BBC Response to DCMS Review of Digital Radio

The BBC have responded to the DCMS review of Digital Radio.

For once I won't berate the BBC Digital Radio department for their heavy use of spin, because they've finally come out and requested extra national DAB spectrum publicly (page 34 (of 52) of the pdf file):

"We recommend that additional spectrum be used to supply increased capacity for audio quality enhancements to UK-wide services provided by the BBC and commercial radio"

Unfortunately, the commercial radio groups are dead against the BBC receiving any more capacity for whatever purpose, so the BBC will have to fight tooth and nail to acquire any more capacity, because Ofcom, in their usual infinite wisdom, might deem the audio quality of the BBC stations on DAB to be adequate as they are, because they already adhere to Ofcom's Notes of Guidance (the rules that the commercial radio stations must adhere to). And when the Chairman and one of the General Directors of the Commercial Radio Companies Association (CRCA) are David Elstein and Ralph Bernard (Exec Chairman of GWR, and new Exec Chairman of Capital-GWR), respectively, who aren't the BBC's biggest supporters it's ever had, then you can expect to see extremely bitter responses from the CRCA on the issue of the BBC gaining more national DAB capacity, and toys being thrown from prams if they get some.

One thing these commercial radio people always seem to neglect, however, is the fact that without the BBC's DAB TV advertising campaigns, DAB would not have taken off at all. 

I will just say this: if the BBC do not manage to acquire a substantial amount of additional national DAB capacity then all the spin in the world won't alter the fact that it was the BBC's actions that led to 98% of all stereo stations in the UK to use the grossly insufficient 128kbps bit rate, and the right thing to do for those responsible for these actions would be to resign.

For example, it was undoubtedly because the BBC decided to transmit all of their music stations apart from Radio 3 at a bit rate of 128kbps that this lowered the audio quality benchmark for the commercial radio groups to follow, and they inevitably descended to the same level. But it was never necessary for the BBC only to transmit Radio 3 at a bit rate greater than 128kbps, and it has been their snobbery and stubbornness that has stopped them from allocating capacity more fairly. Despite the very popular mis-conception, classical music does not require a higher bit rate than popular music, and because Radios 1 and 2 have a combined share of listening of 24.7% compared to Radio 3's share of listening of just 1.1%, then using 160kbps for Radios 1, 2 and 3 would be far fairer than the current situation that sees Radio 3 with a 50% higher bit rate than Radios 1 and 2. This is possible now, and it is only arrogance in the extreme that has stopped this from being implemented already. Other changes that could be made at the same time would be to change BBC7 to 96kbps joint stereo using the low sampling frequency (LSF) mode. None of these changes are ideal, and I don't want to take anything away from people, but there simply isn't any conceivable justification for using a 50% higher bit rate for a station that has a share of listening that is 22 times smaller than that of stations using the lower bit rate, and Radio 3 listeners can always receive it at 192kbps via Freeview and digital satellite.

Proposed Changes to BBC DAB Multiplex Configuration

* Radio 5 Sports Extra is a part-time station, and usually off-air, hence 0 kbps.

As well as Radio 3 being a casualty in the proposed multiplex configuration, the BBC data services would have their bandwidth significantly reduced, but given that such a tiny percentage of DAB-owners can receive these services then it is sensible to reduce their bandwidth until more capacity is acquired.

The above changes are the least the BBC should do to alleviate the current problems with audio quality on DAB -- not doing so only proves that they don't care about audio quality on DAB, despite what they might say.

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