Is it time to bring back pirate radio?
Tony Blackburn
The Digital Switchover for TV appears to be in full swing and generally it appears to the consensus that this is a good thing. That’s another debate, but more concerning to me is the momentum being gained by the Radio Switchover proposed for 2015. It seems a long way off, but it is only five and half years away. If government has its way then at some point in 2015 all car radios, analogue hifi radios, the radio you have in your kitchen, your clock radio and so on, will become scrap.
Let’s just take the car radios. There are more than 35 million cars in the UK, with slightly smaller numbers in most European countries and slightly more in Germany. There’s about 200 million in the USA. In 99.9% of these cars there are analogue radios and for the foreseeable future car manufacturers will continue to pump out cars, vans and trucks with analogue radios.
This is partly to do with the cost of changing their current models, but mostly because even the DAB radios being produced today will be obsolete in a few years when the AAC+ audio codec stations take over from the current MP2 stations. The current crop of DAB radios will not be able to receive the new stations. Moreover, the old stations will be switched off completely in 7-8 years time. The new technology will become outdated in record time, if you excuse the pun. So, even if you buy a DAB radio to replace your analogue radio, you’ll have to buy another one about two years after the digital switch over.
No wonder DAB is being referred to as Dead And Buried… Kenwood have pulled out of the DAB market, Clarion and Blaupunkt have admitted the standard has been slow to catch on. Will they be next? If anymore manufacturers pull out, then DAB will disappear without a trace. What about all of us who have invested heavily in the new standard? I have three DAB radios – one in the kitchen, another in my bedroom and a third – a hifi separate in my living room. Well, like my expensive car radio, they will become scrap.
If ever there was a need for pirate broadcasters it is now. I think we should all start buying up the old BBC equipment and setting up our own off shore pirate radio stations. There will be a huge market for it. Radio Caroline FM, AM and DAB may well be the new sound of the airwaves, perhaps we can even revive Tony Blackburn’s career. Well maybe not.
