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FREQUENCY MODULATION A New Wave Of Listening |
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THE ingrained habits of British radio listeners, some 70% of whom say they have a favourite radio station which they stay tuned into for all or almost all their listening time, are due to be challenged by the extensive developments planned for UK radio during the next few years. It will be interesting to discover how far, once a wider choice of programme services become available, listeners will show greater willingness to explore the territory of the radio dial and, in doing so, will discover what is for many of them at present an uncharted region: the FM waveband.
Radio broadcasting occupies various portions of the frequency spectrum. Most UK stations have until now had access to both medium wave (MW) and VHF / FM frequencies - BBC Radio 4, primarily using a long wave channel (instead of medium wave), is the main exception - and usually transmit the same programming on each. Yet despite the much cleaner and crisper signal, broadcast in stereo, that VHF provides, recent IBA research indicates that around half the radio audience confines its listening to medium wave. This has little to do with the availability of VHF; a detailed survey found that even by 1984 as many as 86% of all households possessed at least one radio set capable of receiving VHF. It is a common misconception that many people cannot listen on VHF, the fact is that virtually everyone can, but many choose not to.
Conflicting Terminology
The audience's nervousness about radio wavebands is underlined by the number of listeners who simply do not know which waveband they usually listen on. Perhaps a large share of the fault for this needs to be laid at the door of the broadcasters themselves, for having failed to familiarise listeners adequately with the layout of the radio dial. The difficulties are exacerbated by the multiplicity of terms applied: for one band, medium wave, MF and AM are alternative descriptions; for the other, VHF, FM or a combination of the two can be offered. The BBC's recent decision to refer henceforth always to 'FM' instead of VHF/FM should in due course aid public comprehension, but in the meantime (in this article, as elsewhere!) the interchangeability of virtually synonymous labels remains one obstacle to 'user-friendliness'.
As far as waveband use is concerned, the latest IBA survey (conducted in October 1987) suggests that, listening at home:
50% of listeners always use medium wave;
22% of listeners always use VHF/FM;
16% of listeners use both medium wave and VIIF/FM;
12% of listeners do not know which waveband they use.
The figures imply that, roughly speaking, around two-thirds of all radio listening now takes place on medium wave. Although successive annual surveys have shown a gradual movement towards more
widespread use of VI-IF/M Britain still lags some way behind most other countries.
In the USA, AM (medium wave) listening has been steadily eroded, as year after year FM took an increasing share of the radio listening 'cake'. By 1986, FM stations were winning 72% of the total radio audience, while listening on AM accounted for only 28% - a reverse of the balance in previous decades. In Australia, commercial FM radio was not introduced until 1978, but in most of the major city markets the top-rating stations are now those broadcasting on FM. Throughout most of Western Europe, VHF/ FM is quite firmly established as the popular choice for listening; in West Germany, for instance, five times as many people say they listen daily (or almost daily) on FM as do so on medium wave. The explosion of deregulated radio in France and Italy in the past few years has greatly boosted listening on FM, and the Scandinavians, we are told, find it positively eccentric that anyone should want to listen on medium wave when the far superior quality of VHF is available.
Simulcasting
A crucial distinction, however, between the UK and most other countries is that radio stations here - BBC and Independent - have, until now, usually broadcast the same programme output on both frequencies. Elsewhere in the world, AM and FM normally operate as separate radio systems, with little or no 'simulcasting' (as the government Green Paper has termed the UK tradition of duplicating the output). Thus, in this country, there has been no programming incentive for listeners accustomed to medium wave to try tuning in on VHF/FM.
Audience research confirms that it is inertia, rather than any fundamental dissatisfaction with VHF/FM, that persuades most listeners to remain tuned to medium wave. Its convenience - the more imprecise tuning that it tolerates, and the absence of the need for an extended aerial keeps it ahead of VHF as the waveband most often used for everyday background listening.
Radical change is coming to UK radio, however, and the proposed new distribution of radio services seems bound to produce a marked increase in the use of FM. In its Green Paper, the government has committed itself to the gradual eradication of simulcasting', so as to provide a wider selection of radio programming on the frequencies available. The IBA, in its response to the Green Paper, endorsed this approach, and is actively encouraging the provision of split-frequency and singlefrequency output. After the success of a Home Office-sanctioned experiment, in which seven ILR stations were permitted to broadcast complementary programming aimed at different audiences on their MW and VHF frequencies for a limited number of hours each week, the government has accepted the IBA's recommendation that restrictions upon 'split frequency broadcasting' should now be removed. The IBA has invited ILR stations to submit proposals for separate medium wave and VHF programme schedules and, subject to minimum requirements for news output being met, each station that so wishes will now be able to provide unlimited amounts of separately-targetted output on its two, frequencies.
Another decisive break with the simulcasting' tradition has been made by some newly-established IBA radio services which have opened using one waveband only. Four of the most recent extensions of ILR coverage, into areas previously unserved, have taken place on VHF/FM only:
Basingstoke and Andover (Radio 210),
Shrewsbury and Telford (Beacon Radio),
the western parts of Northern Ireland (Downtown Radio)
Winchester (Ocean Sound).
For the first time, audiences in these areas must listen on VHF if they wish to hear their local ILR station.
Audience Research
The results of initial audience research in the Basingstoke and Andover area were awaited with great interest and some trepidation, for the commercial viability of the new services could depend on whether enough listeners had been persuaded to desert the medium wave. The findings could hardly have been more encouraging; in its new (VHF-only) coverage area, Radio 210 had within only a few months generated a higher audience reach than it had previously obtained on both MW and VHF frequencies together in its original service area.
With evidence of this kind, it is possible to feel much more confident about the prospects for single-frequency services. New franchises for parts of the country as yet unserved by ILR, such as East Sussex and Cambridge, have recently been advertised by the IBA as services to be provided on one waveband only, with a firm preference for this to be VHF/FM
Although the IBA pioneered the use of FM stereo radio in the UK, the BBC too is now staking its faith in the future popularity of VHF/FM. The opening during the next couple of years of the VHF network allocated to Radio 1 seems likely to produce the sharpest shift yet in the patterns of waveband use. Until now, younger listeners have been among those most reluctant to use VHF/FM, reflecting primarily the very limited access to a VHF/FM outlet that Radio 1 which relies heavily upon the under-25s for its listenership - has so far enjoyed. With its own \TIF channel, Radio 1 should in future attract many more of its young adherents to FM, with the superior quality of reception, e-specially for music, which this affords.
Long-term Planning
The firmest indication of the BBC's commitment to VHF/FM as the primary waveband for the future is given in its five year plan, issued in October. In seeking to utilise VHF frequencies for all its four existing national radio services, with medium wave (and long wave) increasingly taking only the overspill of BBC radio output, the Corporation is shrewdly putting down its markers for the future. This bid jumps ahead from the government Green Paper recommendation that the BBC should concede two of its national networks to future commercial competitors, of which 'at least one' should be on MW. The BBC plan offers to sacrifice two frequencies, but both on medium wave (and with poor after-dark coverage), clearly recognising the future importance of holding on to all its national VHF/FM frequencies.
It is dispiriting that, at such an early point in the public debate, the Home Secretary seems willing to accede to all the BBC's manoeuvres. If new national commercial radio services are to be able to compete effectively against a well-entrenched BBC, they will need a fair share of the available VHF/FM frequencies. By the mid-1990s, it will almost certainly be VHF that most listeners will choose, most of the time.
With the advent of domestic push-button radio receivers to make retuning much easier, with Radio Data System (RDS) giving - only on VHF - a visual read-out of channel and programme information, and above all with a widening choice of high-quality stereo programming available on single-frequency services, FM radio is all set to make an exciting breakthrough in public consciousness and use. Locally, Independent Radio services are poised to share in the opportunities presented by this anticipated new trend in listening habits. And, provided that the government is prepared to allocate frequencies which will give INR a fair start in life, this will also apply on a national level.
[Source: IBA. 1987]
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