The curious case of the vanishing AM transmitter
You’ve probably seen the story of “thieves steal 200 foot AM transmitter mast”. WJLX-AM in Jasper AL was surprised to see that their mast had suddenly disappeared! Here’s the police report! “But how did nobody notice?” was the obvious question. “Did they get no calls at all from their audience?” I’ve done a little digging.
That picture above is not an AM transmitter, obvs
I listened a bit to Ben Fordham on 2GB.
Being honest, 2GB runs the best-sounding news bulletin I’ve heard in a while. Pacy, varied, well-resourced. And balanced. The bulletins, at least.
The BBC has announced a set of new national radio stations. They’ll be on DAB+ in the UK; there’s no mention of their other stations switching to DAB+ as well, but you’d assume that some would have to, to make room. My money’s on 1-5 remaining in “old” DAB, and the rest switching.
Alternately - Radio 4 Extra will have closed, freeing 80kbit/s. You’d assume that World Service will move to DAB+ (it’s currently 64kbit/s mono, and you could deliver that happily in 32kbit/s mono in DAB+). That gives 112kbit/s spare; if they can find another 16, then that’s four 32kbit/s stereo channels.
I feel for the good folks at Boom Radio, who have spent a long time showing that there is an audience for their older-than-Radio-2 music, only for the BBC to muscle in to their turf. I hope that bit goes to a public interest test.
Audience - not traffic. A good quote from a blog post I read; which got me wondering whether we’re aiming for traffic, not audience, for radio station websites.
Fans of Hungarian radio, rejoice.
This website says, in Hungarian…
“On May 17, 2011, after eight years, Regijocafe went silent. Some of us missed it, so we brought back what we could. It doesn’t renew, it doesn’t develop, it doesn’t change.”
It’s an almost complete copy of the entire output of this radio station. What fun.
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Coming up…
- The Norwegian Local Radio Association’s national conference, Oslo (Mar 15)
- Radiodays Europe, Munich (Mar 17-19)
- (in London, Mar 21)
- Evolutions by Podcast Movement, Los Angeles (Mar 26-29)
- The Podcast Show, London (May 22-23)
- (in New York, Monday May 27)
- Momentum 24, Orlando (May 29-31)
- Radiodays North America, Toronto (Jun 3-4)
- Radiodays Asia, Kuala Lumpur (Sep 2-4)
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