Enda O’Kane is a former RTE engineer on TV transmitters and latterly a Reception and Investigations Representative. He is active in the research group Irish Overseas Broadcasting and Emigrant Advice Network, having a focus on improving radio links to Irish emigrants in the digital age.
In a recently published proposal, Mr O’Kane puts the case for RTÉ to invest in DRM shortwave transmitters. According to Mr O’Kane:
“An Irish radio service into the heart of Europe would help fuel our tourism industry and would serve to call back Irish emigrants, as well as inciting [sic] visits from those foreign to our country…. it would provide a badly needed travel information service to our business community that is otherwise unavailable. The Internet cannot provide a listening experience to people on the move. Neither is the RTÉ Astra service receivable by motorists, or accessible in hotels and
apartments across the EU.”
Mr O’Kane continues: “A digital radio service across Europe would give complete independence, enabling broadcasters to further Irish interests in both programming and advertising. RTÉ already owns the critical broadcast infrastructure. For a mere €4 million, the former Athlone mediumwave site could be adapted to digital shortwave and so provide a service to our citizens across the EU.”
Andy Sennitt comments: I find some of Mr O’Kane’s statements puzzling. For example “World band short wave radio is seeing a renaissance internationally. A survey in 1999 revealed that 97% of regular business travellers listen to international short wave.” I don’t recall seeing any such survey, but even supposing it was correct, the intervening eight years have seen a massive shift away from shortwave listening in Europe. I would be interested to know what readers make of the proposal, which contains other information that appears to be some years out of date.
on Jul 4th, 2007 at 10:51
This is puzzling as I don’t know of any vehicle that currently puts a shorwave radio into their cars let alone a DRM shortwave receiver!
I drove a Vauxhall Nova many years ago that had a shorwave radio installed but the idea didn’t catch on. So shortwave for a “listening experience on the move” seems a non starter.
on Jul 4th, 2007 at 11:11
Almost exactly the same claims are mentioned in a press release from 2002:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2002_Dec_30/ai_95905952:
Recent surveys revealed that in 1999, 97% of regular business travelers listened to international shortwave.” The increase in the shortwave audience, says Merlin, is “spelt out dramatically by just one factory in China that is frantically producing 300,000 shortwave radio sets per month just to support demand. Grundig in America report growth each year on their sales of shortwave receivers. There are at least 600 million shortwave radio sets worldwide.”
But I’m having trouble finding the research apparently being quoted. The closest I could find was from the VT communications website. (They appear to be the parent company of Merlin)
http://www.vtplc.com/files/296.pdf:
“…in 1999, 97% of
regular business travellers listened to
international short wave.”
The .pdf is dated December 2000
But I agree with Andy, even if it was true then, it’s difficult to imagine it being true now.
As an Irish citizen living in Europe, I would have nothing against listening to Irish radio on DRM in Europe. It seems a pity though that Mr. O’Kane undermines his argument with apparently old information. Apart from the example Andy cited, Mr. O’Kane also mentions having to “pay a subscription,to receive RTE Radio from WorldSpace.” WorldSpace no longer sells subscriptions in Europe.
Mr O’Kane states also “An Irish radio service into the heart of Europe would help fuel our tourism industry and would serve to call back Irish emigrants, as well as inciting visits from those foreign to our
country. As already stated, it would provide a badly needed travel information service to our business community”
I think this is wishful thinking on his part. (It’s also not a good sentence. What’s the difference between ” fuel our tourism industry” and “inciting visits from those foreign to our country.”?)
I think the strongest argument in the piece is that license payers don’t have easy access to Irish radio when abroad, so in some sense they’re paying for something they can’t receive. But whether that really means that those people not in Ireland but paying license fees really want to hear Irish radio is a different matter. (One could suggest that they stay in the country if it was so very important.)
If I recall correctly there was a suggestion to change the law in Ireland in February to allow RTE (the public service broadcaster in Ireland) to broadcast television directly to the UK. It would be interesting to know if RTE is under any legal requirement to service audiences outside of Ireland.
on Jul 4th, 2007 at 11:34
Yes, VT Communications took over Merlin several years ago. The name Merlin is officially not used any more, though colleagues (out of habit) still refer to it as such. It looks as if the proposal was also written several years ago, but the inclusion of references to DRM on 252 kHz shows that it must have been updated, at least partly, in the past year. In any event, it has just been added as a news item on the official DRM website, which is how I found it.
on Jul 4th, 2007 at 13:16
“This is puzzling as I don’t know of any vehicle that currently puts a shorwave radio into their cars let alone a DRM shortwave receiver!”
The Mercedes S class has a radio fitted which receives short wave. It would not be a big problem to incorporate DRM into a car radio, a module already exists. DRM on long wave looks promising for offering reliable wide area coverage for cars, unlike short wave there would be no problem with ionospheric disturbances. You could achieve signal coverage over a large part of the UK and Ireland with a single transmitter. Which broadcaster is first going to take up the idea though?
on Jul 4th, 2007 at 16:13
Longwave is susceptible to electrical interference though and 252 has interference on the channel from Algeria at night. Contrary to the article the problems of fading, interference from other stations and appliances has not been solved, you either get the DRM signal perfectly or if the interference/fading gets too much the signal drops out though you can drop the bit rate to make the signal more robust.
There’s so many errors in this article I can’t see why the DRM consortium chooses to link to it.
on Jul 4th, 2007 at 19:45
Proposal is only two pdf pages altho numbered 42 and 43! I am also puzzled as to why it would be preferable to make it DRM at this point in DRM`s (lack of) development with very few receivers, and a lot of justifiable hostility from SW listeners who find it wiping out analog signals, instead of just a new analog SW service from Ireland. It appears O`Kane has bought into DRM hype LS&B.
Altho at a corner of Europe, whence lower frequency analog SW would offer good coverage of most of the continent due to skip distances, it would still be advisable to use transmitters a bit further away and a bit further south aimed back at Europe. There is no law (is there?) that one must SW broadcast only from one`s own country, when it is often advantageous to transmit from elsewhere, as RTÉ used to realise at least with its sports specials.
on Jul 4th, 2007 at 19:57
International broadcasters do swap airtime on their transmission sites regularly. So it would seem doing that in DRM would be possible.
on Jul 4th, 2007 at 21:22
Personally, any enthusiasm I might have had for DRM has been diminished considerably by the consortium’s apparent inability to stimulate the delivery of useful receivers to market. So–yes–I, too, am a bit confused by his remarks. As a regular listener to RTE’s limited broadcasts to North America via the World Radio Network on Sirius Satellite Radio, there’s no argument at this end against bringing more of RTE’s excellent radio programming to more overseas and expatriate listeners. The only question concerns which delivery platforms would best accomplish this worthy objective. At this juncture unfortunately, DRM would appear to be the least useful among the available options.
on Jul 6th, 2007 at 01:49
Then all of you will really enjoy the night time splatter from IBOC digital AM on most of your 50 KW stations in the near future.
And the affordable IBOC radio..that you can take to the beach or the mountains…uh vaporware
on Jul 9th, 2007 at 09:40
Problem with DRM-SW is that poor reception in the ionosphere and solar flare activity causes dropouts and dead-air(I’ve heard this on R.Luxembourg’s 7295kHz DRM-SW test transmissions before they were dropped in March and it spoils the listening experience). LW and MW DRM does offer a more acceptable stable reception, and as you say Mike, only suffers at night,but suffers the tyranny of distance on MW for distance if tx power is low and is limited in coverage range in daylight. Also there’s nothing on the UK and European market in terms of DRM radios yet for people to listen to DRM radio stations. Bit of a dead duck at the present time if you ask me!
on Jul 9th, 2007 at 10:45
Also I don’t know where he got the figures that shortwave audience is increasing and is going thru a renaissance;many stations have abandoned SW or are reducing their commitments (or indeed have reduced their commitments)to SW with fewer broadcast hours on it in favour of other platforms like DRM and other methods of carriage.
on Jul 10th, 2007 at 09:09
As there are very few (if any) DRM sets on sale in stores in the UK and Europe, how will RTE get a big audience in Europe on its proposed DRM-LW relay of RTE Europe via LW252kHz and its proposed DRM-SW service from Athlone in ROI? It’s NO good launching a DRM service unless there DRM sets available to listen to it. I favour a pan-European satellite service delivered via Eutelsat’s Hot Bird satellites which have a massive pan-European reach and beyond and are receivable across much of continental Europe with the correct size dish antennae and reception equipment;you can get it for peanuts and the equipment is easily available in most retail outlets(whereas DRM sets aren’t)because the the manufacturers are dragging their feet over launch/release dates of their DRM radios to the market. If RTE go ahead with DRM tx across Europe when the sets aren’t there and are readily available to listen to it,this will be one big waste of cash and effort for nothing.
on Jul 10th, 2007 at 14:50
“This is puzzling as I don’t know of any vehicle that currently puts a shorwave radio into their cars let alone a DRM shortwave receiver!”
The Mercedes S class has a radio fitted which receives short wave. This is 49m only and not to be called “shortwave†in a serious way …
Expansion of this is not really thought about by car manufacturers as it costs money to improve EMC problems by all the electronics in modern cars.
Suitable antennas are also a unresolved problem
on Jul 12th, 2007 at 12:23
Yeah, Bernie. Car radios featuring SW covering only the 49m band are a bit of a waste of time. If you\’re going to have a SW car radio for cars then it should ideally be full band coverage from 1-30000kHz for any serious use;many stations use different frequencies up and down the bands and often change frequencies and target areas through the day. A nice idea would be to have a SW full coverage/MW/LW/FM/DAB in-car stereo with a DRM mode button on the set that will select DRM and make the radio jump into DRM on the SW/MW/LW bands to pick up the DRM transmissions. A normal amplified roof mounted antenna inclined at 75deg off vertical and away from the engine on cars should prove suitable for all band reception.
on Aug 6th, 2007 at 08:12
The coverage map only a potential coverage area including western,central,northern and southern Europe;it ignores lithuania and baltics right up to russia and ignores the northern most tip of Scandinavia. A truly pan-european coverage would take in the Canaries right up to Russia and from the UK and Northern Western and Central Europe incl the whole of Scandinavia right down to Southern and South Eastern Europe including Turkey Cyprus and Greece so everyone across Europe can easily receive and tune into the broadcasts.
on Jun 6th, 2009 at 18:21
“Death of Digital Radio Mondiale in 2008 as well?”
“From both formal and informal discussions among participants at the HFCC, it is now clear that the proposed DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale) system, that would have converted analogue Shortwave to digital, FM like quality reception would hardly be implemented if ever on a large scale, beyond the current experimental stage.”
http://tinyurl.com/b6z5lr