Tag Archives: dab

Radio Whoring

Tech,

We have a number of Google Home devices around the house. A Lenovo Smart Clock in the bedroom, Zolo Mojo’s in the kitchen, living room, “office” and the girl’s bedroom and a Google Home Mini in Charlie’s room.

Other than Alice playing “5, 6, 7, 8” the second most used feature is just listening to the radio.

We’ve had DAB radios in the past. Whilst in Lincoln the signal was weak as there was no local DAB transmitter, the radio would only work with the aerial at full length and if on the right window sill. It had five presets, otherwise switching channels required you moving around in circles to find the station you wanted. And to turn it off, you needed to hold down the “power button” and then OK as a short press just switched it to FM.

Now instead we just shout “OK Google”, the Smart Clock is set to play Scala Radio from 6.30 with their In The Park programme of pleasant classical music and bird song.
Then at 7.00 a weather forecast followed by BBC Radio 2.

As I head to the kitchen for my Breakfast Radio 2 is put on, and as I then head to the desk in the office Radio 2 is started there.

Get to midday and my dislike for Talk Radio means that we switch to Radio X. That’s on for the next four hours until Johnny Vaughan starts, as I then ask Google to play Absolute Radio.

If I’m still at the desk by 7pm, depending on how I feel I might switch to Radio X, BBC Radio 2 or Scala.

Lincs FM goes digital

Entertainment, , ,

Yesterday Ofcom announced that Lincs FM has won the licence for the Lincolnshire DAB multiplex (with MuxCo). Ok there was only one bid, and as the only countywide FM broadcaster it would have been hard for them to lose.

I’ve looked at the stations which they are going to run:
Lincs FM 102.2 (Lincs FM Group Ltd)
Compass FM (Lincs FM Group Ltd)
Lincs Country (Lincs FM Group Ltd)
Easy Radio (Easy Radio Limited)
Shuffle (MuxCo Lincolnshire Ltd)
UCB UK (United Christian Broadcasters Ltd)
Traffic Radio (Highways Agency)
and I’m pretty sure that I wont bother with any of them except Lincs FM and Traffic Radio.

When I was in Hemel, I was used to having over 10 good stations to pickup including X-FM, however since getting to Lincoln my choices have been BBC Radio 1-5, BBC Radio Lincolnshire, Classic or Lincs FM. As Radio 1 don’t play any music, I can’t understand either Terry Wogan or Ken Bruce and I would crash the car listening to the Today programme, I began listening to Lincs FM two years ago.
Whilst the music is a bit too much Radio 2, at least they play lots of songs. All the presents are local, the quizes are good to listen to, the traffic is really useful (even if it is to tell me that the A46 is closed, whilst I’ve been sat in it for 20 minutes in the fog on Monday), and unlike almost every other regional radio station they are owned by themselves. They don’t drop out to national quizes pretending to be local, don’t have evening shows shared with other stations (other than the Sunday Chartshow) and something like 95% is broadcast live.

So good luck with the DAB, just hope that one day I might be able to get a signal without holding my radio high in the air without breathing!