Well, the FM radio network here in Norway will be shut down starting in January and completely by the summer. Local radio stations will be operating on FM, but that depends on how long the license for each station lasts. Already a lot of channels that have gone off the air and over to DAB. Analog television were shut down a decade ago now, and AM radio only transmits to the arctic sea. National AM broadcasts have been off the air for probably a couple of decades now.

The announcement of shutting down FM radio broadcasting obviously have caused a lot of debate and negative feedback from a lot of people in the population. Seems like many people have a lot of emotional attatchment to analog radio. Of course, some areas of the country will lose reception. When TV went digital, the coverage went from like 95% to 75% or so. A lot of mountains and valleys that block signals. A partially fuzzy picture (or audio) on analog isn't a strong enough signal with digital.

Just curious.... Since there are people from all over the world on this forum. Any other countries that have officially announced to shut down analog radio broadcasts?

Looks like Norway is the first one to do that:

http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6538806/norway-to-be-first-country-to-shut-down-fm-radio

Some French State radios have been slowly phasing out of AM and medium waves to focus on FM and Internet:

http://swling.com/blog/2015/12/radio-france-to-shut-down-mediumwave-broadcasts/

I can't imagine FM radios being shutdown... What live contents will you be able to listen to in your car then??
Using your phone to stream radio contents would be an horrible waste of bandwidth for the phone network when FM can do it just as fine.

Is it because the government want to make big $$$ by putting these frequencies on auction?

Julien

According to Wikipedia, Switzerland, Denmark and Sweden are to follow within a few years.
In the Netherlands (luckily) we still have analog radio besides DAB and DAB+, but i think will follow sooner or later as well as did with the analog tv a decade ago.
The problem i find with the digital stuff, is that every time they change the protocol or specs, you've got buy a new tuner. Though as far as DVB T goes i still can use my DVB tuner i purchased 10 years ago.
I hope that will be the same with DAB, or at least upgradeable and not letting people in the cold like with all the smart tv's that don't work with the newest youtube for example.

With the digital TV, Norway opted for a bit obscure encoding standard. I still haven't seen any modern TV with built in decoder that supported the standard. Everyone who still use aerial have an external decoder.

There are already, and have been for some time, advertising campaigns promoting DAB radios. For people still insisting on using the old FM radio, there are adapters that take the DAB signal and send it out again on a fixed low-power FM frequency. I won't be changing out the radio in my car, simply because I bought an expensive model only a couple of years ago. I generally listen to MP3s in my car, but I tend to listen to the radio when driving cross-country trips (or longer trips in general) to be updated on what's going on in the traffic.

I guess the people who suffer most with the FM being closed are people who use radios in their car and industrial workers who use ear protection with built in radio. They're probably the biggest group that actually listen to radio. Many people do however use services like Spotify to stream music, even in their cars. Data over mobile networks have become fairly cheap the last couple of years. 5GB data is like 35 USD a month and free SMS, MMS and calling (within EU/EEA countries as well).

In general I don't think shutting down the FM network is that much big of a deal. Most people already use alternative solutions and will quickly adapt when FM is finally off the air.

I like FM radio and still listen to the BBC World Service as well as NPR Radio from the US here in Berlin on FM.

When I was living in Dalian, China, I was listening to many Korean FM broadcasts on my radio even though it was 300 KM away. That was very nice.

We have been told many lies regarding DAB radio the past years.

A good FM signal is way better than a radio station broadcasting @ AAC/96 khz. No way does it sound better. I do not like radio with such low bitrates.

While the video quality is constantly improving people are somehow getting used to low birate audio on both TV and radio. I do not like this development. I won't listen
to any radio broadcast with such deplorable bitrates. We used to have pure digital radio ( PCM ! ) in the 90s here in Germany using a special
cable radio receiver. The audio quality was fantastic. We used to have like 16 stations in that quality.

I just checked the bitrates NRK radio is using in Oslo. -> NRK KLASSISK 96 kbps DAB+/HE-AAC v1 Stereo -> That's entirely unacceptable.

NRK JAZZ 64 kbps DAB+/HE-AAC v1 Stereo -> Are they joking ? If I want to listen to Jazz PCM stereo is the minimum I would find acceptable. SACD or
a decent vinyl release are even better.

Good FM radio sounds way better than 64 kbps HE-AAC audio. But high quality FM radio is a thing of the past anyway.

Yes, the audio quality isn't the greatest... One of the main things people complain about besides the reception. A lot of dead spots with DAB. The area I live in is a dead spot for mobile phone, and most likely DAB too (haven't tried). If I walk 100 meters up the street, I have full service. FM radio works just fine, but some channels are a bit fuzzy.

Here in the states, AM and FM stereo are still going strong. Back in the 1980's, there was an attempt at AM stereo which did not last too long. It may still be used except my car radio has no provision for receiving it (my car was made in 2011).

Back a few years, we changed over from analog to digital TV broadcasting. While the government made money on the deal, not everyone is happy. I tried to receive the digital broadcast with the "converter" that was given away for free and had no success. Come to find out, digital TV does not work in the rural areas of the US. I even went to a website to find out if there is a digital repeater near me and there is none. What I wished is that the FCC had left one or two analog frequencies alone so that rural areas could continue to get TV.

For me, I read that DirecTV was carrying local stations. I contacted DirecTV and they sent a technician to my place. He took one look at my current satellite dish and delivered the bad news. He told me that I did not have line of sight to 2 satellites and that what I wanted could not happen. Beside being unable to get local stations off DirecTV, HDTV is also not available only SDTV.

At least, I have DVD, Laserdisc, HD-DVD and CED movies to watch.

Yeah, both FM and AM are going strong here in the US.

We do have Digital free, over-the-air HD radio as well as pay Satellite radio, but over-the-air analog AM/FM radio doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

Currently listening to Sports Talk Radio out of Philadelphia on one of these . . .



. . . 94.1 MHz!

@ dumbchemist

That was a very interesting read ! Thank you very much. I am very interested in both terrestrial and satellite reception. I am very surprised to hear there are parts of
New York State where no terrestrial reception was possible ! I am familiar with the system DirecTV is using to distribute their local channels. They are broadcasting all local channels as
local spotbeams in the Ka-Band frequency range. All the other channels are using Ku-Band transponders on a different satellite. That's why usually you have to be able to pick up 2 or even 3
satellites with a single dish in order to be able to receive all the channels.


https://www.satbeams.com/satellites?norad=31862

One great thing about FM radio was that you could even pick up stations from a really long distance. I can pick up one Polish radio station here in Berlin just fine and the transmitter is approximately 110 kilometres away. That's hardly possible with digital radio.

I can recommend USTVnow.com. You can get an account for free and watch the local channels from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, from anywhere in the world.
They even have a Roku app and it is working like a charm. The only downside is you have to get a new account every 30 days but getting a new one is very easy. The other channels cost extra. The quality is really good given it's an online stream. It's real HD but does show some macroblocking at times.
It's actually funny to watch the local stations from Harrisburg as all the people in the commercials, news studio, etc., have German family names. Quite intriguing.

Actually, you need 3 satellites to pick up both local stations and HDTV.

I neglected to say that I do have a C-band dish and the associated IRD. The problem with it is that it has not been used in over 15 years so it does need a tune up. Also, the company I bought the dish from disappeared some years ago leaving me without a local C-band repairman. When I bought my DirectV dish and receiver (for the paltry sum of ~$500) about 15 years ago, I took the C-band receiver out of service. Back then, I had to install the DirecTV dish and receiver myself using printed instructions as there were no DirecTV vans running around with a technician inside. (The receiver was made by Sony).

I'm sure some dealerships and car stereo installers must make a fortune on this situation. Spoke with a person today that asked for a price to upgrade the radio in his car. He asked both the dealership and a couple of car stereo shops. Replacing the radio and other necessary equipment costs around 1100 USD in a Mercedes-Benz. Just crazy...

Considering it costs that much for an oil change in a Mercedes Benz I don't know if that means very much.

An oil change is actually 'only' just over 400 USD at the Mercedes dealer. However, changing the radio in other cars isn't exactly cheaper. The "problem" is that most modern cars (post year 2000) don't use a standard DIN player anymore, as well as a lot of functions are added to the steering wheel and such. If you want to retain a resell value to the car (or aesthetics in general), then everything needs to work as it did from the factory. A cheap dongle transmitter and half the buttons on the dashboard are useless isn't exactly attractive.

Steering wheel controls work with most modern aftermarket stereos. DIN adaptors too, but yeah they are heavily intitigrated into the car these days and generally messing with car audio nowadays isn't worth it. Luckily even the cheapest cars now at least come with something usable.

Here in the US FM isn't going anywhere anytime soon. It is however worthless in %90 of the country with loads of advertising and terrible playlists. Only listener supported stations are worth a listen and many of those suck too. WCBN, WFMU, there are good ones but you really have to look for them and usually it's better to listen over the internet anyway. If my new stereo didn't have FM I might not even notice.

Forgot to update, but two days ago my region shut down FM broadcasting of nation wide channels. Local radio stations will continue to broadcast until September, but I highly doubt they will get their broadcasting license renewed on FM after that.

Guess I need to buy a proper FM transmitter kit now in order to use my radios. Something similar to what people buy for old obsolete AM radios. It's easy to build a basic one, but would be nice with a fully stable one with stereo support.

FM is still the standard in Sweden and will probably not be replaced for many years. As a matter of fact I actually bought myself an FM receiver for my Pioneer VSX-D909S. Personally, I'm listening to radio all the time and from June to August every year, "Summer in P1" is broadcasted daily. For each day, a celebrity gets to talk about whatever he or she wants and also play any music of their choice for 1½ hour. Lots of good names this year. It's been a Swedish culture for so many years and I never get tired of it.

In the Netherlands they are planning to shut FM down in two years... But just like Digital TV, DAB reception is bad or impossible in the most of the Netherlands..... If they turn the switch for FM, I won't be listening to radio anymore! Not going to spend money for something that isn't really working and sounding really terrible!

Isn't all broadcasted FM just compressed in some digital form anyway? In Sweden, most radio transmissions are sourced from either Ogg vorbis or Mp3 anyway. Don't see any reason why to keep the broadcasts analog.

The digital audio broadcasting (DAB) that has been forced upon us is a joke. Still there is insufficient coverage over the regions that no longer have the option to use FM. I don't expect it will be better anytime soon.
The host on the rock channel tells me their radio channel rocks Norway. I don't think you actually "rock" somebody with a broadcast bitrate of 64kbps when you can listen to lossless music quality elsewhere. I remember back in the days when 128 kbps was considered "compact disc quality" when ripping discs with Audiograbber. Nobody will agree with that statement anymore.