Across the first half of 2024, saving AM radio from its potential removal from a car, truck, or van in the U.S. has been one of the NAB’s core missions on Capitol Hill, as the revised AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act awaits a full vote by the House Energy & Commerce Committee.
Since fall 2021, the nation of Switzerland was faced with a slightly more eye-popping scenario for radio listeners: the silence by law of FM radio stations, with AM radio stations already part of the nation’s broadcasting past. Now, the SRG SSR — the Swiss Broadcasting Corp. — is moving ahead with a full shut-down of its MHz-based signals.
According to the SRG SSR, those who listen to the radio now largely do so via digital audio broadcasting (DAB+) or the internet.
Furthermore, it says that Fewer and fewer FM receivers are still in use in Switzerland, with pure FM usage stagnating at less than 10%.
This all but confirms a forecast RBR+TVBR first discussed some 2 1/2 years ago that DAB+ — at least in Switzerland — has become the new radio standard.
As such, the public service broadcaster with services in German, French, Italian and Romansh will be shutting down its FM signals in the near future.
The data is accompanied by statistics from the Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM) in Switzerland that show digital radio with an 81% share of use in spring 2023.
The shift should have happened by now.
In January 2021, the Swiss radio industry reached an agreement that will see the end of analogue FM transmissions and full transition to DAB+, the off-band multichannel digital audio option U.S. broadcasters didn’t want, instead adopting in-band on-channel HD Radio.
Swiss’s public broadcaster SRF was to pull the plug on its FM signals in mid-2022. Then, a full shutdown of FM radio was expected by the end of 2024. After protests, the government agreed to extend FM licenses for the radio industry one last time — to the end of 2026.
While consumption of FM radio has declined considerably in Switzerland, the Swiss Broadcasting Corp. also pointed to the cost in maintaining transmitters and investing in new equipment to ensure broadcasts would continue.
“In light of the organization’s tough financial situation due to declining advertising revenues and inflation, further investment in outdated broadcasting technology is no longer justifiable,” the SRG SSR determined.
In the Swiss city of Bern, stations on the FM dial with a transmitter atop the Fernsehturm Bantiger broadcast tower include Radio SRF, RTS La 1ère, Radio RaBe, Radio Bern 1, and NRJ.
Six DAB+ can be tuned to, offering a plethora of Swiss radio brands.
