Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Alan, who shares the following article from Red Tech:
Medium wave’s sunset in Europe (Red Tech)
GENEVA — European medium-wave transmitters are going silent. On April 1, the BBC shut down the nine transmitters that had previously brought BBC Radio 4 in AM to the whole country. Since January 2018, the British public broadcaster has started to switch off the AM transmitters for its local stations. Looking ahead, it plans to abandon the band totally by 2027 at the latest.
This trend goes beyond the BBC. In the last years, British commercial broadcasters have also switched off AM transmitters. In the case of Bauer Media, not a single AM transmitter remains operational.
The United Kingdom is the last fortress of AM transmission in Europe. Over the last 15 years, many other countries disconnected their last AM transmitters — Austria (in 2008), Switzerland (2010), Ireland (2012), Germany (2015), Belarus (2016), Albania (2017) and Belgium (2018), to name a few. More than 20 European countries have ceased AM transmission. Across the continent, less than 100 AM services remain active.
Notwithstanding, AM still resists against all odds in markets such as Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Spain, among others. However, many big broadcasters still relying on this technology have often reduced their transmission power without receiving complaints from the audience. This is a strong signal about how the future may look like. [Continue reading…]
notThe reason why your car comes with a DAB+ radio is because Poland and Ireland are part of the European Union which in 2020 make the inclusion of terrestrial digital radio compulsory in all new passenger vehicles.
Now that Norway and at the end of the year the major networks of Norway and Switzerland will have switched off AM and FM. Now one DAB+ transmitter can transmit 18 programs where as for AM or FM they can only transmit one program on each transmitter. This is why countries are dropping analog radio. In addition there is no wasteful AM carrier which carries no program is not used in DAB+. DAB+ and DRM band 1 – 3 can carry 18 programs per transmitter, uses much less electricity than either the mobile or fixed line internet.
The old DAB should be relegated to the museum because of the sound of bubbling mud in poor reception areas compared to DAB+. Also the use of HE-AAC compression in DAB+ means stereo sound for virtually all programming whilst still carrying 18 programs per transmitter. The UK is the only country still using the old DAB. It only the replacement of the content server at the studio output is required, no modifications are required to transmitters. The UK already has some DAB+ only services.
The EU does not require its members to transmit DAB+ but many do and cover most of their populations. With rising receiver numbers the economics of digital broadcast will make analog broadcast non economic.
This is the French view of the media landscape. This is what is replacing analog radio. (AM and FM) https://www.worlddab.org/news/blogs/118/radio-in-france-looks-to-a-digital-future
Population just under 68 million compared to USA is 348 million.
Commercial radio advertising $US786 million for last year.
Seems like an article that has been written with little to none prior research. The issue of supposed ‘carbon footprint’ of AM transmitters have been highlighted in the comment section before – I thought that AM transmitters run on electricity, not fossil fuels, but the author seems to claim otherwise.
Furthermore, he also claims that “broadcasters’ energy bills are significantly more expensive for this network than FM” but what is the source for this statement? Perhaps the reason for the lack of it is the fact that the publicly available data disprove this statement. For example, the BBC states that AM has the lowest energy footprint of all their distribution platforms (google: “How much energy is used to deliver and listen to radio?”).
Here in Poland we have a 1 million watt transmitter operating on 225 kHz longwave which costs less than a half of what’s being spent on a FM network consisting of 60 transmitters that barely reach outside the country’s borders. Longwave AM provides a great coverage up to 1000 kms during daytime, even further during the night.
If we look at the countries that have recently switched off AM, we can see that the financial excuses are hard to defend when we get to know what these supposedly high costs are in reality. Czech Republic switched off its LW transmitter which accounted for 1% of the sum they spend on broadcasting annually. Slovakia “saved” EUR 150 000 by switching off two AM medium wave transmitters, but their overall budget for broadcasting was EUR 5,3 million – simple math shows the savings turned out to be 3%. And again, we are considering only the part of the budget that goes for broadcasting expenses, not other operations. Some of the readers may also recall RTL’s Luxembourg 234 kHz powerhouse that’s been taken off air the year before. It operated with up to 1,5 MW of power – seems like a lot, but my question is: what was their electricity bill considering the fact that just a year before the shutdown the same company which was responsible for running the transmitter has launched a solar farm capable of delivering 10 gigawatt hours annually?
Ireland (also mentioned in the comments) also switched off its LW transmitter. The costs were so “high” that just a single year’s license fee could pay for 500 (not a typo: five hundred years) of continuous broadcasting (EUR 250k/year; license fees collected annually: around 200 million). LW amounted for 0,2% of their license fee income, which in itself is only a part of their budget. Strikingly, their management also claimed that LW broadcasting contributes to local warming. But it turned out that they were able to find much better use for that money – which was: to pump it into their own pockets. Soon after LW was scrapped, a scandal erupted when the media revealed that the RTE executive and selected celebrities were all not only earning multiplies of that sum, but also receiving undisclosed extras on top of that. So much for the “expensive” AM.
I recently bought a new car. It is a Romanian Dacia Sandro , a basic saloon . But is has a 4 band radio . Long wave Medium Wave , FM and DAB . AN excellent radio with very good sensitivity and selectivity and no interference . I used use the 756 kHz BBC radio 4 transmitter which for 2kW gave a very good signal across the Irish sea , Cornwall to Cork . It’s gone now and I have to suffer the poorer audio quality of the 198 kHz transmitter, max 5kHz as opposed to 8 kHz on medium wave. The Long wave TX will be shut down next year so I will have to arrange an alternative means of receiving Radio 4 in my car.
RTE Radio medium wave and long wave are gone now and the tall masts destroyed a few days later.
As for DAB/DAB+ it was terminated here last year after more than 10 years of ‘ experimentation’ .
DeadAndBuried now .
Des Walsh,EI5CD .
This article wasn’t written by someone literate in the issues. The issue with the MW AM broadcast band is two fold: first, there is the issue of sound quality. AM can sound good. But most of what you hear on modern radios sound like mud. One of the big things MW AM lacks is any sort of capture or quieting effect. People don’t want to hear noise. The VHF FM band sounds better and the HD modes and DAB modes can sound pretty good when done well.
But even that isn’t entirely the problem. The problem is that the 20 and 30 something generation is walking away from broadcast formats altogether. Why? They can’t stand the programming. They would rather go to a streaming service or listen to their own music or a very wide variety of podcasts. Most completely bypass the satellite broadcast services. It’s the program directors. They don’t understand their audience. The only reason they ever did anything well is because alternatives were few and not so easy to setup. Today, we don’t need weather. We don’t need traffic. We get all the news we can stand. All we want is an interesting program or an interesting interview.
The author then displayed his ignorance when he discusses the “carbon footprint” of an AM broadcast transmitter. Carbon Footprint? Really? What’s the carbon footprint of a server farm on the internet broadcasting through various cell data services? THAT is where new listeners are going. Not AM. Not FM, Not XM. Not HD. Not DAB.
A good DJ can be worth a great contract. But program directors are mostly bureaucrats whose only contribution is the notoriously awful notion of a vertical format. Ugh.
Bang on Jake.
A typical radio station does not have any intelligent output.
Ir used to be more common but these days it’s dead.
Heck even the Stones wrote about it , I can’t get no satisfaction.
When I’m drivin’ in my car
And the man comes on the radio
He’s tellin’ me more and more
About some useless information
Supposed to drive my imagination
BBC Radio 4 does at least have quite a lot of decent stuff on it being talk based though.
Give us intelligence.
Give us Rock and Indipendant music.
Give us news on LOCAL events, traffic and local municiple council decisions.
But heck I can’t stand what I call all the Kidz FM stuff full of idiots wittering on about
some “celebrity” crap and playing safe corporate records.
And with that, I’ve been reminded to listen to the Dead Kennedys “Pull My Strings” 😉
It comes down to management.
1. There never was a power limit in Europe. In the US we have a 50 kW limit. A million watts is capable of dependably crossing the Atlantic, let alone covering a single region of Europe. Ask any dedicated AM DXer along the US East Coast. Now European broadcasters are stuck with funding this power in the face of declining listenership.
2. There didn’t seem to be a band plan to separate services. In the US we have clear channels, regional channels, and local channels with specified nighttime antenna patterns to somewhat protect targeted areas.
3. Probably the 9 kHz channel spacing in Region 1 hasn’t helped with 10 or 15 kHz bandwidth transmissions.
Our system is far from perfect, but it has done a much better job handling the vagaries of radio propagation.
The radio history in the US is quite different from Europe, in France where i live, radio as in the US was a business with limited power (40kw) until 1939 when France was invaded. Radio Cité, Poste Parisien, Lumière, Radiola, ect ect where everywhere and there was a national service. After 1945 a monopoly of broadcasting was inforced. Nobody but state radio. So some businesses found a loophole, installed studios in France and transmitters outside France (where there was a monopoly too but it was ok if programming was for a foreign land…) so we had RTL from Luxembourg with as musch as 2000kw on LW 234, Europe 1 from Germany (!) on 181to 183khz with up to 2000kw as well, RMC from Monaco (with authorisation to broadcast from France in 1974 (!!) 216khz 2000kw, and Sudradio from Andorra on 819khz and900kw. 1981 end of monoply and all those stations rush to FM, 30 years later they shut their AM tx’s, only RTL stayed on the air until 2023 january 2nd mainly because their FM coverage was not great and their audience was aged. Radio France also switched off all transmiters. Today tere are two stations left: Bretagne 5 on 1593khz and 5kw, and TWR in Provence on 1467khz with up to 2000kw available for religious christian broadcast to North Africa mainly. Another thing during the 60’s and 70’s the power of AM transmitters in France was considerably raised to vombat interference from the USSR, France Inter on 162khz could be heard in Moscow, in Cairo, in Marrakech, Oslo…. 162khz was cleared channel. Your system is far from perfect you say but trust an AM lover its the best system i know for having enjoyed driving around your beautiful country tuned to all the smaller stations and checking how far i could listen to the “big” 50kw clear channels one. The USA are a blessingfor radio;
Silvio- Not sure where you got the idea that Italy and Europe are US/British colonies, but that’s simply not true. If you’re trying to make some other political statement, why not just come out with it? Your comment makes no sense.
..America is a British colony, as the Bankers of the “City” (along with that beast, Winnie Churchill, Harold MacMillan, Addington, et. al.) duped America into WWI & 2..! Canada keeps the British monarchy as a counterweight (poise?) to the United States..! The British Empire NEVER collapsed, it just morphed into the Commonwealth! It is known as the, Evil Empire.!
(..interesting book by Stephen A. Grasse..”The Evil Empire:101 Ways that England Ruined the World…2007)
>The British Empire NEVER collapsed, it just morphed into the Commonwealth! It is >known as the, Evil Empire.!
Sounds more like a quote from L. Brezhnev to me.
How is Zimbabwe doing since the Brits gave them independance for ONE example ?
Just sayin’…