A neat idea is being floated by the UK government where new radios would display a listing of stations receivable by the radio regardless of whether they’re on FM or DAB.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Mr. Siôn Simon outlined the idea during this weeks debate about the UK governments plans for the future of local radio;

“We are committed to ensuring the implementation of a combined station guide, which is similar to an electronic programme guide, which will simply have a list of station names. The listener will not distinguish between FM and digital stations, but will simply select the station by name. We are already working with the industry on that system and encouraging its development and introduction as quickly as possible.”

While listeners have for decades moved between FM, MW and even LW there is a fear that the move to DAB will create an FM ghetto.

Though not as advanced as DAB, FM is still a very capable system and I believe here to stay for the foreseeable future. 95% of DAB radios also receive FM so the idea of a common station listing across all available bands is brilliantly simple.

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