Digital Legislating

Michael Hedges April 28, 2005

Governments are attacking the digital media problem and warming, again, to analogue shut-off dates for radio.

More European legislatures are deciding to make 2005 the year of digital radio. And, they’re doing it the old fashioned way: by fiat. When consumers continue to ignore the digital publicity – and buy iPods and new mobile phones by the millions – shutting off the FM band is probably the quickest way to kill the radio medium, as it’s been known for three generations.

Dutch European Affairs Minister Laurens Jan Brinkhorst introduced legislation in the House of Representatives allowing, finally, commercial DAB licenses and proposing analogue shut-off no later than 2019. Public broadcaster NOP launched digital channels in 2004 but commercial broadcasters have expressed a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

At Denmark’s Radio Days in March a conservative legislator, suggested that “DAB is dead,” citing the technology as old and expensive. Denmarks Radio – the highly creative public broadcaster – offers 17 DAB programs, several DAB-only, and has extensively and effectively promoted the service. Commercial broadcasters – notably SBS Radio and Talpa – have not followed, preferring the legislature to re-allocate FM frequencies. 

Swiss public broadcaster SSR-SRG has moved ahead with DAB coverage, primarily in the Swiss-German speaking eastern three-quarters of the country. Regulator OFCOM – in the midst of revision the entire radio and TV law (LRTV) – has removed the public sector monopoly on digital radio broadcasting, with deafening silence from commercial broadcasters.

Norway’s public broadcaster NRK announced last week its intention to move to the DAB platform starting in 2007 and shut-off analogue transmissions by 2014.

The French media regulator Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel (CSA) began last week a period of public consultation on digital radio broadcasting. The regulator and the National Assembly have been conducting consultations and hearings over the course of the last year to determine a viable digital strategy.  This public consultation is directed at “any person carrying on an activity in direct connection with the radio sector.”

The National Assembly has proposed a reorganization of the 6000 FM frequencies currently in use in France as part of adopting rules for digital radio licenses. Neither the legislature nor the CSA have given even the slightest hint of a shut-off date for analogue radio broadcasting. Introducing the public consultation period, the CSA makes clear that the direction for radio broadcasting in France will be “voted in plebiscite.” The CSA has been evaluating digital radio broadcasting for ten years.

“How to start?” asked CSA member Philippe Lévrier last year. “Choose one technology? Every month a new one emerges. Let’s look at them, evaluate them, knowing that everyone will, in turn, become obsolete.”

Indeed, the Media Authority of Berlin-Brandenburg (MABB) expressed an identical position when it discontinued DAB licenses in favor of newer technologies. More recently, the Finnish government directed public broadcaster YLE to give up DAB in favor of DVB-H, the mobile phone platform favored by Finnish handset maker Nokia. DAB has also been dropped in Ireland and Canada.

Digital radio development in the UK is light-years ahead of Europe. It’s a model everybody notices and nobody can duplicate. Over one million households have digital receivers – far more than on the Continent – and 400 programs and channels, public and private, are on the air now. Proponents of digital radio in the UK made all the right moves – once they decided to make all the right moves; the BBC and commercial broadcasters have common, if separate, promotional strategies and UK receiver makers and electronics retailers are fully on board. At the same time the regulator OFCOM and Parliament have distanced themselves from any absolute date for analogue shut-off. It probably isn’t necessary.

It’s nonsense to believe that consumers are resisting digital audio media. The iPod sales figures as well as Internet radio usage surveys are sufficiently convincing. Outside of the UK, parts of Germany and Denmark the digital radio offering is – to the consumers’ ears – just like FM but more expensive. It’s only when digital radio broadcasting matches the expectation by providing true interactivity that consumers, be they early adopters or old anoraks, will race to the stores.