Opinion: Radio gaga

Posted on 12 Oct 2009 at 11:18

 

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FM radio sounds clear, full-bodied and gorgeous and easily outstrips its glitchy, low-bit offspring DAB, argues Mel Croucher. So why is FM being switched off?

How many radio sets have you got? I don't mean all those stations bundled inside Freeview or streamed online with irritable vowel syndrome, I mean proper radio sets with knobs and dials and aerials. Me? I've got loads. I wake up to the bedside alarm radio, then trip to the bathroom where a plastic portable accompanies my organic recycling and its rubber-clad cousin duets with me in the shower. A pocket radio delivers the news as I drag the dog along the beach, before a reassuringly expensive Bose Wave system brings me quality listening over breakfast. Then I squirrel away in my so-called office with its choice of vintage Phillips valve set, a Chinese transistor jobbie and a self-assembly crystal set that works without any apparent power source. I also have a radio in the car, in the shed, and in the Archbishop Tutu Memorial Bedroom (who ended up staying with my neighbour, but that's another story).

I like my radios. I like them very much. According to my insurance inventory they cost me a total of £680. But in five years' time they will all fall silent, because the government has announced a lunatic decision to shunt every national radio network from FM to digital. At the moment, digital accounts for only 20 per cent of radio listening, and there are 150 million analogue receivers currently in use. There isn't a problem with FM receivers, so why in the name of Lord Reith do we need a solution? The public doesn't need to go digital, neither do they want to. The same goes for the BBC and commercial broadcasters on cost grounds alone, let alone quality. Did I mention quality?

As well as my old-fashioned receivers, I've also got a heap of digital crap that only works in the dark when the tide's out. When my wife comes into range, our digital set throws a hissy fit, although admittedly she also has this effect on car alarms, airport scanners and certain parrots. I suspect she may be slightly radioavailable, but at least she pays half the utility bills.

In Britain our digital radios use the dreadful DAB system, where sound quality must be compressed to squeeze in all the stations. DAB is also expensive, power-hungry, and it's not too clever in the countryside, cars or buildings containing concrete and metal. If you live in a wigwam in Wigan you should be fine. As for the rest of us, we will be forced to pay for digital receivers we don't want, can't afford and that don't work anyway. This is bloody madness.

There are superior systems to DAB's drab, muddy, sonic mangling currently available, but the government has already committed us to this failed technology in the hope that somehow it will get better over time (or our offended ears will acclimatise to it). It won't, they know it won't, so what are they playing at? Either they want to consign radio sets to the history books and force us all to move online - in which case they should come clean - or the government really believes that the 80 per cent of us who own analogue radios will meekly acquiesce as they fall silent, in which case they should be locked away with only my digital radio and cyborg wife for company. That'll teach 'em.

Author: Mel Croucher