The figure is number of individual listeners. Those listeners will most likely be listening to multiple stations but they are not the total of every station.
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A problem with SFN’s for ABC/SBS is that Australia has only assigned two channels for the ABC and SBS on DAB+, so there might be problems around some borders, e.g. around the Victorian/NSW/SA border and broken Hill. If Victoria uses one channel and NSW uses another, then SA will have to use one or the other, probably NSW’s. Then there’s Broken Hill which is in NSW but on SA time. Also, the ACT would probably have to use the same channel as Victoria, so hopefully they are far enough apart.
That said, having ABC local radio on a local multiplex would be a good idea. However, somebody pointed out in an earlier post that the ABC&SBS would have to pay for 2/9 of a multiplex, and they don’t want to do that.
I don’t think they want people to know how much listening is on DAB+ compared to AM&FM. Many years ago they reported more info on DAB+ ratings, and it was possible to make a rough guess, but then they just published less info so that this was no longer possible.
In the UK, they publish these figures. More listening is indeed on DAB than online, but online share is going up while DAB and AM/FM shares are going down, and IMHO online will beat AM/FM in a few years time and DAB a few years after that.
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Maybe it’s time to combine some markets where the traditional patterns are silly, or there’s not enough revenue and listeners to maintain the existing boundary’s. Another factor they should consider is the typical listeners geographic behaviour.
Bundaberg and Maryborough RA1 is a very good example.
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I would I also add Wollongong / Nowra to the list too.
If a dab+ multiplex was ever to be setup easy just too do one.
Wave is entitled to put Power fm, 2ST , and KiX country on the multiplex with Wave fm provided they don’t exceed their spectrum. Capital Radio does it in Canberra with Snow fm.
So one merged DAB for Wollongong and Nowra would be most useful use of spectrum if DAB+ eve gets off the ground there.
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I agree. Maryborough and Bundaberg is a great example. A common TV transmitter and market for a start. The locals have always seen the region as a single “Wide Bay” and move between the 3 main centres for business, medical and entertainment. Even when FM came out the markets should have amalgamated. ABC Radio already comes from the one transmitter.
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I think this one is harder because Wollongong is much bigger than Nowra, i98 will feel disadvantaged since its not gaining as much in the way of potential extra audience or revenue as 2ST or Power would. ARN would also need to sell one station.
Bundaberg and Maryborough is potentially easier since they are more comparable in population… but having Childers sort of in bstween could complicate this one if TXs were to move to Mt Goonaneman.
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It could work like this if the two markets were to be combined….
91.7 2ST moves to Knights Hill at 40KW OD
2ST moves to Warrawong in house with Wave fm.
ARN sells Power fm which is sold to Win / i98.
Power fm increases power to 40KW to the north. Rhema CC reduced power to match News Radio CC so both stations can work on the same frequency.
KiIX goes to dab+
The current Wollongong/ Nowra licence areas is a bit of a joke with massive overspill into each other from Knights Hill, and ARN running the same playlists on both Power and Wave fm.
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Good idea.
As an alternative, they could bring in the idea of national commercial broadcasters like in the UK. In fact, you could reserve 2/9 of the national DAB+ multiplexes for such national commercial broadcasters, and in return, the ABC&SBS would get 2/9 of a local DAB+ multiplex where they could put their local stations, AFL or NRL, etc.
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I couldn’t find anywhere where this may have been asked, but does anyone know the future in terms of the remaining (community) stations on AM/FM and the potential timeframe if the end goal is to get all the stations on DAB+? Is there a plan for a fourth mux on Channel 9D or similar in the works?
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AFAIK
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there are no plans to move any stations off AM/FM to DAB+ only.
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There are no plans to allocate any additional multiplexes in capital cities in the channel range 8A-9D as the ones that haven’t already been allocated are set aside for commercial/community or ABC/SBS DAB+ multiplexes in regional areas should stations decide to enable DAB+ in a regional area.
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they could bring in the idea of national commercial broadcasters like in the UK
The UK’s relatively easy in that it does have proper national broadcasting, in terms of the BBC, Digital One and SDL multiplexes. (Pedant’s note: yes, yes, Digital One is on a different frequency in Scotland for reasons).
In Australia, though, many of the “national” services run in time delay and/or contain statewide programming, like Radio National as one example. I have to ask my smart speaker for “Radio National Queensland” which makes my head hurt slightly, otherwise I get news from Sydney, and nobody wants news from Sydney. Unless you’re from Sydney.
The ideal would be if there was a statewide frequency allocation for a “statewide DAB+” multiplex. I think that you could do that with four frequencies - say 10A (WA,QLD,TAS,ACT), 10B (NT,NSW), 10C (SA), 10D (VIC). That would have the benefit of freeing up 9C for more local coverage (and, potentially, that means local ABC stations using that, along with community stations coming off the commercial muxes?). You’d see that working perhaps for some commercial broadcasters who wanted statewide coverage.
By the way… interesting note in the most recent CRA press release: in the survey period, “nearly 4.2 million people listened to commercial radio via a DAB+ radio and nearly 3.6 million listened via live streaming”. DAB+ still much bigger than online.
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If you value news read well, you won’t want the Queensland bulletins. Besides long term staff Michael Bausch, Matt Eaton and a couple more, the Brisbane radio newsroom is full of staff in need of more experience of pronunciation and word understanding along with lisps that make for difficult listening.
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Agreed. By national commercial broadcasters I meant that they’d be able to broadcast nationally, even if the programs are different in different places. I agree that any national multiplexes would have to be state based or at least tmezone based (e.g. one for south-east Australia, one for Queensland, one for SA, one for NT and one for WA). However, given that stations like Radio National have state based news, they would have to be state based.
You could implement statewide multiplexes with only three frequencies, e.g.:
10A: Victoria, Queensland, WA, Broken Hill
10B: NSW, NT, Tas
10C: SA, ACT
And here’s the interesting part. You could reuse one or both of the other two frequencies for extra local multiplexes in a capital city or another part of the state/territory if it’s far enough from other states/territories, e.g. in the above plan, Sydney could use 10A and probably also 10C but Brisbane would only be able to reuse 10C.
You might even be able to do it with two frequencies:
10A: Victoria, ACT, Qld, Broken Hill
10B: NSW, Tasmania, SA, NT, WA
Although SA borders with NT, WA and NSW, the border areas are sparsely populated, so if there’s any interference problems you could probably find other frequencies to use instead.
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A slightly randomly geeky question. Is anyone here able to make an ETI recording of (ideally) the Brisbane 1 commercial mux, but failing that, any of the cap city commercial muxes? A few minutes long? james@crid.land is where you’ll find me - I have a confused engineer in the UK who has questions.
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Hello James, the WorldDAB website has some Australian cap city ETI recording samples here: https://www.worlddab.org/benefit/eti-library.pdf
Looks like you neeed to be a member though…
EDIT: I’ve recorded the Perth mux. Will email you.
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My contact in the UK responds, after looking at the Perth commercial multiplex…
- It certainly is an interesting multiplex. The services MMM80s, 1080 6iX Digital, My Perth Digital, KIX Country, Niche Radio, 6PR Perth and NTS don’t have any DLS!
- Nova 937 doesn’t have DLS, but does have a slideshow slide.
- The services Noongar Radio, CurtinDG, VA Radio Perth, RTRFM 92.1, 6EBA World Radio, Capital Digital, Inspire Digital and Sonshine are all operating at EEP4A. Meanwhile 6PR Perth and NTS are EEP2A. No comment about error protection, just an observation.
- My other observation is that the services Nova 937 and Smooth FM have really high PAD rates… 8.27kbps on a 48kbps service (by way of comparison MMM Country is 0.27kbps).
- The services CurtinDG, VA Radio Perth, RTRFM 92.1, 6EVA World Radio, Capital Digital, Inspire Digital and Sonshine have their language set as Unknown. To be clear, it’s not that no language flag is being transmitted, these services are actually transmitting a the flag for “Unknown”. The other stations on the mux are either English or just not signalled at all.
- No service linking is being broadcast in any form (i.e. DAB-DAB / DAB-FM / DAB-AM)
- No linking set to other multiplexes - although I assume given Australia’s unique geography this would be pointless?
Now - from my point of view: the transmission of “unknown” as a language appears to be a community radio thing, since all those services are community licences (?); and I really don’t quite get why radio stations would not support DLS when so many radio receivers deal with DLS very well. Slideshow - less so.
The lack of service linking is interesting - there really should be some DAB-FM service linking being broadcast, you’d have thought.
All interesting stuff, anyway.
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Probably solely because of 6EBA, since that’s the only one that isn’t solely English?
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Service linking isn’t allowed in Australia, as part of the Australian DAB+ standards from what I understand, CRA decided right back at the start when they took DAB & redesigned it into DAB+ that service linking wouldn’t be used here, there was a very good reason for it, but I can’t remember what it was now, it’s probably out there in some documentation available freely on the internet, but I don’t have time to go looking.
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The references to the publicly available docs on PIs and SIds seem to refer to briefing note 77 as a further explanation of why, but that is not available publicly… but the DAB+ SId note (BN075) does say this:
Given the issues encountered in Melbourne [*] the industry considered whether to support or not support implicit linking between DAB and FM services. The industry position has been, since launch in 2009, to not support implicit linking for the following reasons:
- The current use of FM PI codes is not related to the current DAB SId codes;
- There is no way for AM services to link to simulcast DAB services. DAB to AM switching can be signalled in FIG 0/6 but once a receiver has switched to AM there is no method to switch back to DAB when that signal returns as AM broadcasters do not use AMSS [AM Signalling System, a DRM extension similar to RDS];
- Previously most automotive receivers had single tuners so once they switched to an analogue service they could not detect whether the DAB signal had returned. Today most DAB receivers have dual RF receivers;
- The broadcasters did not want to change existing PI codes as that would disadvantage listeners (e.g. requiring them to reset preset buttons or rescan the receiver);
- There is no equivalent service on analogue for the 30 plus DAB+ digital-only stations in each market to link to.
[*] “The issues encountered in Melbourne” related to how implicit linking and the non-standardisation of FM PIs caused receivers to flick between the Austereo commercial stations and ABC’s ones. In the Australian DAB+ spec ABC SIds start with “3” and specifically those in Melbourne start with “310x” - which matched the 3101 and 3105 that Fox and MMM were initially using as FM PIs.
In a way, limiting the FM PIs as they are now to use (say in VIC) 3880->3999 and 3000->3079 [and only A-F used as overlap] - and blocking these out from use in the DAB SId spec - is a way to ensure that both can theoretically never be the same, at least in the same market.
Not that they wouldn’t be completely unused; “300x” could still be used for the ABC’s DAB+ stations in Sydney (even though they are now meant to be reserved) but the FM stations would be using “2xxx” if they stick to the FM spec, so less of an immediate problem.
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This is such a shit excuse - we dont want to adopt a technical standard that could make it easier for listeners to listen to our content because it might have a one-off and simple-to-fix inconvenience to our listeners
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