National DAS licence for Trafficmaster

Ofcom have announced that Trafficmaster plc have been granted a DAS (Digital Additional Services) licence for use on the national DAB multiplex.

HCJB Discontinues SSB

HCJB The Voice of the Andes have announced that they are discontinuing their 25950kHz single sideband (ssb) transmissions.

For 20 years, HCJB has been one of the few international broadcasters transmitting on ssb. The signal was often reliably receivable in many parts of the world, even in poor band conditions, despite its relatively low power of just 1kW.

Community Radio Station to Close

London community radio station TGR Sound, broadcasting to the Bexley, Dartford, Thamesmead and Woolwich areas, will cease broadcasting at 1pm on Sunday 22 June.

A statement published on the TGR Sound website describes the financial conditions which have led to the closure:-

It is with much regret we have to announce, that as of Sunday 22nd of June, your local Community Radio Station, 103.7 FM TGR Sound will cease broadcasting.

Since its launch in 2004, the station has provided over 300 community groups with support and free publicity for their events and services, trained in excess of 5,000 people and forged partnerships with 200 organisations. This has all been achieved by the hard work and dedication of a team of mainly volunteers.

103.7FM TGR Sound was well regarded by OFCOM and had become as one of the foremost community radio stations and possibly one of the only stations that would have been in a position to offer ‘Live’ broadcasting from 6.00am to Midnight, seven days a week had it been able to continue.

However despite the efforts of our members to bring in advertising and sponsorship from the local councils and both local and national companies, it has proved an impossible task in an increasingly difficult and competitive environment.

Although regular revenue from training and hosting festivals existed, it is not sufficient to cover the total costs of running an FM Radio Station and therefore we became increasingly dependant on grants and funding to survive and pay for the cost of rent, electricity and other essential services. These forms of funding by their very nature cannot be guaranteed and a succession of rejected applications have left 103.7 FM TGR Sound with no major source of income for the remainder of this year.

We would like to thank everyone for all their hard-work and involvement – not only the volunteers but the community groups, organisations and individuals who helped to make 103.7 FM TGR Sound the number one listened to local radio station across Bexley, Dartford, Thamesmead and Woolwich.

Virgin Radio Sale Agreed

In 2000 the UK-wide AM station Virgin Radio was bought for £225m by Scottish Media Group.

At the beginning of June, The Times of India media group offered SMG £53m for the station.

SMG have confirmed the sale of the station, an EGM earlier this morning having agreed that the sale will be completed by June 30.

The station will be managed by UK based radio group Absolute Radio.

Awards for Scottish Radio

Scottish radio stations featured in the New York Festivals Radio Broadcasting Awards this year.

Clyde 1’s Superscoreboard football show took gold in the Sports Commentary/Analysis category along with  bronze in the Best Sports Coverage category.

In the Ongoing News Story category, ‘Going for Gold’, Radio Clyde’s coverage of Glasgow’s successful bid to host the 2014 Commonwealth Games,  took silver.

And in the Music Special category, ‘Made in Scotland’, Clyde 2’s tribute to Scottish Music, received a bronze award.

It was gold also for Forth 2’s Darran Adam who received his award in the Best Ongoing News Story category for the station’s coverage of the 2007 Scottish Parliament elections.

Radio Borders

STUART CAMERON will take over the four hour Sunday breakfast show on Radio Borders on July 6th.

It is hoped that a full country music programme  will follow by the end of the year.

Radio Borders was announced as Britain’s number one station this year in terms of having the highest audience share.

“It’s been a long time since country music formed part of the output on Britain’s leading station, and I’m quietly confident that this could change in the near future,” said Stuart, winner of the Country Music Association’s Overseas Country Music Broadcaster Award in 2002.

3G iPhone available from July 11th

O2 in the UK will stock the new Apple 3G iPhone or under £100 from July 11th

The phone will be available for free on certain O2 consumer and business tariffs and also available for pay-as-you-go customers. Existing iPhone customers will be given an early upgrade offer to switch to the new model.

The 8GB 3G iPhone will cost just £99 on a new £30 per month tariff and the existing £35 per month tariff. Consumers choosing either the £45 or £75 per month tariffs will get the 8GB 3G iPhone for free.

The 16GB 3G iPhone will cost £159 on the £30 and £35 tariffs, £59 on the £45 tariff and it will be free on the £75 tariff.

The new 3G iPhone still does not carry the capability to receive terrestrial radio transmissions, whether analogue or digital.

Otherwise, the 3G iPhone combines all the revolutionary features of iPhone and adds the faster 3G network capability – improving the potential to receive online radio streaming.

It also boasts built-in GPS for expanded location based mobile services, and iPhone 2.0 software which includes support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync. Hundreds of third party applications now become possible with the recently released iPhone SDK.

Positive Results From DRM+ Tests on FM

Kaiserslautern, Germany

Positive tests results using the DRM+ standard for a radio station broadcasting on FM were unveiled at an international symposium at the end of May.

Throughout March, April and May 2008, the University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern broadcast its experimental radio station across the southwest German city in digital on 87.6 MHz using DRM+ in order to test this extended version of the DRM digital radio standard.

Germany’s Federal Network Agency, the University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern and the German
State Media Authority of Rhineland-Palatinate carried out extensive field tests to validate the trial.

DRM+ extends the regular DRM standard, which is the universal, openly standardised, digital
radio system for the radio frequencies below 30MHz (short-wave, medium-wave and long-wave)
by allowing FM stations in the 87.5 MHz to 108 MHz frequency range to broadcast in digital.

Mr Lindsay Cornell, the Technical Committee Chairman for the DRM Consortium who spoke at
the symposium, says: “these tests demonstrate that DRM+ provides clear added value for the
listener by offering not only an uninterrupted service for both portable and mobile reception but
also excellent audio quality. The DRM Consortium applauds the work undertaken in
Kaiserslautern which goes a long way to show that DRM+ has great market potential.”

Mr Cornell went on to thank Prof. Dr. Andreas Steil from the University of Applied Sciences
Kaiserslautern and Mr Joachim Lehnert, Head Engineer from the German State Media Authority
of Rhineland-Palatinate for their significant input into the tests.

The University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern expects to receive a new licence to continue
DRM+ test broadcasts from the German Federal Network Agency following this successful first
test phase.

Visit www.drm-radio-kl.eu for further information on the trial and the project.

Bulgarian National Radio begins DRM trials

Bulgarian National Radio has begun a trial DRM digital broadcasts for listeners in Central and Western Europe.

According to the DRM Consortium, the trial will run for six months.

DRM schedules

Frequency 11.900MHz

• 09.00-12.00 Monday to Thursday
• 06.00-12.00 Friday to Sunday on 11,900 kHz

Frequency 9.7MHz

• 13.00 to 16.00 Monday to Thursday

All transmissions are beamed 306 degrees, with 20kW power.