Sunday Business Post
There I was reading the Sunday Buiness Post and an interview with RTE’s Paul Russell on RTE’s DAB launch when I got a bit of a shock at the end. In response to the journalist Catherine O’Mahony I say … watch this space !
The article reads as follows;
Meanwhile, DAB has been parked for now in the world of commercial broadcasting.
Worst affected by this is Dusty Rhodes, a DAB enthusiast who set up Digital Radio Ltd and developed a number of new services for broadcast over DAB.
Now that the commercial sector is excluded from the project, pending the passage of the new Broadcasting Bill, Rhodes’s channels, All 80s and Mocha RnB, will be available online only.
He said it was unfortunate that legislation had not been passed for DAB and he hoped to be back on air next year.
“The test was a huge success, not only technically, but enjoyed hugely positive feedback from listeners.”
Russell agreed it was a pity Rhodes was not able to be currently involved in DAB.
“We’re out there on our own now and hopefully that will change again,” he said. “It was exciting to have someone like Dusty Rhodes involved. It’s a definite loss. We hope we can keep up connections with the commercial organisations because we’ve seen from other countries that this cannot progress without them.”
The success or failure of DAB digital radio depended entirely on the audience, said Russell. In his view, RTE’s digital services would only ever be an add-on to what listeners used already, somewhere to go for 20 minutes or so before returning to a normal favourite station.
“It’s really hard to call. We realise many people are very happy with the radio they have already. Whether they want this or not is really up to them.”
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