported, the BBC and some of the bigger commercial radio firms are basically in support of the relatively brisk move of UK radio to DAB, the 2015 deadline appearing in the always controversial Digital Economy Bill. However, some of the smaller radio groups, including TalkSport owners UTV, say the 2015 deadline is unrealistic.

The Lords report also expressed some concern for the deadline, saying that awareness of the move to DAB among the general public is poor, and as a result people are still buying FM-only radio sets which could become redundant in five years time. This is a problem, of course, because a lot of people keep radio sets a lot longer than other home electronics kit.

The Lords didn’t actually call for the deadline to be changed, but said the government should step up customer education about the digital switchover, and suggested moves be made to ensure all new radio sets can receive FM and DAB (and so called DAB+). They also backed the FM radio scrappage programme first mooted by the government body spearheading the switchover, Digital Radio UK.

Under that scheme, customers would get a discount on their new DAB radio if they handed in an old FM set when they buy it, a move designed to take FM-only radios out of circulation. The scheme would be unpopular with those stations that will be left on FM in 2015, unless all DAB sets also pick up the FM network.

The Lords report concludes: “If the UK is to go ahead with digital switchover, there needs to be the utmost clarity as to what will happen, in order that the consumer and the industry can proceed with confidence”.



READ MORE ABOUT: