BBC Radio Humberside has announced that it will be carrying full commentary on football matches involving all three teams in its area - Hull City , Scunthorpe United and Grimsby - this season. However, in order to do that, the station will sometimes split its frequencies three ways, and followers of Grimsby will have to get a DAB radio to hear commentary on their team’s match when the two other sides are playing simultaneously.
Radio Humberside Editor Derek McGill said: “There is excellent DAB digital radio coverage in Grimsby so Mariners fans will need to prepare by making sure they have access to a DAB radio for the occasions when we will be splitting our frequencies to cover three simultaneous games.”
Similarly, BBC Bristol will, for the first time, cover the home games of Bristol City and Bristol Rovers on DAB. Away games will be on 94.9 FM, with regular programmes continuing on mediumwave 1548 kHz and the other FM frequencies.
Andy Sennitt comments: This seems to be a move by the BBC to give an extra incentive to some listeners to purchase a DAB radio. It does, however, mean that fans of clubs who live just a little way outside the DAB coverage area may be unable to listen to the commentary on their favourite team. It will be interesting to see how these arrangements work out.
on Aug 10th, 2009 at 09:08
Interesting comment Andy there are people who may not be able to get DAB coverage of their local BBC station or who have patchy and or poor reception of their BBC local station on DAB;it just goes to how poor this format really is. Regular vanilla flavoured DAB is inadequate and always has been from the start;if DAB+ was started and used from the outset, this would ensure better reception/better audio quality and with the better signal, much better error correction in areas of bad/poor reception and for stations that would never be get onto DAB+ because of cost reasons etc, it should be complemented by the second option of Digital Radio Mondiale Plus simulcast transmission on the FM band 87-108Mhz to give a quality option to those broadcasters who would never get onto DAB+ for those reasons I mention, which would benefit the non-DAB+ broadcasters and listeners giving CD quality stereo and mono sound, improved reception and a slightly more reliable means of digital transmission. Also DAB+ and DRM+ simulcasting of regional and national broadcasters would also give the means for suitable equipped car radios to switch from one to the other should reception prove troublesome on either format. Therefore it\’s a win-win situation and nobody loses out whatsoever.
on Aug 10th, 2009 at 20:39
If listeners cannot receive the DAB service outside of its intended coverage area,
then tuff. It is not for there reception anyway.
The problem is that the spectrum planning engineers have made such a mess of the
transmitter planning, that there are vast areas were reception of DAB is poor within
its intended coverage area. So it is to be hoped Grimsby has a powerful transmitter
serving the town, else reception will be ruined by constant bubbling and break up.
on Aug 11th, 2009 at 06:50
But BBC Local Radio Stations should serve the whole of their counties on DAB;here in NW England you can just about receive BBC Radio Lancashire on DAB over a good bit of the county, just one or two mediocre bits over the East Lancs hills and up in the North and towards the South West of the area which is to be expected because the transmitter spectrum planning hasn’t been done right.
Low tx power of DAB transmitters/local topography and terrain and line of sight ie DAB doesn’t penetrate built-up areas as well as FM, also have a say on the quality and reception of signal you get, there was a report in working lunch on BBC2 UK comparing FM and DAB reception in-car of BBC local and national radio stations, with the FM showing better results and the DAB prone to bubbling and break up(you could easily see the clear winner here!), FM walked all over the DAB signal hands down.
Until tx powers for DAB are increased and the transmitters and their coverage areas are planned much better, this will ALWAYS happen with DAB. DAB+ is a BIG step of ahead of rubbish vanilla flavoured DAB with its inefficient MP2 coding, poor error correction in bad reception areas and sound quality and improves on this rubbish that broadcasters/tx providers etc have settled on with a better standard of transmission with much better sound quality, a much improved standard of reception and better error protection correction enabling a more listenable signal in areas of difficult or poor reception, and Digital Radio Mondiale Plus(DRM+) on the 87-108Mhz FM band is a next second best option for stations who cannot afford to get on DAB+ and would probably never get onto DAB+ due to technical reasons etc, by giving them an option to go digital at much less cost with superior CD quality mono and stereo radio delivery and improved reception.
Simulcasting of local and national stations in DAB+ and DRM+ provides the best of both worlds particularly from the view of in-car listening;if reception goes bad on DAB+ then a suitable equipped DRM+/DAB+ car stereo would retune automatically to the same station on DRM+ saving fiddly retuning.
on Nov 23rd, 2009 at 09:59
This is a great idea, I\’ll be tuning in for more games
on Mar 9th, 2010 at 20:10
I HAVE A DAB RADIO BUT UNABLE TO GET RADIO HUMBERSIDE ON IT FOR THE GRIMSBY-CREWE GAME TUESDAY NIGHT?COULD YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN WHY?
on Jun 8th, 2010 at 10:26
I feel that those Rovers and City fans in the rural areas of Somerset,wiltshire and Gloucestershire who listen to Rovers and City AWAY matches on 94:9 and DAB are being sold short by BBC Bristol.
The 94:9 and DAB frequencey struggle to get the signal beyond the Bristol boundaries.
I just wish the BBC Bristol would use the 1548 for the away Bristols team radio commentary.
on Jan 6th, 2011 at 01:20
I agree with anthony for a bit but we all know that it\’s never that easy for some. Because it would really cost a lot. though I feel your needs as a sports fan.