{"id":17315,"date":"2016-02-10T16:39:50","date_gmt":"2016-02-10T20:39:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/?p=17315"},"modified":"2016-02-10T16:43:11","modified_gmt":"2016-02-10T20:43:11","slug":"guest-post-the-future-for-radio-broadcasting-in-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/guest-post-the-future-for-radio-broadcasting-in-australia\/","title":{"rendered":"Guest post: The future for radio broadcasting in Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor,\u00a0Phil Brennan, who shares the following guest post–an article he originally authored\u00a0for the Australian DX News:<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"WHKY-AM-Radio-Tower\"<\/a><\/h2>\n

What Future for Radio Broadcasting in Australia?<\/h2>\n

By Phil Brennan, Darwin, NT<\/strong><\/p>\n

As we witness the worldwide decline in long wave, medium wave , shortwave and indeed FM broadcasting, it can be at times a slightly depressing exercise to ponder the future of our hobby.\u00a0 As I write, just last week Radio France announced that it will soon cease all LW broadcasting.\u00a0 There\u2019s an on-line petition to save the service: this morning it had collected 770 signatures after one week. It was 769 until I sent my modest click across the universe L.<\/p>\n

On the domestic front we\u2019ve seen the pointy-headed bean counters in Canberra and their political masters take the knife to our national broadcaster to the point where Radio Australia now seems to be little more than a relay station for the ABC with barely any in-house production tailored for its audience.<\/p>\n

With all this doom and gloom it was with some trepidation that I spied a recent Australian Government report entitled Digital Radio Report<\/a><\/em> [1]<\/a> which arrived via my email in-box through the excellent Australian Policy On-line resource.\u00a0 The report was published in July 2015 by the Department of Communications and was conducted by the Minister for Communications under the Broadcasting Services Act<\/em> and the Radiocommunications Act<\/em>. Note: the Minister for Communications then was Malcolm Turnbull who is now Australia\u2019s Prime Minister.<\/p>\n

The report makes for an interesting read (for nerds like us) and provides some great insight into the bureaucracy\u2019s thinking on the future of radio broadcasting in this country.\u00a0 So while the report ostensibly considers the current and potential state of digital radio in Australia, in so doing it looks at the other forms of radio broadcasting and gives us a peek into the future.<\/p>\n

The report broadly considers the following issues:<\/p>\n