A DAB set: digital radio stations are struggling to survive
It's all my fault. Well, maybe not all of it, but I'm feeling mighty guilty. In recent weeks, as the death knell of DAB radio has been sounded following the closure of stations like Oneword, theJazz and Planet Rock, I've been keeping pretty quiet. This is partly because I find talk of platforms and multiplexes and licenses all a bit, well, befuddling in relation to DAB, but also because I know I am part of the problem.
Confession time: I use DAB mostly to listen to Radio 4. Rather more experimental listening - including, I have to concede, stations that broadcast on the DAB platform - I tend to tune into via the internet.
There were giddy, optimistic days after I bought my first DAB set during which I whiled away many an hour twiddling through the fancy new options (the World Service during the day in Glasgow where I was living at the time! Five Live without it sounding like it was broadcasting from down a well! Oneword, which was really rather good). But then, after broadband came along, and life began to revolve more around the PC and especially the laptop, I found myself listening to radio online rather more than I experimented with DAB. And then podcasts toddled along, looking mighty user-friendly and portable too.
Internet radio means geography is no barrier for listening. I spend at least one morning a week tuning into a breakfast show in another part of the UK; that's how I listened to Lincolnshire waking up last week after a bumpy night thanks to the earthquake. I like listening online to quirky US radio in the evenings, and Resonance FM for its sustained kooky brilliance any time of day. I use the PC to listen to Midlands 103, the station in the bit of Ireland my mum's from, which redefines local radio to micro-local and features family names we recognise. In the best way possible, it's all a bit Father Ted.
And then I hear DAB is in trouble again, and I start frantically listening to 6Music and Five Live Extra via the kitchen radio, the bedside radio and the stereo in the lounge, all kitted out with DAB and all ordinarily tuned to Radio 4 (or, in the kitchen, it might be Radio 2 because the nation's favourite suits cooking). These gestures never last long. I'm soon back listening to The Archers - how long is the rubbish, unconvincing and contrived Matt and Lilian storyline going to rumble on for? - on my DAB set. Is it just me? Am I alone to blame? Has DAB changed your listening world? And, most pressingly of all, would you miss it if it went?
