In article , Dave Plowman (News)
scribeth thus
In article ,
tony sayer wrote:
I really wouldn't worry about AM or FM being shut down for a long time
yet. What is far more likely to happen is that the current sorry mess
that is DAB (Dead And Buried) will eventually give way to DAB + using a
much better CODEC .. but then again all these transmission systems have
to be paid for and they aren't cheap hence the recent shut down by GCap
media of the Jazz and Planet rock and core none of which were making any
money.

And there's absolutely no reason to believe that DAB + will be any more
successful than the present DAB. There are already more than enough DAB
receivers in use to make any station profitable - if it gains a large
enough audience to attract advertisers.


Course that well known commercial radio medjia analyst Dave is in charge
of GCap media now!.

One thing their new guvnor saw as a glaring omission was the lack of
mobile in car audience which is still a terrestrial radio stronghold
despite ipod's and MP3 players and the like.

As sod all, less then 1%, of new vehicles let alone cars have DAB as
standard fit, they couldn't reach an important part of the audience with
these stations. That added to the high costs of DAB transmission, and it
doesn't matter if you own the MUX you still have to pay Arquiva, it
wasn't profitable.

When the car makers do start fitting DAB radios preferable to a modern
standard as DAB version 1 is out of date, then that situation might
change.

They, GCap, would do away with their other services on DAB tomorrow if
they could but the Transmission contracts don't run out till 2012 so
their stuck with the white heffalump till then;(..
--
Tony Sayer