“On cars, the move to include digital radio as standard in new vehicles has continued over the last year. Around 14% of new vehicles have DAB as standard, up from 4% a year ago.”
Within hours, this news was misinterpreted by one online news source as Vaizey having said:
"Forty per cent of cars have DAB [Digital Audio Broadcasting] radios as standard now, up from just four per cent a year ago.”
From ‘14% of new cars’ to ‘40% of all cars’ in a stroke of a keyboard! No wonder the article went on to assert that “the key driver to the take-up of the [DAB] technology looks like it will come from the car industry as manufacturers start to fit digital radios as standard.”
How wrong can this statement be? Fewer than 1% of vehicles on the road currently have a DAB radio. That proportion is not going to increase quickly, even by 2013 or 2015, as the government wants it to. Rather than being “the key driver” for DAB radio take-up, cars will become THE major sticking point for digital radio switchover.
“Jane [Humphreys, Department for Culture, Media & Sport] said earlier ‘around 2015’ for a digital radio switchover. The automotive industry has made it very, very clear, since the process began, that it needs certainty. We’ve got 2013 [as the date for a government decision on switchover] and we think we’re working towards a 2015 switchover date. With respect, Jane, I can already see tomorrow’s headlines that DCMS says ‘digital switchover delayed from 2015’ because you used the phrase ‘around 2015’. That implies a delay. It may be what potentially happens in the market – it may be 2016, it might be a bit later than that – but, for the moment, from an automotive industry perspective, every time there’s a suggestion that 2015 has stopped being the aspirational date – or might stop being an aspirational date – all that happens is [that] the automotive industry, or parts of it, is given another opportunity to say ‘it ain’t going to happen, forget all about it’ and we will end up with the bigger problem of converting vehicles already in the parc to digital, because people will just say ‘if DCMS can’t give us certainty’ – and I accept that, at the moment, you can’t – but if DCMS are saying ‘around 2015’ instead of ‘in 2015’, it reduces the opportunity for SMMT to keep telling its members there’s a deadline, and it’s ‘this’. So please could we have a little bit of caution, from an automotive industry perspective, in (particularly) government references to switchover dates.”
Jane Humpreys: “Thank you, Bob, though I think I’m right in saying that the Minister has never said ‘it will be in 2015’. He too has said that it will be in terms of … that is the target to which we are working, but what is the principal objective is that we have to meet the criteria that have been set out and we have a piece of legislation – unless I’m much mistaken – that says there will be a minimum of two years’ notice. So….”
John Mottram, DCMS: “That’s right. I’m aware of three Daily Mail articles that suggest it’s seven years, two years, five years’ delay depending upon the date, so I think in terms of coverage and it being delayed, I think that delay is already out there. But to Jane’s point, I think the Action Plan and Ed [Vaizey]’s words make it clear that it’s a consumer-led approach. The industry target date is 2015 – we’ve never shifted from that – but that decision is based on the criteria….”
At that point, the meeting was abruptly closed. What had been scheduled to be merely another ‘tick the government box’ faux consultation meeting had suddenly started to spin out of control. The natives had started to get restless. It was time to turn them out onto the street again.
3 comments:
Why on earth is this still going on? Surely it must be clear to everyone involved that consumers are perfectly happy with FM or internet streaming and neither need or want DAB.
I just wish the minister would show the same courage that his government did in its first days when it killed off the equally unloved and unwanted Home Information Packs.
Aside from all the technical problems and difficulties of DAB transmission and reception, little publicity has appeared concerning the vastly increased power consumption of receivers. especially portables, and the consequent cost of batteries and associated cost to the environment. All this at a time when energy bills are set to rocket generally.
I agree with the other comments. I'm highly dubious about DAB in car radios.
1. Will it work all the time, not just in population centres?
2. Are there really going to be sufficient channels to justify having DAB? Half the national BBC channels are already on FM, the others are repeats, minority interest and the admittedly good BBC world service. But do I really want a new radio for one channel?
3. DAB offers up to 20 channels that might or might not work on my journey. A month ago I was driving in Canada listening to the satellite radio - with well over a 100 channels. It worked in the mountains when the FM signals faded. Should we not be thinking about this technology?
4. Would my DAB car radio work in France when I travel there next month, or are they on a different system?
5. Are manufacturers really going to install separate radios for one market? If so how much will the additional cost be? I'd suspect quite substantial as radios are now built into wider information systems rather than being standalone units.
6. What about cars such as my present one - a Prius with an integrated music system, I can't see me buying a new car just to get a new radio.
In short isn't this all a little too late. I bought two DAB radios around eight years ago, but times have moved on, I have satellite in the living room, itunes in the study and wunderadio on the iphone. DAB looks increasingly irrelevant in this environment.
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