Options
198 electricity bill ?
Maggie_King
Posts: 381 Forum Member
✭
What would be the annual electricity bill for transmitting Radio 4 on Long wave ?
0
Maggie_King
Posts: 381 Maggie_King
Posts: 381 Maggie_King
Posts: 381
Comments
It could well be commercially sensitive information because Arquiva will have negotiated a contract with one electricity company who might not want their competitors to know the amount.
The consumption of the three transmitter sites might be available.
Page 8 shows distribution costs for r4 as £9.8m each year, if (by looking at other stations costs) digital is £1.5m PA and FM is 3.8m PA, then LW/MW is costing £4.5m each year, the majority will be 198khz LW electricity costs!
Which the BBC has said it may last for another 7 years, then the LW transmission might stop!
A huge cost for sure. However probably modest in the context of he whole R4 budget?
Also does anyone know what % of the UK can pick up Radio 4 on Medium Wave?
High power LW and MW (also FM) is getting increasingly expensive and the cost of multiformat digital transmission using multiplexing techniques is less, so it is expected the future for national radio in the UK will be; DAB, Freesat, Freeview and internet which between them will give almost 100% coverage.
Shipping forecasts will eventually be replaced by MW Navtext and new satellite technology when 198 closes in a few years.
Spare MW frequencies like 648 (which will be very expensive to run at high power) will now be used for new low power community radio (with perhaps R Caroline in mind?), especially where the FM band is full (but licencing has now been delayed to later this year).
http://licensing.ofcom.org.uk/radio-broadcast-licensing/community-radio/apply-for-licence/am-band
In many of the areas with patchy VHF FM, Radio 4 Long Wave is even worse. I suspect it would be cheaper to fill in the gaps in DAB coverage than it would be to go back to a high power Medium Wave network. Also I doubt whether many motorists think of switching to Medium Wave or Long Wave when VHF FM or DAB drops out.
Test Match special is I would think it's biggest audience for motorists, and people who have not bought a DAB set., they've arranged the maintenance work to avoid periods when that is being broadcast.
Well AIUI the BBC needs to make savings in the region of 50 million a year. So shutting down 198 would give us nearly 10 percent of that at a stroke.
The poster may well be correct in stating that the future of 648 khz is for use by low power community stations. Time will tell.
But the Ofcom statement of intent, to which he posts a link to ,see above,indicates that Ofcom were as of January 2013 minded to issue community licences giving a daytime service of around 10KM radius or more. My underlining, but those two words are crucial IMO for a correct interruption of Ofcom’s, then, intent.
No limit on the maximum coverage is mentioned by Ofcom, only an approximate minimum.
Preceding that this Ofcom statement says “Each applicant needs to consider who their target community is, and where it is, in order to justify the target area they require”
Which, as I see it, means that if an applicant can justify that their potential audience are people who are members of a community of common interest within say, purely for example, an 85 km radius from a tx site, such a licence may be granted.
I would consider the transmitter/ariel array required to give daytime coverage over that kind of radius to be at least “medium” power if not “high” power.
So is the future of 648 khz low, medium or high power community radio? Or, all three?
Well whatever the distance it will be nothing to do with washing up powder.
Sir, I am obliged.
You are indeed correct. Coverage will have nothing to do with a brand of soap powder, a Walt Disney character, a motor car, a BBC staff magazine, a North African gazelle, a Hebrew boy’s name, a character in The Tempest or an alternative biblical name for Jerusalem, to define just a few ariels, or indeed Ariels. So, in my posting ‘ariel’ would read better as ‘aerial’.
I appreciate your wit and greater wisdom.
http://www.radiocarolineonair.com/
No other group is likely to want to use AM for a music service? Bigl/One Gold a few years ago, but not now?, Perhaps Asian?, but the difficulties Sunrise have been going through may give concern?
IMHO AM has had its day....