This report in What Car? talks of plans to switch off the analogue radio service and go completely digital. It points out that 90.7% of the UK population listens to the radio every week, but only 2% have in-car DAB.
If that’s worded right, it’s like saying 90% of the population eats chicken, but only 2% buy large eggs! It’s meaningless. And deliberately alarmist.
What Car? tries to argue that cars without DAB will have less value. Well, seeing how you can get a Pure Highway (with FM transmitter) for as little as £60, you’d have to be selling one hell of a banger to someone with extremely odd priorities for it to be a significant financial burden.
And just think of that lovely clear FM spectrum to tune into when the switch-off happens. I expect that What Car? experts think that turning off the analogue signal means it isn’t there anymore!
On the radio, Halfords is advertising daily that they can fit a DAB radio into “almost any make of car”.
It reminds me of a situation I’ve mentioned before. Back in the early 80s, the standard storage device for a home computer was a cassette tape recorder. Magazines had cassette tapes stuck to the front in those days. But disk drives were becoming affordable, and many started switching to floppy disks instead.
There was uproar. Well, what it was really was the loudest and stupidest people just making a lot of noise. They opposed the change. I suppose 200-odd years ago they’d have been called Luddites. Today, they’re just idiots.
The sooner we go digital, the better.