Yes, there is evidence of the DAB+ listening numbers.
You vastly overestimate the sound quality aspect of the discussion and incorrectly state it’s “unpopular” because of it. That’s simply not true. People are listening because of the variety of formats and stations offered. For the most part, most stations are broadcasting DAB+ with a sound that is approaching FM quality and is vastly superior to AM - that is actually all the public is expecting. I’ve never heard a single person in the community complain about the sound quality on DAB+.
Australians wouldn’t pay for satellite radio. Most regional towns have local ABC plus Classic and Triple J and one or two commercial stations plus a community station at a bare minimum.
It only works in America because there is zero localism (thanks to the Reagan revolution and his deregulation agenda) and whatever they call local radio in the regional and rural towns is terrible (and mostly religion and country formats) compared to their friends in the UK and Australia, and even in NZ which have better options on the dial.
Yes something like XM might have worked before the age of mobile internet, but we’ve definitely missed that boat too. Imagine trying to get satellite radio receivers into cars given what a struggle it was to get DAB into cars.
America is an outlier and I can’t think of any other country (in the developed world) where terrestrial radio is so sh*t that they need satellite radio as a substitute.
Thankfully, Australia is not in that category, even though our regional and rural friends don’t have a large amount of choice on the dial, compared with metro folk, they still have a good public broadcaster and some good local community stations to provide alternatives to commercial radio, in those small towns where it’s a monopoly.
Also, it helps to have some overlap between different rural towns , so there is at least some choice, when driving around all day in the car.
Not so sure it’s quite that dire, except in the less populated great plains or west. Most mid sized towns and cities have a reasonable variety of formats (albeit mostly networked and not really local). As you say there’s also a lot of overspill even in small communities in the midwest. Most smaller towns at least have a decent rock/classic rock station, AC, CHR, classic hits and the obligatory country station (or three!). The US regulator has also been very liberal with providing FM translators for AM stations which generally act as a quasi FM conversion for a lot of AM stations. Many of them even ID with the FM frequencies with the AM in the fine print.
I don’t think it was so much the US “needed” satellite radio, but in true “land of the free” style it was just another commercial enterprise that got legs.
It was likely demand from millions of listeners who were tired of the rabble on FM and luring Howard Stern over, which made it viable (2 providers: Sirius and XM, before the merger) Again, there is no demand for it here.
No, it was because it was seen as a commercial opportunity.
And if you actually go to the US, you’ll find there is a reasonable variety of formats just about everywhere. Perhaps you should take off your rose coloured glasses about Australian radio in the bush. Often there are only two commercial stations, one frequently on AM with talk. Both will be networked most of the time. And ABC and community radio in places. Along with religion.
But go beyond the more populated areas and the choice is either dire or, if far enough away from a regional centre, non existent. I have never found that even in the sparsely populated backblocks of the US.
As I mentioned, the reason VAST is encrypted was because of rights holders and networks pushing and pulling, same would’ve happened with satellite radio.
There’s too much fragmentation between networks which all have their own interests at heart (was mentioned a while back that Grant wanted to deliberately induce interference in Geelong so listeners couldn’t listen to the Melbourne FM stations) to make any sort of ‘open’ system viable bar ABC, SBS and perhaps the preachers who just want to spread their message as wide as they can…
Many regional stations are networked for a big part of the day. Even when they are not networked, stations in a particular network would play mostly the same songs as each other at mostly the same time, give or take an extra commercial break here or there, or a different song here or there.
Australia and the US excluding Alaska are a similar size, however, the US has a much larger population, which would make it easier to support a satellite radio service compared to here.
There’s really no way around it, it’s a significantly worse experience at the rates of compression we now have. Even 128kbps would still be much worse, and the fact regulation to that standard is a pie-in-the-sky dream of mine at the moment says it all
40-64 kbps being similar to FM quality per ACMA is analogous with Brian’s “approaching FM quality” comment.
You know and I know that DAB sounds awful at low bitrates. But when most of the audience is listening on crappy speakers, it’s a moot point for most consumers.
Does the US have a thriving community radio sector like Australia does? No. Particularly regional and rural US.
Does the US have a strong public broadcaster presence in radio, like Australia and the UK does? No.
Yes, commercial radio here is mostly networked, I’m not disagreeing with that, however there are local community radio and local ABC stations, Triple J and Classic FM as well as News Radio and RN. America does not have this.
You don’t understand the difference between having a strong public broadcaster and community sector , and not having one. The quality of radio in the US is atrocious. You can’t even get local news in a lot of places, as their “news” is basically just what comes out of Washington or state-based news is Democrats vs Republicans.
But that still means that all those 32kbps stations are “worse than FM”, and, as I said, this is all bullshit anyway because FM is closer to 300kbps!! Even ACMA’s completely fake scale STILL has most DAB+ sounding “worse than FM”
I already said this but, if it’s bullshit and nobody cares, why is trying to mislead people into thinking it sounds better always the first thing that marketing of DAB+ leads with?
They haven’t used that as a way of promoting DAB+ for years and years LoL. They actually “lead with” the fact there’s more stations and more variety of formats! I haven’t heard any promotion of DAB+ which mentions “superior sound quality” unless it’s an AM station like 4BH promoting DAB+ as better sounding than AM - which it is.
To be fair, the US does have a lot of public stations - non-profit stations roughly equivalent to what the ABC offers. Sometimes they’re owned by the state or a uni, other times they’re independent non-profits. NPR, PRX and APM produce networked programming, and stations produce their own local programming too. Usually the ‘main’ station is news/talk, and the HD2 and HD3 stations offer classic and another music format. Sometimes they’ll relay BBC or another rolling news service.
On the community radio side, they do have college stations and ‘educational’ stations. Not the same as what we have here.
Then commercially, there’s a lot of small commercial operators who may own 1-10 stations each. The country has so many groups like this. Again, nothing like Australia’s consolidated media ownership landscape.
It’s a very different place to Australia and hard to draw meaningful comparisons.
“Exceptional sound quality” is a subjective description and does not imply it’s better than FM as you so constantly state.
Comparing a 16 kbps DAB broadcast with AM is also ridiculous when mainstream AM stations like 4BH, Cruise, 3MP etc are broadcasting at much higher rates that are comparable or approaching FM quality.
