UK Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell has said that she will be reviewing digital radio adoption with the view to switching off the analogue service. The date for the switch-off is expected to come later this year. The statement came in the foreword to new report published by the Digital Radio Development Bureau.
The analogue TV signal is due to be switched off in 2010, but the government is yet to give any indication of the date that it expects to switch off the analogue radio signal.
Digital radios have enjoyed a strong growth in the UK, with sales up 444% this year – 600,000 have been sold this year already, and prices are set to fall to around £50 for some sets, with the development of new chips.
Many listeners are also enjoying radio through their internet connections, and indeed some sources estimate that, rather than a dying past-time, radio listening is set to grow by 10% over the next five years.
The Independent on the analogue radio switch off
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Fraser Lovatt
Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people.Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon.At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC.After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video.These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?
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