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posted by martyb on Tuesday April 21 2015, @03:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the digital-killed-the-fm-star dept.

The Government of Norway announces

[April 16], the Ministry of Culture announced a national FM-switch off, to complete the transition to digital radio. Norway is making [a] historical move into a new radio era, being the first country in the world to decide upon an analogue switch-off for all major radio channels. With DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) and digital radio, listeners will be provided with more radio channels and greater diversity in content.

[...]The DAB-coverage in Norway now exceeds FM-coverage. DAB provides Norway with 22 national channels, as opposed to five channels transmitting nationwide on FM.

[...]Switch-off starts in Nordland county 11th January 2017 and ends with the northernmost counties Troms and Finnmark [13th December] 2017.

Official announcement in Norwegian. Also covered at Ars Technica.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday April 21 2015, @08:12PM

    by GungnirSniper (1671) on Tuesday April 21 2015, @08:12PM (#173652) Journal

    Greed isn't only a financial term. In this case their greed was stuffing as many channels as possible on their services, reducing the quality of the streams to do so.

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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 21 2015, @09:33PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 21 2015, @09:33PM (#173682)

    Yet its the only differentiator of the product.

    If all you want is "adult hot contemporary" unfortunately there are about three stations shoveling that locally.

    If you want continuous techno then your only choice is buying a satellite HOWEVER the problem is every 0.1% of the listening audience wants a DIFFERENT weird corner.

    The other (related) problem satellite has is their window has already passed. I can't find a place where I can't stream on my phone, assuming I'd want to (I'm more an audiobook/podcast guy). Its very hard to sell a piece of hardware and a monthly subscription when the competition is a free app on the cell phone the user already has.

    Imagine for a minute what listening to unusual music was like, say, 25 years ago. So I'd order old fashioned optical disks of industrial music, kids, we called them CDs as in compact diskettes, and then I'd listen to these disks, only one album per disk, too. Crazy old person stuff. People will look at satellite radio the same way in just a few years, if they don't already. Like those people still paying for AOL in 2015.

    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday April 21 2015, @09:45PM

      by frojack (1554) on Tuesday April 21 2015, @09:45PM (#173688) Journal

      The other (related) problem satellite has is their window has already passed. I can't find a place where I can't stream on my phone

      That's funny, because the only place I have sat radio is in my car precisely because of the long gaps in cell coverage in the Western US. There are parts of Oregon, Washington, Utah, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona where data is not available, or drops down to GPRS speeds.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 21 2015, @09:58PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 21 2015, @09:58PM (#173701)

        Hmm good point I bet tunnels are interesting too. The stuff I listen to is downloaded, usually over wifi when the phones on a charger, so I don't care much, but some folks like to stream or like live sports or live shows. So that is a good point.

        Still eventually, theoretically the whole world's gonna get wired up, every square foot, and its cheaper to plop a tower down in the desert than to launch a satellite.

        From a purely financial standpoint those satellites aren't going to last forever and investors would be pretty crazy to launch another...

    • (Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday April 21 2015, @11:30PM

      by GungnirSniper (1671) on Tuesday April 21 2015, @11:30PM (#173741) Journal

      Yet [the number of streams] the only differentiator of the product.

      They also sold themselves as commercial-free, and could have also sold on sound quality as well.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 22 2015, @06:17PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 22 2015, @06:17PM (#174073)

      So I'd order old fashioned optical disks of industrial music, kids, we called them CDs as in compact diskettes,

      CDs are old-fashioned? Get off my lawn!
      Old-fashioned music came on vinyl or on magnetic tape in a compact cassette.