News

Listeners in Saarland can now receive Antenne Schlager via DAB+. With the slogan ‘Feel good’, the station is now also broadcasting its popular Schlager hits on the Saar and Blies. Antenne Schlager offers a wide range of pop hits and cult hits. The morning show with Tom Meyer and the afternoon show with Hanna Alschner are just some of the highlights that await listeners. The station promises good humour around the clock with music by Helene Fischer, Ben Zucker and Udo Jürgens. Antenne Schlager can be received via DAB+ in Lower Saxony, Bremen, Hamburg and now also in Saarland.

SRG SSR is making sure listeners understand why the Swiss public broadcaster is moving quickly to end its FM broadcasts. Swiss lawmakers set a 2026 deadline for stations to transition to digital, but SRG SSR is ready to make the change at the end of the year. In June 2024, the broadcaster announced it would leave the FM band at the end of 2024. Now, it is going into detail about the benefits of the full switchover, stating that “Analogue broadcasting modes, such as FM, which have been operational since 1952, have had their day.” According to SRG SSR, ending its FM broadcasts will reduce energy demands by several gigawatt hours of energy each year, saving a significant amount of money. Savings are also expected from reduced maintenance and replacement of antennas and transmission systems.

Celtic Music Radio is pleased to announce that the station is now available on DAB digital radio in the Inverclyde area, the third Scottish area to enjoy such a service. “Celtic Music Radio has been providing a service via DAB in the Greater Glasgow and Edinburgh areas for some time,” said Alex Jenkins, chair of the station’s board of directors. “Inverclyde has been in the pipeline for a while so we are delighted to finally provide DAB there as it demonstrates our ongoing commitment to delivering quality programming to more and more listeners.”

Spark Radio will be broadcast around Southport and the surrounding area on DAB+, reaching an audience of up to 330,000 listeners. This is a fantastic milestone as our learner-run station brings its shows, podcasts and music to a wider community. This will not only provide a valuable platform for our talented students to showcase their skills but also enriches the local radio landscape with fresh, creative content from the next generation of broadcasters.

Ofcom has published an outline of frequency block usage for small-scale DAB across the United Kingdom. The UK media regulator says: "The maps show which frequency blocks have been allocated to each small-scale DAB area that Ofcom anticipated advertising when considering the licensing of small-scale DAB. The purpose of this document is to provide an overview of the frequencies used, or planned for future use, by small-scale DAB across the UK. With over 60 multiplexes on-air, about 40 more licensed and yet to come on-air, and 25 areas being assessed, the overall frequency plan is not expected to change significantly. However, all frequency plans evolve over time and the allocations depicted on the maps may change to some extent."

Two digital network operators for commercial radio, Teleko digital and RTI cz, are expanding DAB+ signal coverage in Moravia. Teleko has started broadcasting from the Velká Javorina transmitter in Slovakia, while RTI cz has launched its first Moravian site on Lysá hora in the Beskydy Mountains. On Thursday, RTI cz began testing transmissions from Lysá hora, where its full-range multiplex C signal is being distributed from its own transmitter by Teleko digital. The tests are running on channel 9D and the network should ultimately transmit at 3 kW. From Lysá hora, RTI cz will cover the entire Ostrava-Karviná region. This operator broadcasts from Lysá hora with an output of 2 kW. From Thursday to Friday, Teleko digital also launched the Velká Javorina transmitter, located on the Slovak side of the Czech-Slovak border near Uherský Brod.

As Italy moves forward with allocating local and regional DAB+ frequencies, broadcasters are concerned the numbers don’t add up. The provisional national DAB allocation plan , PNAF-DAB, issued by the Italian communications regulator AGCOM outlined three national, 54 regional (27 of which could be divided into subregions), and 36 local networks. In 11 of the catchment areas, applications did not exceed the number of available network licenses. The remaining 10 regions, the number of groups looking to operate at least one of the area’s networks exceeds the planned capacity. Under the current plan, so-called “beauty contests” will be used to determine which applicant will receive a DAB+ licence.

Q3 2024 RAJAR figures are out for the UK. Listening to radio online actually fell for the quarter (27.7% of all radio listening, compared to 28.1% last time around). Listening to radio via DAB continued to increase, and is now at 44% of all radio listening, another record. FM/AM now accounts for 25.7% - down from 29.7% one year ago. Over at Bauer, notable that the Absolute Radio brand has posted its best-ever figures, in spite of now being a digital-only network, losing both 1215AM (Jan 2023) and 105.8FM (May 2021).

Under the motto ‘Dinkelsbühl listens digitally’, the Middle Franconian private radio station Radio 8 is switching off its first FM frequency and leaving 89.8 MHz this Thursday, 31 October. Reception via the Radio 8 app, the website www.radio8.de and digital radio DAB+ is preferred. Depending on the location, the FM frequencies 97.3 MHz from Feuchtwangen and 89.1 MHz from Wassertrüdingen can be heard in the town. An information event on the switchover was held on Altrathausplatz on Saturday. DAB+ radios from TechniSat were up for grabs.

The RTS Première, RTS Espace 2, RTS Couleur 3 and RTS Option Musique channels will be leaving the FM band on 31 December. Cars not equipped with DAB+ receivers will need to be adapted to continue receiving RTS and traffic information, as well as to listen to any radio in tunnels. The four RTS radio channels will soon only be available via DAB+ and internet streaming. Like all their SRG colleagues, they will no longer be available on FM receivers from 1 January 2025, an obsolete technology that Switzerland has decided to abandon. Anyone who does not have a DAB+ receiver and wishes to continue listening to RTS Première, RTS Espace 2, RTS Couleur 3 and RTS Option Musique on an FM radio will only be able to do so by using an adapter.