The UK Government published its Digital Britain White Paper on 16 June. The key points of the report in relation to radio are:

Digital migration

• Confirmation of a digital radio “upgrade” by the end of 2015 (and which will be confirmed at least two years in advance).
• All national and local services currently on DAB to migrate from analogue.
• Small ultra-local stations and community radio to upgrade from MW to FM, or remain on FM.
• Target for criteria (i.e. 50% of listening to be digital; national DAB coverage comparable to FM; and local DAB to reach 90% of population) to be met by 2013.
• Five point plan for DAB in vehicles, supported by major car manufacturers including Ford and Vauxhall.

DAB coverage

• BBC to achieve comparable coverage to FM for its national multiplex by the end of 2014.
• BBC to bear significant proportion of the costs of local DAB coverage roll-out.
• Some cost savings delivered by Digital Britain to be re-invested to support transmitter investment.
• Government will support a re-plan of local and regional DAB (merging multiplexes where agreed, and creating a second national multiplex).

The White Paper is very positive and is supported cross party.

In overall terms, we at Folder Media / MuxCo support the proposals in the White Paper, which we believe will help underpin DAB.
In summary:

• We support a set date for switch over, rather than a rolling set of criteria. This gives a clear flag to achieve, and we feel confident that the radio industry will be able to achieve the criteria by 2013.

• We have always advocated that DAB is one of several digital radio platforms, and is likely to continue to be the primary terrestrial platform in the short to medium term, and hopefully longer.

• We support the proposal for clear labelling of the DAB technology.

• We have been involved in the initial industry discussions about converting the regional DAB layer into the basis of a second national layer and in principle support the proposal.

• We have been involved in the initial industry discussions about ‘merging’ multiplex areas. We support the view that where such mergers make economic and efficiency sense for both multiplex operators and service providers, then the multiplex operator should have the right to approach Ofcom to merge, but that merging should not be artificially forced upon multiplexes. In addition, any re-plan needs to take account of potential long term interest rather than a short term view.

• We have always stated that functionality and interactivity will be the bedrock of DAB, hence our intention to hold capacity for the provision of data rather than audio services. We currently maintain a watching brief on this aspect of the opportunity, as whilst we can create services, we need devices on which they can operate. To that end, we have good relationships with a number of manufacturers.

Through the MuxCo application process we interviewed thousands of people who are current DAB listeners as well as those who had not yet taken the plunge. Current listeners are nearly all huge advocates for the technology and how it has improved their radio listening. We’re keen to work hard to make digital radio an even better proposition – coverage, content and features – and we’ll work strongly with all radio operators and the Government to provide a service that betters listeners’ analogue radio experience and keeps radio a vibrant medium.

Read the full article here.

MuxCo today (12 February) publishes an update on its plans for its new DAB Digital Radio multiplex that will serve Liverpool, Cheshire and North Wales when it launches later this year.

Using transmitters at Moel-y-Parc, Wrexham Rhos and St.John’s Beacon, the multiplex will serve around 1.4m adults (15+) and enabling a range of existing and new services to broadcast in digital.

The multiplex will carry BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Cymru, 107.6 Juice FM and Dee 106.3, allowing these existing services to both broadcast in digital quality and be heard by a wider audience than can currently hear them on analogue. In addition, the multiplex will carry a number of new services, only available on DAB Digital Radio. These will include Traffic Radio, a 24/7 traffic news and information service from the Highways Agency, a new music service from Town & Country Broadcasting and a range of data services from Folder Media.

The multiplex has opportunities for additional radio services to join this exciting multiplex.

Gregory Watson, Managing Director at MuxCo, said “The Government has recently published two reports – a Digital Radio Working Group report to the Government in December 2008 and Lord Carter’s ‘Digital Britain’ report in January 2009. Both reports highlight the importance of expanding DAB coverage to ensure that listeners in all parts of the UK are able to hear existing services on DAB, as well as a wide range of digital only services that broaden choice and cater for a wider range of tastes and interests. We are very excited about being able to update our plans for the new multiplex, and to start the countdown to our launch this Autumn”.

In the UK, 31.4% of all adults every week currently listen to radio via a digital radio platform, and this results in the digital platforms having a total share of all radio listening of 18.7% (Rajar Q3 2008).  DAB is and is set to remain the principal digital radio platform – 8m sets sold to date, and DAB accounts for over 11% of total listening.

MuxCo agrees with the DRWG that a radio-specific broadcast platform is an essential part of radio’s future and that “DAB, unlike both DTT and the internet, is the most effective and financially viable way of delivering digital radio, particularly large local radio services, for the foreseeable future”.

We welcome the DRWG’s suggestions for a migration path which would be triggered by at least 50% of total radio listening is to digital platforms, and that the DRWG believe this could be achieved between 2015 and 2020.

Gregory Watson, MD at MuxCo, says “It is great news that the Digital Radio Working Group, and its members which include the BBC, Radiocentre and DRDB, has reaffirmed its commitment to the development of a sustainable and successful digital future for radio.  We are set to start launching our new multiplexes in 2009, starting with Wrexham & Cheshire by September.  Today’s announcement gives us even more comfort with the development of DAB.  We look forward to the publication of the Government’s Digital Britain Report in early 2009, and urge Government and Ofcom to consider the recommendations set out in the DRWG report”.

The full DRWG report can be downloaded http://www.culture.gov.uk/reference_library/publications/5700.aspx

“The new Gloucestershire “multiplex” will be on air by early 2009.  The operator’s timetable has changed slightly due to technical refinements that are being made to frequency planning across the UK”.

Now, what exactly does that mean?

Well, actually there are two issues that are causing our multiplex launch dates to move.  The first is our negotiations with our transmitter operator and the second, as alluded to above, are some ongoing industry discussions.

Firstly, transmission. Once a multiplex is awarded a licence, there then begins a process of technical and price negotiation with a transmission provider. There are a number of elements that change from multiplex to multiplex after the award right up until launch:

Has the owner of a particular mast changed their access rules or reached their capacity constraints since we submitted the application?  Are there new international frequency clearance issues?  Could a location/power change overcome these?

To put it simply, are the transmitters that we had planned to use still viable as sites and remain the most effective and efficient solutions, or might alternatives sites be better all round?

We also need to ensure we’re not missing a trick when it comes to getting the best deal for our service providers.  Might there be a new local contribution point for local service providers which could save them money?

All of this makes each contract individual and different and it takes time to sort out these issues and that’s what we’ve been working on since the licence awards.  However, we’ve got an extra element of complexity as our chosen transmission company – NGW, are in the process of being acquired by the other main transmission contractor – Arqiva. This means that whilst we could sign a contract with NGW, the operation of it might be with some of the Arqiva team and use some of the Arqiva infrastructure.

As a simple example, let’s look at BBC Radio Wales. The BBC may decide that it will broadcast the same version of BBC Radio Wales to all of the multiplexes in that nation.  Today that would mean we would start a fresh installation with NGW as BBC Radio Wales isn’t currently on NGW’s DAB network. This would mean that brand shiny new communications lines (probably through a third party like BT), would need to be ordered as well as some equipment for both their end and ours. Some of these costs would be borne by MuxCo and some of these would be passed on to the BBC.

Now when Arqiva take over NGW, all this could change. BBC Radio Wales is already on the Arqiva DAB network so, potentially, we would only have to pay some access costs to get the service on one of our multiplexes, potentially saving everybody a significant amount of money.

The difficulty is that because there are competition issues between NGW and Arqiva, they can’t work together, yet, to discuss how they are going to integrate their networks. This means that there are a significant number of uncertainties about how and for how much our networks are going to operate. We’re not very keen to agree a load of things now to see that there was a better way of doing this – from a coverage and a cost basis – in a couple of weeks time when the two companies can work together properly.

The second thing that’s been happening is some inter-industry discussions about the development of DAB. This includes the discussions happening about 4digital’s national multiplex and their relationship (if any) with Digital One and the work the Digital Radio Working Group is doing. There has also been some discussion about frequencies and coverage levels of the existing local multiplexes. Once again whilst this doesn’t necessarily affect us per se, there’s likely to be some knock-on effect that could mean we would be able to do something extra and improve our service. We therefore don’t want to commit everything to stone to find out in a few weeks something changes and we could have got a better deal for everyone – ourselves, our services and at the end of the day, our listeners.

So, where are we with our launches then? As we haven’t signed our contracts with NGW we don’t have any fixed dates. We have, however, overcome many of the contractual elements and MuxCo specific issues and the next step will be to take this to NGW’s new bosses – Arqiva – and go through our plans. After this we can then sign them and Gregory (who sits opposite me) can look a little less stressed.

We currently hope to be able to launch our first three multiplexes in the first half of 2009.

We’re now getting on and building these things so we can get the services on air.

We’ve also submitted today our application for North Wales, the details of which i’ll try and put up online for tomorrow.

Somerset’s been an interesting one to do, it’s a relatively small multiplex and a quite a few of the stations have small but specific coverage areas. It’s something that’s meant we have to work really hard with from a cost basis to ensure that it’s economic enough to get the stations on board.

In these financially tight times it’s MuxCo structure (with TLRC and UKRD as partners) that allows us to roll out DAB digital radio to this area.

It was a very enjoyable experience although I admit I have never been very good at listening tests. I can’t always distinguish subtle difference in audio as easily as the eagle eared engineers, in part due to the fact that my hearing isn’t very sharp. In any case we have to be very careful when discussing subjective opinions about audio.

Listening to the audio from the different codecs, however, I could tell the difference – just. One was more lean and rangy – more treble, basically.

Now here is why subjective listening tests are to be viewed with caution. If you’re turning out jangly guitar rock you might quite like the sound quite lean and rangy. If however you’re running a talk service or playing a lot of acoustic numbers then that lean and rangy treble might be less welcome.

In addition, whatever we provide in terms of baseline parameters can be totally masked by a station’s processing – or lack of, and the quality of the same. There is excellent and disastrous unprocessed audio and the same goes for various types of processing. How a radio station presents its audio is very much up to them. So for us as multiplex operators, just picking one codec over another alone does not guarantee a subjective improvement for you the listener.

Luckily there is hard data we can refer to – data that demonstrates the actual frequency range that each codec achieves. A greater range gives services a broader platform to stand on. So subjective listening is valuable but is only part of the decision making process.

This is MuxCo’s tenth application – and what a busy year it has been.  However, we remain true to our beliefs of enabling DAB expansion in an efficient and viable manner.  We continue to ensure a wide variety of new choice is carried.  NME Radio will provide a new perspective on the rock scene, whilst Easy Radio’s easy listening mix will now be available to a significantly larger audience across the Home Counties.  Shuffle is a new service for the area comprising music and listener-generated content for teenagers and young adults, whilst Traffic Radio will provide an up to date traffic and travel service.  If successful with our bid, we would hope to make some further announcements of additional services before our proposed launch in July 2009.

Onwards and upwards, and now down the M4 and M5 to Somerset.