France will cease all FM radio broadcasting by 2033. This portends a problem for North America.
There’s a technological movement afoot in other parts of the world that could leave North America behind when it comes to radio broadcasting.
Commercial AM radio has been with us since the early 1920s while FM began its ascendency in the 1960s–and that’s where we are today. Other than the additiona of satellite radio in the 00’s, not much has changed over the decades. Yes, we have some HD-Radio signals available, but they haven’t exactly caught on.
North America did dabble with DAB radio (Digital Audio Broadcasting) about 25 years ago and Canada was all for it, but a number of things killed that technology for us. And for that, we can mostly blame America.
The frequency spectrum allocated for DAB in North America didn’t work when it came to implementation. Canada tried to play in the DAB sandbox with testing on the L-Band in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver, and Windsor starting in 1999. In fact, in 1996, a plan was released that detailed replacing all Candadian AM and FM stations with DAB. It sounded great but most people balked at the cost of L-Band receivers. And because America wasn’t onboard, any Canadian initiatives were doomed.
Let’s explore that last point.
In Europe, Band III and L-Band were set aside for DAB, neither of which were available in North America (Read: America. I seem to remember that the US military had dibs on the best regions of those spectrums. Correct me if I’m mistaken). Instead, broadcasters–again American ones–were hell bent on promoting HD Radio
Why? Because HD-Radio didn’t required new spectrum allocations and promised that AM and FM broadcasters could upgrade their facilities without an entirely new infrastructure. DAB required new transmitters and new receivers. HD-Radio didn’t. It offered backward compatibility with analogue gear and was seen as an easily accessible and affordable upgrade to get better audio and song display information.
Secondly, American broadcasting companies were still in a merger frenzy following the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which removed restrictions on the number of radio stations a single company could own. All the available money was going into acquiring stations. None of these companies were keen to spend money on infrastructure and technology. It was all about American radio companies gobbling up other American radio companies. Infrastructure? Planning for the future? Forget that! We need market share! We need to push up our stock prices!
Third, satellite radio. Although the technology rolled out in other parts of the world, North America (read: America) is where it stuck. The thinking was there wasn’t room in the marketplace for both satellite and DAB. There were powerful market forces (again, read: America) that did not want DAB to be adopted.
Meanwhile, Europe invested heavily in the transition from AM-FM to DAB. So did Australia, China, Hong Kong, Ghana, Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia, and South Korea. A few of these countries–Norway, for example, has already gone all-DAB with Switzerland to make the transition by the end of this year–have dumped AM and FM permanently. The UK is shutting down AM stations on a fairly regular basis and has an eye towards moving entirely to DAB in the not-too-distant future.
Now we hear that France will be done with AM and FM by 2033. DAB is already a way of life for both broadcasters and radio listeners in many parts of the world.
So what does this mean for North America? Will we continue fall behind the rest of the planet when it comes to radio broadcasting technology? Possibly. We could be going back to the days of analogue television when North American and Europe had different video systems (NSTC vs. PAL and SECAM).
The only thing that could even out the playing field is moving radio to IP delivery. Instead of tuners, we’ll access radio through apps, something that’s already starting to happen via RadioPlayer, iHeart Radio, TuneIn, and a few others. SiriusXM is really pushing listening through its app because they’d love to abandon their expensive satellite technology.
It’s going to be interesting to see where all this ends up.
I had a DAB radio when I lived in London, England between 2006-2008. I’ve heard that it didn’t or couldn’t take off in North America due to the military using the frequencies or something like that.
Doesn’t matter what standard they use. If the radio monopolists insist on deciding what content we listeners get, none of it is of any concern for me. I use digitized content which I purchase on CD, create a file server at home, and then use portable media or internet connection to play what I want. It used to be that radio did a service by bringing new music to my attention. Now, all they are interested in, is the advertising dollars they can get by monitizing my attention. And well, don’t really need that. Local independent radio is likely to get shafted no matter which way it goes. Can’t say that saving the payola gang of media monopolists is high on my list of concerns.
I’ve been using the apps you’ve mentioned to stream radio in my car, which uses the data on my phone. What about ATSC 3.0? Here in the US, there are a few TV stations that have migrated from transmitting ATSC 1.0 to 3.0. It’s been said that electric cars cause interference in AM radios, which is why many electric cars don’t have it. It’s been suggested that the AM audio (along with any other audio programming) could be transmitted via ATSC 3.0. Granted, we’d need ATSC 3.0 tuners in our cars for that to work. Perhaps several years down the road, ATSC 3.0 for the US might be similar to what DAB in Europe is now.