February 2020 – Radio Reporter

February 25, 2020February 25, 2020

Italy: Radio tormenting – someone uses the rosary

Noise Icon, person holding hands on ears to cover from noise — Source

If your neighbour is listening to radio at high volume, do you use earplugs or are you gonna start a watt-war?
It is also possible trying to solve the problem by knocking at your neighbours door or, in more serious cases, by calling the police. But when the noise occurs often and is intentional, it becomes stalking and thus a lawyer is necessary.

Hard Rock or Radio Maria?

Italian website of Radio Maria — Radio Maria Website
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Checking on the web, it’s possible to find a great number of people convicted of tormenting their neighbours, using noise made by TV or radio programmes. It’s funny that, in Italy, people seem to prefer using religious programmes, such as the rosary (transmitted by the national and most famous religious broadcaster: Radio Maria), instead of music.
Here follows a brief list of the most interesting and funny cases:

2020, Divignano (near Novara, in Piedmont, Italy): A married couple persecuted their neighbour using various religious functions transmitted by Radio Maria
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2019, Vicenza (Veneto, Italy): A man was trialled for listening to Radio Maria at high volume during early morning hours
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2018, Biella (Piedmont, Italy): A night worker can’t sleep during the day because of its neighbour listening to Radio Maria all day
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2012 Golfo Aranci (Sardinia, Italy): 8 months of imprisonment for the two sisters that persecuted their brother during his restaurant opening hours, using Radio Maria as their weapon
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There are also people who use the rosary to defend themselves.
2013 Fiesole (Tuscany, Italy): A family listened to Radio Maria at high volume to drown out the noise made by the neighbours parrot.
Read more

February 20, 2020February 20, 2020

Spain: the legendary “cupón de la ONCE”, the main character of Spanish radio commercials

Everyone who had a chance to listen to Spanish radio programmes, especially the ones on Radio Nacional de España or the private stations Cope and Cadena Ser (on FM and medium wave), has noticed that one of the most common commercials talks about the “cupón de la ONCE”: a ticket of a very popular lottery managed by the homonymous organisation, managed by blind people. Created in the 1930s as a non state lottery, it was promoted by some blind people associations in Andalusia, Catalunya and Levante, which merged in 1939 in the official national organisation that started calling the ticket “cupón”.

The 80s boom

With the advent of democracy in Spain, also the organisation renews itself: the lottery becomes national (1984) and the prize reaches 100.000 pesetas (1987), multiplying by a million the ticket’s value, sold for 100 pesetas. Since then, the lottery took off, becoming more and more popular, and radio broadcasters started being flooded with commercials promoting the tickets’ sale. Lottery’s proceeds, from the 60’s, are invested in the opening of educational centers and libraries, to promote cultural events, and to finance fundamental services such as rehabilitation.

February 11, 2020February 12, 2020

TV Antennas resisting modernity

Despite technological innovations, the reception of television programmes transmitted over air (with an antenna on the roof) still remains the most used system for watching TV. This is what emerges from a report on TV audience made by Deloitte, the worlds biggest consulting company. Today, it is estimated that at least 1.6 billion people worldwide (450 million families) are watching traditional antenna TV. However, those numbers may be low: in fact considering the countries where it’s impossible having verified data, it’s estimated that this number could raise to 2 billion users, 50% more than pay-TV by cable, IPTV and satellite subscribers.

The advertising pie is still rich

The study is based on data from 83 countries with a total population of 6.6 billion. The analysis included nations with a low level of digitalisation and audience maturity level. This is the case in India (130 million users of over-air TV), Indonesia (251 million) and Nigeria (127 million); Italy, with 42 million users is on place 42. The research analyses the trend of advertising investments (that will raise to 4 billion dollars in 2020, reaching 184 billion in 2021), on traditional TV vitality and on its resilience to new technologies.

TMT Predictions, PDF Download

February 4, 2020February 4, 2020

Spain: The seventh DAB mux is on air

Transmitter, Antenna, Teide, Spain — Transmitter Teide
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Digital transmissions on DAB waveband, channel 9C, started in Tenerife in December 2019. The transmitter is located on the Teide, the highest active volcano in the Atlantic ocean and also the highest mountain in Spain (3.718 m). In total there are nine programmes transmitted: Axel24, BBR and XPR2 are exclusively aired on the Canary Islands, whereas Coast FM, Energy FM, Europa FM, Loca FM, Loca Latino and Magica FM, are also transmitted in Spain. Since February, Gran Via Radio from Barcelona has been added, a well-known station on 91.2 in the Catalonian metropolis.

The installation, made by Techworld Sur from Tenerife, uses a technology called BCAST, by a Polish company which provides small and medium sized radio transmitters and the software platform DABCAST for the digital transmission. In this way, the radio station is just paying a fee for the service without the need of buying any hardware equipment or the transmitter (an initiative funded by European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme). The radio station uses the software Virtual Studio to put together the audio stream with other elements that must be transmitted, such as album covers, the logo and extended text information. Then, the signal is sent to the cloud where it goes through the multiplexing process, it is encrypted with an algorithm that protects it from losing data and then is submitted to the transmitter.

BCAST Transmitter, DAB — Transmitter BCAST
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Illegal vs. legal match ended 4-3, but Navarra started a “remuntada”

At this stage seven multiplexes are active in Spain, but only three of them are official: the ones presumably without a license are those located in Costa del Sol (channel 7B in Marbella) and on the Canary Islands (7B in Gran Canaria, 7D and 9C in Tenerife). But Navarra’s government is going to even the score: on January 8^th, 2020 it announced a call for the release of six licences for DAB transmission. A regional block, on channel 11D named FU-NAV, with 6 regional channels and another 72 channels for local broadcasters divided into two blocks made of 6 broadcasters in Pamplona, and 10 local blocks. Navarra is the first autonomous community granting regional licenses for digital radio: are other regions going to follow this path?

Pamplona, bull run, Spain, torreros — Pamplona, well-known for the bulls run during the San Fermin festival, will be the first city in Spain having 3 mux DAB, with two of them being local.
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