Just before the weekend a story broke about the real posibility of the BBC axing two of it’s niche digital only radio stations, the result; a passionate backlash driven by social media users calling for the stations BBC 6Music and the Asian Network to be saved. I would argue that this is the perfect time to stand up and fight for the future of offline digital radio. The eroding of station choice seems to have caused the kind of backlash that broadcasting Radio 3 in mono at 96kbps could never have achieved.

You can save 6 Music and thus Digital Radio Switchover by

• Taking a look at the station website and seeing if it’s your thing?
• Adding a twibbon to your twitter avatar
• Joining the Facebook group
• Signing the Petition
• Complaining online to the BBC
• Complaining online to the Audience Council
• Writing to your MP
• Writing to The House of Lords Digital Switchover Committee
• Asking your friends to buy a “DAB+ upgradable radio” if in the market for a radio

Why axing 6Music could kill DAB (and DAB+) radio sales!
Of course we have to ask why even bother buying a digital radio if there are no new stations that can only be listened to on digital, a lot of people on the Save 6 Music Facebook group have said the station was the only reason they brought a digital radio. This next point is a huge warning that should alarm the likes of PURE who make most of the digital radios on sale in the UK. Why kill a station such as 6Music that appeals to people most likely to buy a digital radio, while keeping a station such as 1Xtra, which attracts an audience never likely to buy a digital radio because they’ve got the iPlayer on their Playstation. This story is FULL of own goals by the BBC.

A lot of people on the Save 6 Music Facebook group have said the station was the only reason they brought a digital radio.

Why is it happening?
The BBC have been told by the future incoming government which seems to be of the blue variety that they are too big, and present barriers to commercial competition. Mainly this criticism is focused on online services and revolves around local newspapers trying to launch online video services for some reason, I would suggest sarcastically this is nothing to do with Rupert Murdoch or backing the incoming government in the dumbing down of the BBC to the kind of quality content on offer from commercial broadcasters. Yeah and I’m the pope ……. true story!

Ed Vaizey Shadow Cultural Secretary, who last week welcomed the BBC’s package of cuts, has now changed his tune, calling for the digital radio station 6 Music to be saved.

Then again, it looks like some HQ buildings went massively over budget, and not forgetting the BBC are expected to shoulder the cost of £20m worth of DAB transmitters for an undetermined amount of time, 10 years would be £200m.

Why is 6Music so important?
BBC 6 Music, began as a solid brand for quality, left-field and alternative music, which also aimed to and has broken virtually unknown artists into the industry. It backs niche but highly popular music festivals like Summer Sundae in Leicester which has gone on with the large niche broadcasting reach of 6Music to become loved as “Glastonburys grandson”. 6Music filled a gap and this is what digital radio was about, niches, choice and quality.

6Music filled a gap and this is what digital radio was about, niches

But the failure of DAB to grow as a platform (its growth has recently declined) has lead to marginal audiences that are so low in number that the stations, even national stations cannot be viable. Indeed the iPlayer may deliver more listeners to radio, through its listen again services, which of course can’t be carried on DAB. Stations come and go on DAB, it seems to be the crematorium of radio, a place where stations go to die. However as demonstrated by this backlash 6Music has a loyal listener base and many people seem to agree it is a one of its kind station in the cultural vacum that is our media landscape at the moment. It’s axing has become more than just the loss of a station, it’s a loss of a safe heaven away from the drivel aimed at Radio One’s audience and more importantly is exactly what we don’t need to be happening if we want to push more listeners to digital radio.

Loosing prestige stations on the eve of switchover?
In one word, madness. On one hand you’ve got the government scrambling to legislate through the Digital Economy Bill, a switchover to digital radio ASAP and on the other hand you’ve got broadcasters falling over themselves to run on DAB faster than savers ran on Northern Rock in 2007. Indeed some broadcasters like 4Digital, haven’t even got to the stage of opening current accounts with DAB Digital Radio because it’s not a viable technical platform for 4Digitals service features, not withstanding a lack of listener numbers and an install base in homes, cars and workplaces needed to attract advertising revenue.

DAB is eating stations for lunch while Government are waving a magic wond to switch to digital by 2015! Madness!

Why saving 6Music could help move us to DAB+
We now have STRONG interest in digital radio, let’s use it to admit DAB is crap and that we are going to push on with DAB+, which is “HD for Radio”. I would at this point begin wondering if in fact people do want to kill DAB digital radio on purpose, particulary the people who forced it down our throats too early on, but if we are to move to digital why take away reasons for people to do so? Oh yeah this is true too; DAB is THE reason why broadcasting radio is now so expensive, with dual transmission costs to stay on FM and DAB! It’s not expensive because of FM, and the BBC got themselves into this mess by backing DAB so for now would it be better to do away with digital alltogther? No!

Could we have a “Red Button for Radio”?
Square one might not be a bad place to go back to, we could push on with digital switchover but only if we keep stations like 6Music and in the background as PURE are doing, create “HD Ready Radios”, ready to take on DAB+ and add features such as surround sound, or 5 channel sports stations, where you can access a commentary menu on the radio and hop between alternative live events on the same station.

Red Button pushed Digital TV forward, what could radio provide on a “magic button”?

The DAB only sets would be useless going forward which means they have no value, thus price points come down for people who want to go digital without the cost and those who don;t want red button features. We could figure out how to get traffic alerts in car DAB+ radios and have a plan to shutdown the DAB network before the BBC have to spend £200m on the remaining 10% national coverage issue, plus tripple transmission on FM, DAB and DAB+ and Freeview, Freesat, Online, Sky and all the rest of it.

What’s next for the 6Music saga?
Tuesday, Mark Thompson is expected to clarify what the hell is going on and make proposals to the BBC Trust. If they decide to pull those stations from Digital Radio because the Conservatives think they are too big (don’t read too much into that), then we could see a disorderly destruction of demand for digital radios. I might add though that the Shadow Cultural Secetary never knew what 6Music was until the voters became unhappy, so can they be trusted? Whereas the House of Lords are litterally and you can see this for yourself online, they are banging their heads against a brick wall with common sense about moving to DAB+. It’s not often you’ll see politicians which such a good grasp of the technical aspects of a digital broadcast platform, but EVEN the Lords know that DAB+ is the future.

6Music could be brought by Absolute Radio and feature adverts, or artists only backed by the stations commercial interests!

Absolute Radio, formally Virgin Radio have expressed an interest in buying 6Music and keeping it branded as 6Music. This could be a good thing if the other option was to see 6Music go silent; Absolute seem to have a good grasp of how to make digital radio work, which is ironic because digital radio was always the BBC’s plaything. Influential people from the music industry have stepped up in defence of 6Music and in favour of keeping it as a vital grass roots of the industry. Whatever happens over the next few weeks, in fact in the wider context, this year could make or break digital radio switch over. There seems to be no money, little understanding and a desire to write it off as a technical and cultural disaster, some that was good while it lasted. OR we could finally see in 2010 finally some concerted action to save radio from the iPlayer! In fact getting rid of the iPlayer live streams could also help drive sales of radio sets.

One final thought, this was the promise of DAB in 1997
How it all looked so good back then, the irony of Broadcasting House in this clip (which has now nearly 1bn spend on refurb) isn’t lost on me and I suspect it wouldn’t be lost on DG Mark Thompson either! Did offline radio kill itself by never advancing faster than online radio?

Jez Nelson and Peter Snow discussing DAB in 1997 on Tomorrows World.

DAB logo on the way out?

My answer would be absolutly, yes, we do need a national radio broadcast system particulary at a local news, traffic and event coverage level. Music radio does seem to be in the domain of online services, as is the nature of the beast of online, but online isn’t as portable as a radio, neither will our mobile networks handle data traffic relating to radio.

Our Digital Radio System Could Become An Embaracement
It’s vital we sort out the fundamental issues with DAB before it’s too late for national broad audience audio broadcasting platform, afterall why spend all that effort to replace FM with something far worse? Not to mention there are far too many digital platforms, to be on all of them is cost prohibative. Everyone seems in favour of one digital platform but nobody can agree that DAB is the way to go, which is a good thing really, but leading to fragmentation and the relentless march of online services which offer content to your liking via Spotify or when you want it, via the iPlayer, which you can only replicate on WiFi Radio.

Radio Overlords
Recently government committees have begun discussing these concerns, I’ve been following closely and have even added my concerns as a consumer/listener in writting to the House of Lords. I want to highlight this issue to my readers because it’s such an important debate which seems to be being mostly ignored in the “Digital Britain” kerfuffle, with a great focus on broadband capacity and controversy around taxing those people who don’t use broadband.

Why Hasn’t Radio Gone Digital Yet?
Well of course we’ve all heard of “DeeAaaaBeee Digital Radio”, originally developed around 1995 and mostly funded, researched and developed by the BBC and widely taken up by early adopters and creative christmas shoppers, its promise was station choice, better sound quality and exciting new features. It was on the face of it very good, but the technology was just too unproven and often failed to deliver on its promise. Unfortunatly, it has been “pimped” as this technical wonder, and because it wasn’t as great as it was made out to be, the interest in DAB dropped off and FM is still the mainstay of radio in the UK. There is widespread concern that is only increasing, about the technical aspects of the DAB system that make it very unsuitable to base our future radio system around, let alone even consider switching off FM. My advice would be to only buy a digital radio that can be upgraded to DAB+ and there’s a very good reason why. Plus why have two logos, if we aren’t thinking of transistioning away from DAB? Stealthy introduction of a nice logo, devoid of any strong emphasis of the underlying technology so may we see “DAB+ Digital Radio”? Unlikely!

In terms of branding; we don’t call Freeview, “DTV-B Digital TV”, we call it Freeview and it’s branded as such, Sky HD isn’t “H.284 MPEG wrapped 16Mbit” it’s SKY HD, Digital Radio should not be branded as DAB if it wants to reclaim a strong reputation in the future. It could be that traditionally radio has needed to market a “frequency” and “band” such as “88-91FM BBC Radio Two” but that isn’t needed in Digital and so “DAB” is really only used because it was new broadcast “band” alongside FM, “MediumWave” and “LongWave”. DAB sucks, even as a brand.

What’s Wrong With DAB? I like it!
Everything is wrong with DAB, the idea is good but the execution is shocking. Aside from the pulling out of the system by companies such as Channel 4, who couldn’t see a viable way of running their new radio services on Digital Radio, which included listen again abilities; which should tell you a lot about the shortcomings of DAB a system designed way before we even knew that broadband was lurking in the dark to scare the little digital radios. The sound quality and signal strength has been shown time and time again to be worse than FM, and if you are looking at getting Surround Sound from Radio 3 on Digital Radio, good luck, I wouldn’t be suprised if it was dropped to mono only, for your kitchen radio, with its one speaker. Station choice has vastly been eroded over the years as, major broadcasters have been scrambbling for FM licenses at end of the FM specturm 100.0 upwards; think Kerrang in the West Midlands, would it have been a sucessful radio station on DAB alone? I would suggest nobody would be listening, if it wern’t on FM.

Yet this wonderful digital technology is the supposed standard on which we are to replace FM with, by 2015!! That’s a lot of FM radios to ditch! Meanwhile the rest of the world is moving away from DAB and looking at DAB+ which offers far better sound and better use of the airwaves, in theory leaving room for surround sound broadcasts or more station choice, more data about what’s playing, additional features yet to be imagined like listen again services over the air. DAB’s main feature of digital radio text, is actually no more advanced than the RDS system that has been around on FM for decades, it’s not better than FM RDS radio text, it’s just that FM radios mainly ignore it.

WiFi radio ready to make all this irrelevant?

I would add that the BBC, who are going to shoulder the cost of this to the tune of upto £20m a year to upgrade transmitters, are far too invested in DAB, to conceed defeat on this matter and move to a better digital platform. They in effect have a vested interest in DAB. Indeed they have been the main advertisers of the platform and what’s worse, even the BBC have stagnated on DAB and focused on “Audio on Demand”, which is now known as the iPlayer which offers more features and better audio quality than DAB Digital Radio, as well as the sound quality of radio on Freeview being better than DAB and Sky TV has better station choice than DAB. We seem to have a problem with DAB do we not?

Recent Committee Meetings
So as we are meant to be seeing digital switchover for radio within the next 5 years, and the industry is at least 10 years behind TV in terms of Digital switchover, it has been taken up by Parliment as a matter of urgency and grave concern. In a recent televised enquiry about “digital switchover” which I watched a lot of time was given to the concerns about radio.

I thought the debate I watched did skirt around the issues with nothing more than a nod of agreement that we have a problem with digital radio. The outgoing Minister for The Creative Industries, seemed to be more interested in taking a position as the Elected Mayor of Birmingham, a position that doesn’t exist and on this performance wouldn’t get my vote. There seemed to be a lack of understanding of the issues and more worryingly the the Creative Minister hinted that DAB+ would be targeted in the UK as a way of listening to radio abroad as they would use a different system to us, so a DAB+ radio would be for the holiday maker or traveller, not a resident in the UK wanting a better radio service.

Why Choose The Outdated DAB System?
There was a great point on this made by Baroness Eccles, with not an exact quote but something similar to this: “why are we basing our future on DAB which is outdated as opposed to starting fresh with DAB+ as rest of world”! Backing up really the stupidness of the situation, which will see the rest of the world use DAB+ and see us shackled to a technology that maybe 40 years old when it’s finally adopted. Though a hint of hope if that a standard use of the DAB+ chip will be seen by the industry, our broadcast system will remain DAB, which is just wrong, we have the oportunity to “go HD” on digital radio, like proper 2 channel audio (imagine that?) and we aren’t taking this opportunity to put in place a fit for purpose system.

Transmitter Costs
Of great concern was the cost and duration of transmitter replacements, which was reported to be in the region of £10m-£20m per year for an undetermined amount of time, of which the BBC was expected to pickup the cost without additional increases in the licence fee.

A Radio Scrappage Scheme?
Briefly the talk of TV was interupted in a comical way by people with no idea what’s going on. A radio scrappage scheme was proposed as a way of junking the perfectly good and numerous FM radios, to trade in and get money off your sparkling hunk of junk known as “DAB Digital Radio”.

The Lords Were In Charge
Overall it did seem that The Lords have a great grasp of the challenges ahead for Digital Radio, the Ministers seemed clueless and there seemed to be more unaswered questions and “stating the bleeding obvious” as my nan would put it, but then again isn’t that all politics summed up? What scares me the most is unlike with the move to Freeview and now Freeview HD, there doesn’t seem to be anyone in charge with the competency needed to move us away from FM, if we even want to ditch FM?

The conclusion was that we don’t need to replace FM right now and looking back at history, Radio 4 still transmits on LW, so there is a lesson there, a platform for radio sticks and is hard to move, which is exactly the reason we should not choose DAB, because my friends it will be around for 50 years and you will grow to hate it when FM is siwtched off (wait are they switching FM off, what is this tom foolery larking about turning FM off, ah you jest!!? Oh wait seriously they are turning FM off? Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!).

There is a great video on the Parliment website, if that’s your thing and you can see for yourself the state of this debate. The digital switchover of television and radio in the United Kingdom – Silverlight Video There are a number of articles like this one writen for consummers about why we should go DAB+.

This is the letter I recieved from the Lords, thanking me for my input into the debate.

Some quotes I found amusing from the historical displays in the Royal Pump Rooms, that’ll perk up this post:

“We note with interest that yet another ‘motor car’ has arrived in Leamington. We are inclined to disregard the rumor-mongers who predict motor vehicles will become commonplace in the future.”

Arriving in Leamington just before midday by the commonplace motor vehicle, I headed into the tea room at the towns art gallery, located in the Pump Rooms, a converted swimming and hydrotherapy pool, recently having celebrated 10 years of renewal as a visitor attraction. Actually I spent a good two and a half hours in there, if you’re ever around Leamington it’s well worth a visit for the information and history conatined there. The swimming pool there was converted into an art gallery and around it is a museum charting the towns history including the decor of the original Turkish bath. Various displays talk of the towns history of medical uses for and health benefits of the spa water, something I found interesting as swimming is a part of my own recovery. As well as that the displays talk of the types wealthy visitors from London and how it became a great tourist destination, offering concerts, walks in the park and shopping, something the town is once again begining to pick up. That’s the reason why I spend time there, it’s just so lovely.

Stunning Trees in Jephson Gardens

From there I headed to Jephson Gardens and again spent a good hour maybe two walking around snapping the various wildlife and general niceness there. The Squirrels again proving how much they like having their photograph taken with these wonderful picture box things.

The wildlife in Jephson Gardens

“Cameras were still new at this time [1789], mystifed by having his picture taken, Boffin said ‘How quickly they draw me’”

The Italian meal that I had booked was at 5, so before that I wanted to do a spot of shopping, failing to buy a shirt I instead found a rare gem staring at me in the musical retail outlet “Head”. The Air France CD, that’s just so rare on the high street! It had started raining the shops were shutting and so after a cup of tea I went to Strada for a slap up Italian, oh my how posh this was! I was seated at a table, the service was excellent and the pizza I had was superb. Looking around I noticed some Lemons, instantly chuckling to myself as Sherri had told me life was just giving me Lemons at the moment. Sure enough!

Lemons and Pizza!

As usual from 3pm-5pm I was in severe need of sleep and after the heavy meal I just had to go back to the car for a snooze after being out and doing all that it really took its toll. On the way to the car I looked at rents, £525 being the very cheapest. What with having the Air France CD I whacked that on and had a soothing hour or so with the music before heading out to The Assembly to see Laura Veirs.

“The Upper Assembly Rooms were situated on the Parade and first opened in 1813. Residents and Visitors would go there for concerts and other social events and entertainment.”

Laura Veirs

Awwwh, she was lovely, being 6 months pregnant too but you couldn’t tell. The seated gig was so cold, the heating hadn’t come on and not even “The Hall of Flames” could warm up the crowd. I love the Assembly, the decor is just so ornate! Soothing gig, most of the new album got a run out, only “Cast A Hook In Me” was played from a previous album. I spotted Dan Whitehouse in the crowd! An early finish allowed me to get back on the Motorway in good time and I was in bed by 23:30 which I was thankful for considering it’s a near 90 mile round trip, I really shouldn’t try those kind of drives too often though at the moment.

“In it’s Heyday, Leamington was considered to be ‘too choice and costly’ to admit anybody but the rich and famous, cheap train travel and changing tastes began to attract visitors away from the spa towns to the seaside and the delights of foreign holidays.”

We have a great country, it’s such a shame people feel they always have to go abroad to have a good time when they can find some of that at home, just takes some imagination, but we do have great places to visit that do not require stressful journeys. I’m determined to make more days out like that for myself and anyone else who wants to tag along!

The app isn’t free and it’s not a rip off either, it’s certainly worth the investment and I’ve found it very useful in driffting off faster and thus getting more from the sleep I do get. It’s hypnotherapy and thus some people may not be comfortable with that but it’s useful in pre-sleep. There are a series of information pages on what to do and what to avoid to help your body prepare for better sleep. For example I didn’t know that bannanas contain similar sleep inducing properties that milk has. The actual programme is delivered as a 28 minute audio file that you follow repeating each night and it’s really very relaxing. I may find a way to record the sleep sequence to MP3 so I can play it on another player while the iPod monitors my movements for the sleep cycle graph.

Sleep is important for creative people, and provides a good time to rest a seemingly restless mind, so sleep is very important in my line of work. I must stress though, if you’re having as much trouble as I am with tiredness, seek medical advice, lack of sleep or a bad quality of sleep can be highly debilitating and is a serious matter that should always be discussed with doctors.

Creating The Right Mood
I’ve put a lot of focus on improving my sleep hygiene, including going decaff and have even moved my bedroom into a smaller, darker, quieter room that’s easier to balance the temperature in. Aromatheraphy is also a good thing to bear in mind, technology can help here too with those plugin air freshners, I’d recommend one that cycles round three different containers as you tend to notice them more. Lavendar and Lemon are always good choices. A timer can be put between the wall socket and the air freshner so that the room isn’t overloaded and it also lasts longer as it’s only switched on ideally just before bed and then turns off when you’re asleep.

LED lighting is also amazingly great to bring soothing colours into my night time pre sleep warm down. Believe it or not, replacing one 45 watt lightbulb with a fridge light bulb, yes a 15W incandesant bulb, can really help phase down the amount of light going in to your eyes as you prepare for sleep. As my room is so dark I’ve got another timer on a bright lamp which will turn on just before my alarm goes off. In other words I’m commander and master over my sleeping environment and it’s working really well.

Other Recommended iPhone Apps for Sleep
I’ve metioned the excellent Sleep Cycle App in a previous post but it really is helping me see how disturbed my night movements can be, but there are other applications which can help in the winding down before actually falling asleep, mostly these are white noise applications. White noise is very effective I find in diverting my attention and keeping my mind blank, music often does this for me too and I tend to choose soothing songs to fall asleep to, but it’s always handy to have a rainforest, ocean or thunderstorm to command at will.

Rain has always been a relaxing sound for me, there’s nothing better than being tucked up in the warm hearing the rain tapping at the window, or even caught in a stationary car in a heavy rainstorm, it’s just so relaxing. What these white noise apps do though quite often is allow you to add binaural beats, which are supposed to slow down your brain waves to a more sleep like rythm, but I tend to turn those options off and just have the white noise, like rain.

1. Bloom
2. Binaural Beats
3. Custom Sounds of Nature Lite
4. Sleep Tracker
5. Orba (a beautiful soothing game)

Sleep Tracker allows you to chart the amount of hours sleep you had to what your mood was the following day. Bloom is a longstanding music creation app that creates such a soothing and always evolving synth soundscape. Custom Sounds of Nature allows you to select a white noise scene like an ocean and add and change the volume of backgrounding sounds like seaguls and the strength of the waves. Orba is actually a colour ball matching game that is just so beautifully designed, playing it empties the mind of thoughts.

My fave though has to be Binaural Beats, simply because even without the hemisync noise you can create and vary the elements in a sound scene, so you can create a loud heavy thunderstorm or a light rain shower next to a stream. So there we have it, if falling asleep is an art rather than an exact science there’s something out there for everyone that technology can help us achive, from sensory rooms, hypnosis and white noise to relaxing games.

I’m a big fan of acoustic music, but her voice on this track, Wish I Stayed is what caught me, very much similar to Julia Stone, Cerys Matthews, broken and raw in a very powerful emotional combination which is what I appricate in vocal style, some umph! She carries this track off with a great accent too, similar in intonation to Jack Pentate. If that gives some indication of what you may find in this voice, if not play the video, it certainly is worth a watch! Her album is out March 1st 2010.

Ellie Goulding – Wish I Stayed (Acoustic Version)

Ellie Goulding’s Website