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€100k to be spent on Longwave survey
Maggie_King
Posts: 381 Forum Member
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I see that the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs is to spend €100k on doing a survey of Longwave 252 listeners in the uk. Is it just me or is this a crazy amount of money for country that was recently Insolvent to be spending on this ? http://www.irishpost.co.uk/news/rte-longwave-campaigners-to-make-voices-heard-again-in-broadcasters-survey
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So that's £76,000. The article says that "thousands" of people in Britain petitioned to get the service kept operational until 2017. That suggests a survey would spend £10 per interviewee.
Then decide how the survey is to be carried out. Advertising in relevant newspapers ? A team of researchers targeting pubs, clubs, and cafes in places like Kilburn and clubs around the UK ? Emails to relevant people asking them to complete web forms ?
The money sounds a lot, but could well be soon eaten up. And at the end of it, someone has to produce a report with recommendations...
Anyway, let's hope that our Irish friends manage to keep the radio that they need and want, unlike so much national radio in Britain that is radio that faceless commercial concerns decide to force upon us...
RTE needs to come up with a long term plan orthe two years will be up and we will be no further forward.
Yes because many older rte listeners aren't online. And because in car internet radio is in its infancy.
See my post above yours
is normally available only on 252 and while reception is good in Wales and most of
Northern England, it is almost impossible in the south east of England.
The Irish Government could make more money out of its long wave allocation by finding
a non-government commercial station to take it over or to rent it out to the WRN, World
Radio Network.
Stop thinking of it as a duplicated domestic service; stop thinking it's only for elderly offline expatriates. Start thinking of an external service promoting Ireland, tourism and culture; start thinking outside the box.
Turn the wick up, give it a punchy name such as 'Emerald 261'. Have some some unique programming aimed at the UK together with some promotions and competitions.
Oh come on. An external service promoting Ireland on a wavelength few modern radios even support? Promoting Ireland via TV or a website would be far more effective. It's 2015.
The thing I don't get with this one, is that 252LW isn't a legacy service for RTE. It was Atlantic 252, offering nothing Irish-specific until the early 2000s. It's not like 198LW for Radio 4 that's been around forever.
Or 279 for that matter..
The BBC world service is now basically a internet or sattelite service to most of Europe. So is possible although it has still some FM and DAB+ relays in some cities.
The 252 service took over from 567 mw which was the RTE legacy service to provide a better daytime service, 253 should have shut when the UK sport station closed, some in RTE thought 252 worth keeping to replace 567, but few sets now have LW and domestic interefernce affects LW, so the survey may confirm this?
RTE could have linked with ONFM in London which was a missed opertunity. Also WRN did relay some of it's partner stations programmes on London Spectrum 558 and DAB, but for some reason no longer, so doubt if it could afford to take over 252?
A few months ago they reduced the power down to 150kw from 300Kw. Atlantic 252 was running at 500kw.
Yes that was very noticable today around dusk when driving on the A38 in the English Midlands. RTE 252 was only just audible above Algeria 252. OK with a portable it might have been possible to null Algeria a bit, but even so, reception was much worse than Atlantic..
I have yet to find one which doesn't. It may not have a LW band, but tunes from the high end of AM.
Well you can't be looking very hard.
Last three cars did not have LW. No amount of tuning about on the AM band was going to make LW miraculously appear.
Maybe you only buy French cars?
http://listen2digital.co.uk/stations/
If listen2digital does not win the bid UTV/Bauer have uncommitted space on their bid.
How much would the carriage on dab+ cost RTE ? funny thing is, rte ran a very badly worded closedown message on 252lw last september which made some people think that the service was available on dab in the uk and The irish post newpaper got letters saying " I don't want to use a digital radio to listen to Donnacha on saturday nights because Im 75".
They should have kept it at full power until someone decided what to do......
RTE said words to the effect that the survey would not affect their plans, they have always left the door open to the Government financing the longwave service themselves using the same diaspora funding that they have which is being used for this survey.