The stations that have so far failed have been broadcasting stuff that doesn't attract enough of an audience to generate the sort of advertising revenue needed to keep the thing solvent. Nothing to do with technology.
Channel 4 are struggling to keep going on their one TV channel; that's why they can't afford to splurge on new radio stations.
-- -- ^^^^^^^^^^ -- Whiskers -- ~~~~~~~~~~
4 national stations closed on the Digital One multiplex earlier this year because they couldn't afford to pay the £1 million per year transmission costs.
DAB+ is 2 - 3 times cheaper to transmit per station. That's a big, big saving for a station.
What an utterly ridiculous statement.
?-- Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info The adoption of DAB was the most incompetent technical decision ever made in the history of UK broadcasting: http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/dab/incompetent_adoption_of_dab.htm
Digital One is only carrying one station - Planet Rock - that isn't already a big station on FM/AM. Why? Because the transmission cost for a stereo station is £1 million per year.
Nothing to do with technology? Transmission costs on DAB are as high as they are precisely because the technology is very inefficient.
Can you not understand that the FIXED multiplex transmission costs being shared by say 30 stations is gonig to lead to lower transmission costs than if they're shared between 10 stations?
Correct. That's the only correct thing you've said for some time now.
-- Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info The adoption of DAB was the most incompetent technical decision ever made in the history of UK broadcasting: http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/dab/incompetent_adoption_of_dab.htm
Yup. There are already more than can make a reasonable income from the advertising pot that exists. So a new one has either to expand that pot or pinch from others.
I think they also found out - rather late - the costs of trying to provide the sort of speech based progs they promised.
--
*I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be without sponges*
Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.
The costs charged for rental have little to do with actual costs.
--
*Gravity is a myth, the earth sucks *
Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.
That will be why FM costs are lower then...
--
*If PROGRESS is for advancement, what does that make CONGRESS mean?
Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.
FM is totally irrelevant. You just say things for the sake of it, don't you. You put absolutely no thought in to whatever you say, and you just go straight for the gob off.
-- Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info The adoption of DAB was the most incompetent technical decision ever made in the history of UK broadcasting: http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/dab/incompetent_adoption_of_dab.htm
Totally wrong. It was the TRANSMISSION COSTS that caused the DAB crisis earlier this year. GCap wanted to close 4 stations (theJazz, Core, Life and Planet Rock - the latter was sold), and it wanted to sell its 67% stake in Digital One for £1 to Arqiva.
It was the transmission costs that led to that and to Fru Hazlitt saying that DAB is "not an economically viable platform".
It's common knowledge that the transmission costs are exhorbitant on DAB.
-- Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info The adoption of DAB was the most incompetent technical decision ever made in the history of UK broadcasting: http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/dab/incompetent_adoption_of_dab.htm
It's all too easy to find people who will talk ceaselessly for no money at all - but finding people who can talk and have other people want to listen, is a whole other kettle of ballgames.
Using a different audio codec to squeeze twice as many stations onto the same transmitter, just means you'll have to find twice as much talent as the existing stations haven't. So you get twice as many failed efforts and twice as many unpaid bills - and twice as much unused transmitter capacity. Even if there are people out there with equipment that can actually handle the new codec.
-- -- ^^^^^^^^^^ -- Whiskers -- ~~~~~~~~~~
Not so. You give the impression transmissions fees bear some relation to the actual costs. You're wrong.
--
*I got a sweater for Christmas. I really wanted a screamer or a moaner*
Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.
They couldn't afford the transmitter costs because they failed to provide content that people would listen to in large enough numbers to attract advertisers to pay the bills.
[...]Only if you can find 2 - 3 times as many people to set up stations and provide stuff people want to listen to. If four companies have failed to manage that, what makes you think eight to twelve companies could?
Multiplying the number of stations is easy; multiplying the amount of talent to make good use of them is very very difficult, and multiplying the number of listeners is in a different realm entirely.
-- -- ^^^^^^^^^^ -- Whiskers -- ~~~~~~~~~~
DAB+ wouldn't launch yet anyway, because there aren't enough receivers out there.
But the economics are vastly superior on DAB+ than on DAB. The transmission costs per station are 2-3 times lower than on DAB. It also makes it cost effective to provide much better quality.
DAB+ is an inevitability.
-- Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info The adoption of DAB was the most incompetent technical decision ever made in the history of UK broadcasting: http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/dab/incompetent_adoption_of_dab.htm
Absolutely. The idea of the 'big brother' channel providing serious competition to R4 is a joke. In the early days of CH4 I might have believed it.
Indeed. Our hyper 'DAB' friend seems to think the transmitter rental is based on how much electricity it uses.
My view is there'll be great resistance to replacing relatively new equipment *if* they use the new standard. Portable radios don't really fit into the 'must have the latest' scenario. And the numbers who won't use the current DAB because of the quality are tiny.
--
*Why is the third hand on the watch called a second hand?
Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.
No. It means that you only need one multiplex to transmit the same number of stations that were previously on two of them.
gr, hwh
Digital One charges over £1m per annum to carry a stereo station. So how much would you say the transmission costs would be for Digital One?
-- Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info The adoption of DAB was the most incompetent technical decision ever made in the history of UK broadcasting: http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/dab/incompetent_adoption_of_dab.htm
C4 were going to launch 3 new stations: E4 Radio, which would have had Big Brother programmes on it, plus Channel 4 Radio, whcih was meant to compete with R4, adn Pure4, which was a bit like 6 Music with more talk.
Oh, that couldn't be further from the truth. How much do you think it would cost to transmit Digital One?
I've explained this elsewhere. If you're too stupid to understand what I've said, I can't be arsed repeating it again.
-- Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info The adoption of DAB was the most incompetent technical decision ever made in the history of UK broadcasting: http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/dab/incompetent_adoption_of_dab.htm
Thanks for stating the bleeding obvious.
Not so. You're assuming that DAB+ could only be launched on new multiplexes. But DAB+ stations could fit onto existing multiplexes, and DAB and DAB+ stations only pay for the capacity they use, and that's why DAB+ stations are 2-3 times cheaper to transmit, because they use 2-3 times less capacity.
A good example is that a DAB+ station could fit onto what is a "full" multiplex in terms of there being insufficient spare capacity to carry another DAB stereo station. So DAB+ stations could be launched in the most lucrative radio markets, such as London, when DAB stations coudln't be launched because there's not enough capacity.
Also, if a broadcaster currently has capacity on a London multiplex, once there's a sufficiently high number of DAB+ receivers in the market it could withdraw one station and replace it with the same station but in DAB+ and launch one or two new stations alongside it to make extra money.
Basically, leave DAB+ to people who know about it, there's a good boy.
There are 7.7m DAB receivers sold so far. There are 120m - 150m FM devices in-use according to Ofcom. So the advertising pot for DAB will obviously increase over time, so all your nonsense, or maybe Plowman's nonsense, about the advertising pot being a fixed size on DAB, is obviously just nonsense.
See above re ownership.
-- Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info The adoption of DAB was the most incompetent technical decision ever made in the history of UK broadcasting: http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/dab/incompetent_adoption_of_dab.htm
FFS. Transmitter rental is a figure plucked out of the air - based on what 'they' think the market can stand. There's absolutely no reason to believe a more efficient transmission method will alter this.
--
*Always borrow money from pessimists - they don\'t expect it back *
Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.
Bullshit. The multiplex transmission costs are already known (and contracts have been signed), and the transmitter networks don't need to change at all to carry DAB+, so the transmission providers can't turn round and just increase costs. The broadcasters all know this, so the multiplex operators (which are all owned by the broadcasters anyway) can hardly just bump the price up.
See:
"The benefits of DAB+ include:
Lower transmission costs for digital stations"
-- Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info The adoption of DAB was the most incompetent technical decision ever made in the history of UK broadcasting: http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/dab/incompetent_adoption_of_dab.htm
Page 4 of 12:
[...]WorldDMB created a Task Force of its Technical Committee to develop the additional standard. After examining the options, DAB+ using MPEG-4 HEAAC v2 was adopted. DAB+ was published in February 2007 as ETSI TS 102 563 ?Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB);Transport of Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) audio?.
[...]Which could just be a clue as to why Ofcom didn't insist on DAB+ being immplemented five years earlier. Don't you think?
Page 8 (Graphics omitted, for obvious reasons):
Possible scenarios with DAB+ The following figures show how the bit rate of a DAB ensemble may be assigned to:
Multiplex with MPEG Audio Layer II (DAB) 9 radio services using MPEG Audio Layer II at 128 kbps
Multiplex with HE-AAC v2 (DAB+) 28 radio services using HE-AAC v2 at 40 kbps and 1 audio service using HE-AAC v2 at 32 kbps.
Multiplex with MPEG Audio Layer II and HE-AAC v2 (DAB and DAB+) 5 radio services using MPEG Audio Layer II at 128 kbps and 12 radio services using HE-AAC v2 at 40 kbps and 1 radio service using HE-AAC v2 at 32 kbps
A 40 kbps subchannel with HE-AAC v2 provides a similar audio quality (even slightly better in most cases) to MPEG Audio Layer II at 128 kbps.
Technology is the easy bit, content is the hard part.
-- -- ^^^^^^^^^^ -- Whiskers -- ~~~~~~~~~~
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