Consumer Products Blog
Analogue radio: turn off, tune out, landfill
By Duncan Smith - Last updated: Wednesday, May 19, 2010
In my earlier post I expressed my extreme disappointment with the UK government’s proposals to turn off analogue radio in a “digital switchover”. In summary I said that (a) the idea is bad for consumers, (b) DAB isn’t much better (arguably sounding worse, for example) and (c) filling up landfill with perfectly good radios isn’t good for the environment or the government’s eco-credentials.
Now they’re announcing a radio scrappage scheme – 20% off a new radio if you trade in your old one. That’s 100-150 million radios potentially scrapped. Ironically the comparison is now being made to the recent car scrappage scheme. As far as I am aware my analogue radio isn’t damaging the environment just now, whereas putting it in a landfill in 2015 won’t help.
As for 20% discount, I can imagine why the high street retailers are not happy, as they already concede that amount of their margin to stay competitive with online retailers. No wonder they don’t seem keen to participate.
All of this to encourage us to buy DAB, already a twenty year old technology. Whether you like DAB or not, and I have provoked some debate on that topic, is it the right thing for 2015? Britons are already spending a hugely increasing amount of time online. If you want high quality, good sounding, interactive, personalised radio content, the internet is the place to look.
Even radio manufacturers won’t get much from this, as there aren’t many providers of the core DAB technology, so there isn’t much room for innovation. Manufacturers will have much more fun designing really novel internet-based products, I’m sure, especially as new technology emerges.
So, someone please tell me, who is benefitting from this idea? Is a spectrum sale really worth it?
Is anyone in our new government going to tune in to this discussion?
Comments:
Jo Said,
July 7, 2010 @ 1:55 am
This switch off scheme is undemocratic and a great exmple of a very sucessful digital radio lobbying campaign no doubt. It’s very worrying how fervently the BBC et al are supporting it. Are there NO technically literate ministers in the government? As it’s quite clear that DAB radio is inferior in every way. Please support Rob Mannion’s anti switch campaign:
http://www.southgatearc.org/news/may2010/doubts_over_analogue_switchoff.htm
Analogue switch off U-turn is right for consumers » Consumer Products Said,
July 11, 2010 @ 6:16 am
[...] is the third and hopefully final in my series of posts (#1 and #2) about the threatened switch-off of analogue radio broadcast in the UK in [...]
Dezza Said,
June 15, 2010 @ 9:57 am
Ok Duncan, so I forgive you for all that stuff about DAB sounding better than analogue FM radio (which it doesn’t), because this time, you’re spot on.
The “radio scrappage scheme” is a stunningly stupid idea – second only to the idea of selling off the FM radio spectrum in the first place. Drop the ‘s’ and the description of the scheme would be rather more apt! Moreover, to compare this to the car scrappage scheme is truly daft. There are (arguably*) some good environmental reasons for removing old, inefficient and polluting vehicles from the roads, and replacing them with cleaner, safer, more efficient ones. By comparison, sticking 150 million perfectly good FM radios into landfill does not seem so ‘green’ – although, maybe, yours will be one of those lucky ones that gets to go on holiday to Africa!
The salient difference between the two schemes is that (I would imagine) most people who exploit the car scrappage scheme elect to do so of their own free will (my car’s getting a bit tatty / unreliable / too small for my ever-growing tribe of offspring… etc.). Specifically, they were not told “…buy a new car because we – the honest, wise and competent government (a triple-barrelled oxymoron!) – are going to stop your old car from working whether you like it or not. Oh, and by the way, here’s a paltry discount of the maximum retail price to make the whole thing a bit less infuriating…”. An expression involving places where the sun doesn’t shine springs quite readily to mind!
To add insult to injury, I now have to listen to some old wind-bag telling me that the sound quality of DAB is like having “…nectar poured into my ears…”. Nectar with nails in it, more like. Stephen Fry might like to “…zoom to his favourite station…”, but my tuning dial stays there – no “zooming” required, thanks very much for asking (and my radio has 18 pre-sets anyway). I have to say that there’s also something slightly ironic about listening to these tedious DAB advertisements on my perfectly good, working FM car radio – it’s a bit like turkeys promoting the joys of Christmas! My fault for listening to commercial radio, I suppose.
So, will I be buying any DAB radios? Nope. In my house, I’ll listen to the radio via the internet. By 2015 I’m sure the internet radio providers will be using even better, high bit-rate codecs – if they feel the need to compress at all, given that we’ll all have 100Mbps broadband by then** – whist DAB will still be stuck with its 20+ year old technology. And for my car (probably still the same one)? I’m going to buy myself a stereo that will interface with my iPod – I imagine that I’ll be able to by one of the obsolete models with an FM radio very cheaply in the not-too-distant future.
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* I reckon my 10 year old car needs to be burning a lot of oil (which it doesn’t) before you can justify the pollution, CO2 emissions and drain on natural resources associated with making a whole new car. If you were a cynic, you’d say it was a thinly disguised ruse to prop-up a failing automotive industry…As for the safety aspect (of new car vs. old car): try concentrating on driving and looking where you’re going – as opposed to fiddling with your mobile phone, SatNav, DAB radio (that won’t hold on to a station because the coverage is so poor), etc…
** Like they already have in civilised places like Japan, Hong Kong etc.!