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40 years after the introduction of the marine offences act in the UK in 1967 the BBC commemorate the historic event with a tribute to the men the Postmaster General Tony Benn Edward Short took off the air (except for Radio Caroline)

do you think RTE will ever commemorate the jamming of Sunshine Radio & Radio Nova?. No, not even if John Clarke is director general, and Ken Hammond is still reading the news.

back in March we posted that RTE were installing a DRM transmitter to replace the old 252LW. While RTE has no firm plans for DRM they are about to test DRM anyway.

Our radio friend Enda O’Kane writes

DRM will be carried on RTE’s longwave 252kHz transmitter.
Nightly commencing 08/08/07 until 15/08/07 from 0100hrs to 0700hrs UTC,
In addition to above :
Mon August 13th commencing 2100hrs ending 0800hrs on Tues Aug 14th.
Tues August 14th commencing 1400hrs ending 1400hrs Wed Aug 15th
These tests are to gauge public reaction to this technology and RTE regrets any inconvenience to listeners.
After these tests RTE will review the results.
It is important to stress that RTÉ has, as yet, no plans for a DRM launch

UTC is one hour behind summertime

in other radio news Radio Luxembourg launches podcasts of vintage broadcasts

big up 2 wally 4 da logo/holder.

station update.
found a outdated licence on the windows media server so WM9 tests are halted
trying VLS to VLC now and shoutcast is up 8+1 days.
tonight i hope to mix some live tunes in projekt klassicnovaska after the KGB top 40

on digitalradio.ie FAQ the question is asked

Q: Will mobile phone technology make DAB digital radio obsolete?

[my answer] the real answer is No DAB is obsolete because it was invented in 1981-85 and first broadcast in 1998. In early 90’s I was in talks with a marketing company called Covenberg and they were trying to get local radio & rte into an Irish DAB alliance in advance of the onset of DAB. that was 16 years ago. not enough interest was shown at the time.

DAB in UK has happened and many say that the sound quality of BBC Radio 3 is greater on FM than on DAB. The future of Digital Radio is not DAB, the past history of digital radio is DAB. DRM and DRM plus are the future and offer more democratic access to the spectrum for micro local community and religious broadcasters along side big business radio. Big business radio can now use DAB to keep the services and multiplexes to them self force special interest off air in an analogue switch off and onto the internet where currently mobile access is limited to expensive. read more on DRM from Enda O’Kane [pdf]

Another future that the radio industry are not looking at is WiMax Mark Ramsey writes

It’s all about empowering the consumer to control his or her listening experience and dramatically enhancing the experience of radio by mashing up radio with IM and TXT and social networking and interactivity and pictures and video and dozens of other capabilities yet to be dreamed of.

I have been listening to digital radio for years with a dish. And im now getting all the normal radio channels and a few extras on the Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) trials which is not a 100% mirror of the DAB trial.

DAB is of the Compact Disc age. We should not be going down a memory lane with it. Why would industry focus on something so old.. well if it keeps out the riff raff for another decade or so, then they can go on formatizing the death of the radio.

on stream test have a listen to http://radio.wxtc.net:8000/listen.pls

Broadcasting radio into the heart of Europe would provide a useful information source for Irish people in Europe, says Éan member Enda O’Kane in an article that has appeared in Business Travel magazine.

He notes:

DRM is now used worldwide by 32 broadcasters and more than 40 hours of English language programmes are broadcast across Europe.

An Irish radio service into the heart of Europe would help fuel our tourism industry and would serve to call back Irish emigrants, as well as inciting visits from those foreign to our country… It would provide a badly needed travel information service to our business community that is otherwise unavailable. The Internet cannot provide a listening experience to people on the move. Neither is the RTE Astra service recievable by motorists, or accessible in hotels and apartments across the EU.

Enda notes that RTE already owns the broadcast infrastructure, and says that for €4 million, the former Athlone medium wave site could be adapted to digital short wave to meet the needs of Irish citizens across the EU.

Read the whole article.

For more infomation on DRM, including sound recordings, broadcast schedules and information on receivers, visit drm.org.

mark ramsey on radio on pollster frank luntz on the music industry says “Big Radio is free”, Luntz said “Much of the illegal music downloading that takes place isn’t done just because the music is free but rather because stealing music costs “the suits” money.”

bhg says Big Radio is not free. Not one decision of Big Radio this morning was free, nor were the ad breaks given away for free.

read it here. then tune in to RadioMuzakCola (it’ll rot yer teeth)

funny old day. out Friday night on a gig, 40th in Cellbridge, home late up late. soon as I woke the AM noise issue hit me again.. I got dressed yanked the sw radio out of the mains and went mobile again , a good 50 meters from the front of the house in the back garden the signal was as bad as ever. S9 sprogging the radio like mad. Big peak on 612Khz with harmonics on 512 712 then 1224 2448 doubling all the way up to 9.6Mhz

I knew it was airbourne and not mains but I fired a quick email the the ESB over BLP.. I rang the brother and he said kill the mains in the house and see.. good idea must try that later i said.

Headed up to the Radio museum in Howth for the first time! wonderful little gem hidden away there (btw it beats the radio museum in Sundays Well Cork, the Howth museum is a living museum!). Met Joe & Eamon up there, old Hams I know via my community work over the years, they introduced me to the curator and all the other hams there for the day, they were operating a special station for International Museums Weekend, the station call sign is EI0MAR, I was never a Ham, more the spam of radio in my pirate SW days but we all got/get along!

I raised my issue on 612Khz with the 6 hams up there in Howth, they gave various theories but also suggested that I kill the mains and see that it goes away then bring up parts of the house one by one, i bit like code breaking or debugging bad scripts. [i will blog some more about the EI0MAR Museum.. after I visit it without my girl group entourage that were more interested in the playground than the radio wires]

So i got home and decided ok I have proved the new UPS is not to blame so I will pull the mains and see the UPS work and see if the noise goes. If it doesn’t go this is going to be worse, as it is far more difficult to rectify (literally) a neighbours problem equipment than it is my own. So I take the sw radio to the garage and climb up and pull the big 35A trip on the house.

SwooshhhhhwooootizzzzZz zap nothing. the bad jammer signal is gone! woot! so what the foxtrot is it! trial and error begins… soon after i find that it is the age old doopy now an ubuntu desktop for the dr. who fan among us. Its PSU even when not drawing power but simply plugged in, is whacking out a major 90 meter radius sprog of bad RF all over the band. I found it!!, and I know what to do next.

The hams in Howth were dismissive of my BPL theory but the dread and fear of it was evident. I believe my SWL issues would be as bad if not worse if BPL reaches our shores. BTW another question I was asked was if the signal had polarisation and it did at SE-NW the signal could almost be silenced..

Thanks to all who gave advise; the Hams of the IRTS in North Dublin and Irelands youngest person to pass the B licence exam but not take up the licence thats the brother who I was mistaken for today among the old hams. I spend my life being mistaken as him, but the only comfort in that is that he spends his life been mistaken as me, and I have a larger public profile! Twins!

from the Museum website it says

The Martello watchtower was completed in 1805 when a Napoleonic invasion of Ireland seemed imminent.
The first working submarine telegraph from Great Britain came ashore on the beach just below the tower
in 1854. The tower then became a cable station.

In 1903, the famous American wireless pioneer Lee de Forrest used the tower to demonstrate his wireless
telegraphy system to engineers of the British Post Office. Two years later the Marconi Company
conducted ship to shore wireless experiments with the HMS Monarch as she sailed to various locations in
the Irish Sea.

In a museum pamphlet it goes on to say that Lee de Forrest was doomed as British MPs had shares in the Marconi Company. Some things never change. A British PM and a Italian Broadcast Media Mogul up to their necks in it.

over on the podcasting news ireland blog i wonder if the six choices on offer are best

I set myself a task to think of 6 stations rte should air on digital.
remember digital has the space for the niches not the masses.

1. RTE Polska - 150K plus Polish community
2. RTE United - 1Million plus irish are members of trade unions
3. RTE Global - world affairs radio like WRN
4. RTE Outside - for those sick of RTE Studio
5. RTE Ulster - for the Irish up North (to be heard down south)
6. RTE Courts - near live reenactments of all the state trials/tribunals

ABC national radio has an intro disclaimer on the start of a music podcast [rss] that explains that songs ARE shortened to meet copyright demands but the intro goes on to explain that at a url provided has the whole show which can be heard with full songs ‘on demand’.

At a recent IIA event this issue came up by way of question to the speaker from RTÉ. Do the listening public understand or care or care to understand the difference between

1. live radio
2. live streaming radio
3. on demand (streaming) radio
4. podcasts

they want their radio!!! the difference between 3 & 4 is codec, quality and mobility of track. If you thought taping TOTP with a condenser microphone to non Dolby mono tape deck in 1980 was piracy, well you probably support the break down of 1 2 3& 4. You probably work for a national broadcaster or record company, and have not the solutions to round this square.

The time has come to not play their stuff if they don’t let you. Broadcasters have applied this stand off negotiating tactic before. Once or twice in the 80’s on Music Video on TV and once in the mid ’90s on streamed audio over the internet. On Music Video I think over the two legs of the fight the result was a draw. On the streaming radio issue in the ’90s the radio stations won without much of a fight. BTW radio measurement better start looking at podcasts, as the occupiers of the iTunes flawed measurement top 20 list in Ireland are leaking listeners to podcast! think ‘nob nation‘.

Time has come to put it to the copyright holders again. If you want us to play you lets us. If you don’t we wont.

ABC National & NPR seem to have similar approaches to music in section 4 podcasts. 60 seconds plus of song seems ok. If section 3 streams can be trans coded and section 2 streams auto recorded to hard disk why sure somebody will go to the bother of time coding the podcasts and use them to pirate the tracks. I just hope the podcasters of today talk a little less ‘up to the CRASH’ of an intro on songs unlike Jimmy Saville did in 1980 on lo-fi recordings on a C60 BASF I treasure as my pirate past. I poke fun, C60 wasn’t piracy nor is music on podcasts, nor is taking music out of podcasts. its whats possible today and its all for personal use. Charging the recording owner again and again as formats change is just as dubious as what the recording industry call piracy.

As DRM is removed from music. Lets get the show on the road for music in podcasts.