Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Richard Cuff, who shares the following news via the BBC:
Upcoming changes for listening to BBC audio outside the UK
If you live outside the UK, how you listen to BBC radio will change, starting from spring 2025.
Instead of using BBC Sounds, you’ll be able to use a new service at BBC.com and on the BBC app. BBC Studios has launched these all-new audio environments, tailored to outside UK audiences. The BBC’s content will remain available on other international podcast platforms.
International listeners will no longer be able to use the BBC Sounds app and website from spring 2025.
You can find out more about these changes on the bbc.com website.
Advice for UK Listeners travelling abroad
For listeners who reside in the UK, you will still be able to use the BBC Sounds mobile app when you are abroad. Check our FAQ for further info: Can I use BBC Sounds when I travel outside the UK?
Why are we making these changes?
BBC Sounds is a UK licence fee funded service. To offer better value for our UK listeners, BBC Sounds will be repositioned and made available exclusively to UK audiences.
BBC Studios is a commercial subsidiary of the BBC and is focused on bringing our trusted, world class journalism and storytelling to international audiences. This includes BBC audio content on bbc.com and the BBC app, which will be focused to international listeners.
Support for listeners Outside the UK
If you live outside of the UK and have a query regarding listening to BBC radio and audio content, please visit the support page at bbc.com where you can find help and contact their support team.
Sounds like another Money grab to me.
What happened to the previous UK’s Government’s pledge to stop the TV receiver licence fee and what appeared that the BBC would have to fund itself?
With this attitude what happens to the World Service high frequency broadcasts? They currently have one on Digital Radio Mondiale which I have heard in the past (Before the Singapore transmitter site was turned into housing) from 4000 km away it sounded better than my AM from 500 metres away!
DRM contains no carrier, so the cost of electricity drops by at least 40 % of the high power high frequency AM transmissions.
DRM has a few characteristics which could be ‘useful’.
Firstly its drop in electricity costs is significant.
The ability to send multilingual simultaneous programs improves the cost effectiveness and increases audiences.
Controlled Access mode needs an encryption key to unlock the decoding makes pay radio possible.
It is possible to send the latitude and longitude of the corners of a rectangle so that only receivers with that area can receive that data. Since there can be upto 3 sound channels, then one can be for all but those who are within the selected area. This could be used for advertising.
> What happened to the previous UK’s Government’s pledge to stop the TV receiver licence fee
I guess nothing?
> With this attitude what happens to the World Service high frequency broadcasts?
I guess nothing? The changes affect the availability of their domestic services abroad, the World Service doesn’t fall into this category.
> They currently have one on Digital Radio Mondiale which I have heard in the past
They do transmit for two hours daily (one for Europe, one for Asia) with 16,9kbps audio bitrate. At this point, taking into consideration the fact that BBC has scrapped the use of DRM for domestic use (after some mediumwave trials), I think it’s nothing more than a token presence.
> from 4000 km away it sounded better than my AM from 500 metres away
If you think about it, it’s quite ridiculous to claim something like this in the context of a technology that is supposed to be “new” and “modern”. For instance, I don’t see EV makers advertising their products as revolutionary just because they can go faster than a Ford T. Yet in case of DRM, they boast every so often that DRM supposedly sounds better than AM. This is nothing more than cherry-picking, because it’s completely ignoring the fact that radio is not just about AM – other technologies do exist, they are years ahead of DRM (which is a technology from the early 2000s), and – contrary to DRM – are widely available and adopted. Even the point itself is at least debatable, because DRM audio signals are transmitted with a high level of digital compression, with bitrates worse than early 90s GSM phone calls, far below the transparency rate for any audio encoder, resulting in a severly distorted autio with lots of digital artifacts.
> DRM contains no carrier, so the cost of electricity drops by at least 40 % of the high power high frequency AM transmissions.
Yes, we already know that, however neither the broadcasters nor the radio manufacturers seem to care about it and no one, i.e. in the DRM Consortium, seems to have any idea on how to change it apart from trying to push the same thing over and over again, which doesn’t work.
>> DRM contains no carrier, so the cost of electricity drops by at least 40 % of the high power high frequency AM transmissions.
>Yes, we already know that,
It’s not even technically true. While DRM doesn’t have an obvious, stand-out, unmodulated carrier, it does have *multiple* carriers (~90 to 450 of them in DRM30, phase modulated, and running at their individual peak powers (average power is not just RMS, but lower due to the phase modulation) + a few “pilot” carriers for sync/gain purposes.
Alan may wish to think of those carriers as equivalent to AM’s sidebands (in that they’re where the information is encoded) but, except as an analogy to aid conceptual understanding, it’s technical BS.
DRM has carriers. Lot’s of ’em…
You had better go and learn about COFDM which was invented by the CSIRO in Australia because that is what DRM uses to transmit the data.
I been able to catch the BBC on the 31 meter band 9580 khz
in the middle of the night in north america
BBC is moving to fully monetize its international content with commercials local to the listener’s area. They can inject relevant local ads using similar technology that TuneIn uses, and that ad load will be increased. If you are streaming content, just use a VPN and stick with the UK-targeted content. There are many that support UK residential IP addresses the BBC does not block.
Looks like the coming global version of the World Service will have Sportsworld on weekends stripped from its schedule once again, if the online schedule I see posted now on bbc.com is accurate. I say “once again” because WS listeners clamored for its inclusion online when it was only available via shortwave due to “rights issues”. Will this be the excuse for stripping them out once again? Online and via Sirius XM satellite radio (subscription) are the only ways for North Americans to have access 24/7 (a handful of HD sub channels carry it too, but the US public radio stream doesn’t have Sportsworld) and shortwave has largely been deep sixed by the BBC. Whoever is running things at the BBC seems to be doing a slower motion Elon Musk act — killing its best parts and features so it’s most loyal adherents will eventually have nothing to fight for.
Web radio was supposed to bring the listeners radio stations from all over the globe. With each decision like this one, it seems more and more like a broken promise.
Ah my – the TV is, understandably, forbidden to us filthy foreigners because it’s financed by the UK viewers’ license fee. As such, we do not contribute to Aunties’ upkeep.
OTOH, the radio license (which I well remember) was done away with years ago but now, they’re taking the radio service back into the fold and, presumably, hope to monetize it in some way.
I guess that although it’s audio only (just like radio) Sounds is being counted in the same way as TV and (hopefully) will become a profit center now.