Swiss Broadcasting Corporation to pull plug on FM radio
swissinfo.ch
swissinfo.ch
>...The term was first used after George Hartzog, the seventh director of the National Park Service, closed popular national parks such as the Washington Monument and Grand Canyon National Park for two days a week in 1969.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument_syndrome#:....
Serafe will only let you waive the fee if everyone in your household is both deaf and blind, or you are on certain social benefits (can't afford it), or you are a diplomat.
Everyone else has to pay CHF335/year, and good luck getting a partial refund if you leave the country (we didn't).
https://www.serafe.ch/en/exemption-from-the-fee/basic-princi...
Not Swiss here(it's the same kind of tax in Austria), and I hate useless taxes that incompetent governments shove down our throats, but I support the idea of citizens having an independent, impartial and transparent publicly funded media, and unfortunately that costs money to fund and maintain either through direct or indirect taxes, but either way you'll still be paying for it one way or another from the state budget.
We can't have a functioning democracy expecting citizens to make informed decisions on important things like Brexit, when their only sources of information are controlled by big-ad-tech like Meta or Google and Warren Buffet.
The only question remaining is the traditional "who watches the watchmen", as in what assurance do we have that the publicly funded media is truly unbiased and independent and not paddling its own biases and political agendas.
if its controlled by the state by definition it cant be neutral.
People in Switzerland still trust their state and institutions: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/democracy/why-people-in-switzer...
Maybe Switzerland has a better system but in most countries state funded media ends up being the voice of the state
On paper this makes it so that the state media is reporting directly to the paying citizens similar to a national Patreon, in practice IMO, it's still state control but with extra steps and middlemen designed to give the illusion of independence.
At least here in Austria I can't put too much faith in the state media since they don't cover any major corruption scandals of the parties in power, but mostly report on neutral stuff like whatever new laws passed and that the sloth family at the local zoo had a baby.
Choose one. /s
That's not quite right. You don't need a TV License if you're in possession of a TV.
You do, however, require one if you watch TV as it is being broadcast, utilise BBC iPlayer (their online catch-up service), or consume TV via satellite / terrestrial receiver equipment[0].
Consuming catch-up TV (e.g. My5, Channel 4, etc.) does not require the purchase of a TV License, nor does Netflix or YouTube.
The "Enforcement Officers" (who pay you a visit if you cancel, and try to intimidate you) tend to play into misconceptions regarding how the law works, so it's best to be equipped with knowledge before cancelling to avoid being tricked.
[1] https://netzpolitik.org/2018/danke-helmut-kohl-kabelfernsehe...
In my country DAB has station dedicated to playing classical music, jazz, youth-oriented pop music, current affairs, religion, rock music - not to mention dozens of local radio stations!
FM allows for only a very limited number of stations, which means it ends up in a bidding war between the large commercial stations - who in turn have to play fairly generic music to attract a large number of listeners. With DAB there's plenty of space left over for niche stations, as they can transmit essentially for free.
Especially licensing. Even on commercial radio you can regularly catch them playing "10 second" clips of different songs, to stay within fair use, that they wish to play but cannot legally do so. The college stations are more brazen about it and will flat out tell you that they can't play different jobs for legal reasons.
Indeed, commercial radio does have to appeal to an audience, but that audience would unquestionably enjoy other music – at least within the same genre. But playing it for them opens up a huge legal minefield. It is a lot easier to pick a small catalog that you can properly audit and disallow anything beyond that.
I don’t think Switzerland is crowded enough to have 10x more radio stations sustainably.
Also there's often going to be a lot of interference from abroad, 100Mhz signals while VHF can carry far under the right conditions.
All the pirate stations back in the day were ultra high power AM stations operating out of Mexico.
So the way to use it more effectively is to build more transmitter stations at a lower power, but at that point you're competing with cellular networks which have access to probably 10x the spectrum and already have a load of infra built out to support that.
For example, if you used FM for LTE/NR it would be completely congested 100% with even just signalling overhead of the time apart from very rural areas (as suddenly everyone's phone that has no service because of being out of the reach of any mast suddenly gets it - perhaps because of thick walls etc).
Similar if it was used for WiFi - the transmit power would have to be so low to avoid interference it would have no benefit over current spectrum (2.4GHz doesn't work in most places for this reason).
And rural areas already have starlink - which has 2GHz of downlink frequency alone (plus they can add more somewhat easily, which is impossible for FM).
Around here, following the digital switchover, most people could no longer receive all stations, but which ones depended on exactly where they were. And those that can be received are of exceedingly low quality. Very heavily compressed and relatively low resolution. But each station now provides multiple streams.
On the positive side, that did help me finally stop watching TV entirely!
Rather a streaming service with an open protocol, and then users use whatever they want to listen. Fine if there's also an app for those who want, but I don't want to install an app to listen to a specific audio stream. I have VLC and it's enough.
The other problem is people without cellular data and/or cellular phone, and those with limited data plans. But if most radio stations stay also on FM, that's basically a non-issue.
"But muh branding!!!" - Every marketer and UX designer everywhere
However, since December 2020 the EU mandates that all new cars equipped with a radio must be able to receive DAB+. In H2 2019 only 22% of cars sold in Germany were equipped with a DAB+-capable radio, in H2 202 this already rose to 80%.[0]
So yeah, in 2015 they'd indeed lose around 80% of listeners. But it's a completely different story in 2024, as anyone with a car bought in the last 5 years would support it. Give it another 5, and the switchover might be possible without anyone really noticing.
As for Switzerland? 99% of cars sold in 2019 were already equipped with DAB+, so they probably mandated it even earlier.
[0]: https://www.worlddab.org/system/news/documents/000/012/060/o...
I could also understand why such an action would be taken if that meant that they could pack more stations in the same spectrum, but considering that Switzerland is a relatively small country, so is there really a market? Even if considering multiple languages per niche.
I guess a case could be made for power savings by virtue of (assuming local topography allows) lower power transmitters or by multiplexing various stations on the same transmitter.
On a personal level, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about all forms of analog broadcasting being slowly phased out. The tinkerer in me likes the idea of being capable of constructing an information receiving device in an almost "survivalist" manner, but if this trend continues and analog FM really goes the way of the dodo, then I surmise that DAB (or whichever local flavor is chosen) will become easily and cheaply available, which makes my gut feeling a moot point anyway.
I don't know, I just don't like the idea of needing a processor to receive broadcast audio, and I can't quite put my finger on why.
There's an article from back then here: https://radio.no/2017/01/norway-makes-radio-history/
Switzerland an Norway both have a very moutaineous terrain.
Does that make it more difficult to fit many channels?
they definitely will do that though. spectrum is valuable, they're not just going to let unallocated spectrum sit there unused.
I agree. I'm concerned the more advanced broadcast technology is the easier it is to control and or shut down.
A broadcast service can be shut down for various reasons, political, economic,etc. or because of some unforeseen disaster, natural or human-made. Whatever the reason the population is then cut off from news and information. The simpler the technology the easier it is to restart or resurrect.
Whilst Europe has largely dispensed with AM radio, we're seeing this debate playing out in the US over AM radio in cars. And now we're seeing this with FM, and Switzerland isn't the first.
Let's look at this holistically for a moment. AM radio is easy to establish and it works well—witness both local and shortwave services in the 20th Century. An AM receiver can be as simple as a tuned circuit and diode (a crystal set). FM is a little more complex but mono FM is nevertheless very easy to get going. Similarly, an FM receiver can be as simple as a single valve or transistor circuit configured as a superregenerative† detector (I've used one to listen to FM over a 100 miles from the transmitter, they can be extraordinarily sensitive given their simplicity).
This simplicity and ease of establishment just isn't possible with DAB. DAB requires advanced electronics, ICs etc. that cannot be improvised without high tech production.
It seems to me these debates over the closure of AM and FM services are being conducted without the public's interest and national security in mind.
__
† https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_circuit
https://www.qsl.net/l/lu7did/docs/QRPp/Receptor%20Regenerati...
I really hate that engineers, regulators, and businesspeople managed to work together to make something simple and reliable less reliable but more "modern".
If it's optimal, the quality of a digital link will be pretty well perfect up until that cutoff (but no link is truly optimal). DAB's design placed emphasis on more channels rather than longer range, so the point at which DAB cuts out will likely be before the point that FM has degraded to unintelligibly. In theory there can be a region where FM has degraded but DAB is still holding up, but in the name of more channels this region is probably small.
You'd think that this would be a good scenario for 'hierarchical modulation':
> Hierarchical modulation is particularly used to mitigate the cliff effect in digital television broadcast, particularly mobile TV, by providing a (lower quality) fallback signal in case of weak signals, allowing graceful degradation instead of complete signal loss. It has been widely proven and included in various standards, such as DVB-T, MediaFLO, UMB (Ultra Mobile Broadband, a new 3.5th generation mobile network standard developed by 3GPP2), and is under study for DVB-H.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_modulation
Combine that with scalable audio quality:
If you’re listening to something on your phone through a data plan, it’s not DAB, but an unrelated streaming service.
Even though older iPhone baseband chips had FM receivers, you’d still need break it out and deal with the antenna setup, with the approach taken by others requiring wired headset and shenanigans in the headphone port. That’s more BOM, and user resistance to wireless headphones or newer models whose baseband chips cut the feature.
It used to be a somewhat common feature in phones (including smartphones from other brands), but it usually had quite “eh” reception. And with transitions to DAB, the feature becomes unusable without DAB decoders which I’m sure someone is claiming royalties for.
Cellphones used to include AM/FM radios.
Personally I think it might be useful to have them for public service uses: perhaps cell network are more robust than a few years ago, but there are still instances when they could be (are) overwhelmed, and a broadcast-only system could be useful in major emergency events.
Smartphones a lot* of antennas, but most target 1/10th the wavelength of FM radio.
A cell network doing a one-way broadcast text message to all clients is a solved problem. And honestly, I greatly prefer this way to push out an emergency message than assume I'm tuned to a radio station or broadcast TV, two things I'm rarely doing. I'm way more likely to be listening or watching local or streaming media instead of watching broadcast TV. Or even just not be doing any of that at all. Lots of people I know wouldn't even be able to tune into a broadcast TV or FM radio station outside of their cars.
Especially in the car! I can’t make out voices on FM at all. But AM, easy.
There are no technical impediments to high fidelity audio because of amplitude modulation. In the past the big limitation was the bandwidth of intermediate frequency (IF) amplifiers in the receivers which were typically tuned for maximum gain and not flat audio band response. The transmitters have flat response out to the legal limits. Radio stations have a monitor receiver that has proper IF audio response and the sound of those are very good.
Not that I care too much, as I basically only do on demand media these days.
It also has lower fidelity.
It sounds like they reduced bitrate by pitch-shifting down prior to transmission, and then pitch-shifting back up at playback. Everything just has this metallic ring to it: When I tried the classical station, at first I thought there was bells in the piece they were playing until I realized it was a compression artifact. When I listen to talk, I keep hearing a bell/ringing over everyone's voice.
I know a lot of the newer codecs also sound great (for the car) at low bitrates, so I don't want to go and blame "quantity over quality."
What is so forward about DAB ?
In theory it sounds excelent. In practice it sounds like crap due to using the lowest bitrate possible.
Digital TV and radio were simply the first casualties of the modern advertising economy.
This is not Switzerland, but the BBC apparently uses 192 kbps only at Radio 3 (their classical music station), while other BBC stations are either 128 kbps or 64 kbps only.
You can read the industry's claims as to why DRM is needed in broadcast (to ensure authenticity mainly), but you'll have to read between the lines that it's to make broadcast TV impossible to record, ads impossible to skip, and (probably eventually) sweet talk regulators into allowing pay-per-view or paid access "premium" channels, probably leeching off the bandwidth (and quality) of the "free-to-air" channels they are legally a required to broadcast to maintain their licenses.
https://cordcuttersnews.com/the-team-behind-nextgen-atsc-3-0...
It's useless in the car, in my experience on-and-off the last 10 years or so. Too many blackspots (in the UK)
DAB+ uses HE-AACv2 which is much better suited to the bitrates that the UK has chosen to use, and in addition has much better error correction, reducing the "bubbling mud" effect that UK DAB listeners are all to familiar with.
The sad truth is that FM actually works very well, and can have extremely good audio quality, but capitalism must ruin all good things. The death of the BBC, as now seems inevitable, will be the final shame.
DAB+ came out in other countries in the mid 00s and was adopted in the UK in 2016 and now we have over 180 DAB+ stations. But notably missing the BBC.
* Recognized that DAB was not capable enough given the number of stations required, and waited.
or:
* Cut back on the number of stations so that the remaining ones could be broadcast at an acceptable quality.
Digital connections have a terrible failure model, it either works perfectly or not at all, with little in between.
In modern datacenters or in radio broadcasting equipment, you can still find VGA connectors or LCD displays using that signal.
I thought there was an agreement that we would wait a little longer but for what ever reason the SRG thinks they know better.
They stop the analog signal, not the whole "air transmission":
>>Those who listen to the radio now largely do so via digital audio broadcasting (DAB+) or the internet
It's literately the first sentence.
Optimisation, efficiency and monoculture versus redundancy, resilience and diversity.
Combine this with cheap and ubiquitous 4G Internet, the introduction of mass audio and podcast streaming services, and the prevalence of smart-home devices at loss-leader prices like the Google Home or Amazon Alexa, and the writing was on the wall from the get-go.
In short, the National Broadcaster (RTE) were latecomers to DAB to the point where it was no longer deemed necessary by the time it was implemented. Case in point was when RTÉ shut down the DAB infrastructure, but didnt shutter the digital services populating it: RTÉ Gold/2XM/Pulse continue as online streaming services.
The majority of people - even my parents - are now far more tuned in to the likes of Audible and Spotify. When they want e.g. Death Notices or GAA they use a streaming app or the native webcast from the FM station Website.
Synchronous single-infrastructure dependent Audio Streaming is now a use-case in search of a problem for the average consumer, outside of certain niches like Naval/Aviation traffic.
I personally always found that so depressing. But I was very much out of sync there. Due to circumstances I ended up in rural Ireland for a while but I'm a very cosmopolitan person so that didn't work out at all. I need the world, big cities, things to explore. This kind of phenomenon was a reminder of the small size of the community I lived in which depressed me deeply :) I do understand it has value to local people who enjoy life that way.
It was a very unique way of using radio though.
(Another way in which this system showed its cracks during the pandemic: presumably because of the flimsiness of the formal system, the CSO bases its population estimates on modelling. This lead to, at one point, the government reporting that 107% of the oldest age cohort had been vaccinated, because the CSO models significantly underestimated how many very old people were still alive.)
https://www.heise.de/news/UKW-Radio-Schleswig-Holstein-schal...
But I still listen to podcasts and streaming from RTS/SRF. They do great world news coverage from a kind of detached perspective. Gotta know French or German, for next 6mo until it becomes commonplace to have live transvocalized podcasts.
Personally I think they should expand community radio wholesale if national broadcasters cannot be arsed.
In the US it'd just be gobbled up by another corporate interest; no way that'd go to the amateur service.
This wholesale move away from simple, analogue radio infrastructure (AM/FM/SW radio) is a disaster waiting to happen in the event of a major regional/global catastrophe.
Most amateur organisations would not even think about trying to experiment with WBFM anyway - too obsessed with ultra-narrow digital modes.
I'm not a fan of DAB+. The range is less than FM, and the compression artifacts are a real treat. Why not just go back to good ol' analog AM, then? Oh wait, it's been deemed too "rustic" and "unmodern".
FM was a great way to listen to the radio, don't you think? You could actually hear the music without it sounding like a tin can on a string. And don't even get me started on the so-called "HD Radio" nonsense in the States. It's just a way to cram more commercials down our throats and make our radios more expensive.
What's with this obsession with "spectrum efficiency" and "bandwidth management"? Can't we just have a simple, reliable way to listen to the radio without it sounding like it's coming from a broken tape deck?
I still remember when LW was around. That was real broadcasting. None of this fancy-schmancy digital stuff. Just pure, raw signal strength. You could pick it up with a pair of cans and a piece of twine, no problem.
So, yeah, Switzerland, go ahead and pull the plug on FM. See if I care. I'll just use my trusty AM radio and enjoy the beautiful, analog sound of static.