The Switch off of ABC/Radio Australia High Frequency Broadcasting: We are being dudded! The ABC is claiming that the money saved by the shutdown will be used for DAB+ digital radio in Darwin, Gold Coast, Canberra and Hobart. Firstly please note that these are cities not regions. The ACMA’s Digital Radio Planning Committee: Technical Subcommittee is planning to reduce the power used for digital radio in regional areas from the 50 kW used in mainland state capital cities to 5 kW in country areas. When Australia switched over from analog to digital television, the Department of Communications/ACMA produced a coverage area map which uses a 3D map of Australia and propagation software. It used the signal strength calculated at a receiving antenna height above the ground of 10 m. They also backed up this map with a significant amount of national signal strength surveying using four wheel drive vehicles with a pump up 10 m mast. The result can be seen here. https://myswitch.digitalready.gov.au/

This map shows poor signal strengths with the TV antenna 10 m above the ground. DAB+ digital radio is transmitted from the same site at the same power, but a car parked on the street has its antenna only 1.5 m above the ground and receives nothing. This site is only 17 km from the main high powered transmitters. There is additional signals coming from a UHF translator on a site near a DAB+ repeater in Hawkesbury which are also weak. Compare this map with; The ABC https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?ll=- 33.79740899999998%2C150.99609399999997&spn=0.798849%2C0.961304&hl=en&msa=0&z=9&so urce=embed&ie=UTF8&mid=1kNyJ8aqkP HS4-IuHhTgrnl2JeA Or Commercial Radio Australia http://www.digitalradioplus.com.au/dab-in-vehicles

Note that neither of these maps show any holes in the coverage as shown by the 3D modelling for TV. The ACMA could use their software to model DAB+ radio giving the proposed transmitter radiating power, the allowances for antenna height, the losses going into buildings and for the antenna used. Most listeners are not used to using outdoor antennas fixed to the building roof, and expect that the car radio will not drop out when driving around the licence area. So where are the equivalent maps for DTV for the proposed digital radio in Darwin, Gold Coast, Canberra, and Hobart when the subcommittee is proposing such low transmission power? Remember that Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth all DAB+ transmitters are 50 kW each. With so low transmitter power, it is obvious that they only intend to cover the city but not the towns homesteads and roads in between. So when you drive from Canberra to Sydney for example you will lose the signal well before Goulburn and not get another digital signal until Picton! Compare this with FM/AM which will give coverage all the way. City Population Dwelling Ch Power ea (k) Vehicles (k) (kWerp) Gold Coast 570 465 9D, 8B 5# Lower Hunter/ 518 417 Newcastle Sunshine Coast 347 298 Central Coast 328 260 NSW Illawarra 293 216 Geelong 279 238 Canberra/ 253 198 8D, 9C 5 Queanbeyan Cairns 240 186 Townsville 229 181 Hobart 222 168 9A, 9C 20 Darwin 137 105 9A, 9C 20 Table sourced from the 2016 Census. # with possibly 3 repeaters In June 2018 on the bolded locations above, commercial and ABC/SBS broadcasting are due to start. So why has Hobart been given priority and Canberra and Darwin have been low powered trials? The ABC is supposed to cover the whole country which is impossible outside of the state capitals and their surrounds using DAB+. DRM could cover the whole country with one high power high frequency transmitter. Commercial stations have existing licence areas using AM and FM which cover most of their licence areas, however DAB+ is incapable of giving an equivalent coverage. It will only be able to cover individual towns and their surrounds. DRM can easily give the same coverage at a lower cost than at present. Contrast this with outback Australia The 2016 census statistics list the population in outback Australia from all states except Victoria as 628,000 people who in total own 522,000 vehicles. This does not include itinerant workers, commercial vehicles such as semi-trailers, grey nomads, farm vehicles and mining vehicles. Whilst the ABC may claim they have terrestrial transmitters in places like Broken Hill etc, people in these regions still have to drive long distances with no radio. ABC Emergency Broadcasting could have saved lives through the use of the DRM Emergency Warning System EWS can transmit text and audible warnings along with maps of the affected areas. This is the Emergency Warning System which is available on DRM and DAB+ digital radio. In addition the warning system can be set to activate in a specific geographic area so that those who do not need to know are not disturbed from normal national broadcasting. Examples from WA: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-17/esperance-fire-report-to-be-tabled-in- parliament/8032060?site=esperance This is where 4 people were burnt to death, because Scadden has no mobile phone coverage. If the ABC Esperance or a national high frequency DRM transmitter was in operation they could have been transmitting up to date maps of the fire’s location and text fire warnings containing the required detail. Fires do move faster than many people think. http://www.smh.com.au/national/muddled-message-led-to-ultramarathon-tragedy-20110914- 1k91c.html similarly Department of Fire & Emergency Services could have contacted the ABC and used the EWS to alert the runners if there was high frequency DRM radio operating either nationally or statewide. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-28/esperance-couple-found-alive-after-missing-10- days/7973606 Couple found after police search called off. A lot of time and money could have been saved if the DRM emergency warning system had shown the areas where the police were searching. The lost could have moved into the search area. Again no mobile phone coverage, and even if there were, the phone batteries go flat. The ABC WA high frequency broadcasting switch off. There was two high powered transmitters one for the Pilbara and the other the Kimberley with the equivalent of ABC local radio from Perth. “The first closure date was announced for December 14, 1993. However, several hundred listeners in the North-West objected to the closure of their only ABC radio coverage, and the date was extended for a few more weeks, so that alternative radio coverage could be explored. The final closure date was January 21, 1994 at 2200 UTC. And that was the end of VLW, the ABC shortwave service for the outback areas of Western Australia.” Heritage Radio Website The pattern has repeated itself! Shutdown services to the North during the holidays, monsoon and when politicians are not in Canberra! Remote area commercial broadcasters RED Media (RedFM and Spirit), FlowFM (South Central/East) and Rebel Media (RebelFM and The Breeze) Qld, should be allowed to transmit using high frequency DRM. As with commercial VAST TV, the signals are encrypted these signals could also be encrypted and the GPS location could be the key to allow decrypting when the receiver is in their coverage area. Most 4 WD drivers outside of the Pitt St farmers, would buy DRM radios with HF capability as a safety device as well as for entertainment in long drives if there were broadcasts and they were publicised. Australia’s Barrett Communications and Codan Communications who make modern high frequency two way radios for the outback should be encouraged to install a single chip DRM receiver within their two way radios so that the user can listen to the radio and still be alerted to incoming “phone” calls. Stop Press: Indonesia Despite what the ABC thinks, Indonesia with its population of 200 million has had high frequency radio for a long time is now planning a DRM national rollout, and considering they have thousands of islands, they will be using high frequency DRM. Lack of publicity for high frequency broadcasts The ABC claims there are extremely few listeners. This is their fault, because they failed to include the broadcast’s existence on ABC Darwin, ABC Katherine, ABC Alice Springs, ABC Kimberley, ABC North West, ABC Goldfields/Esperance, North and West SA, Broken Hill, ABC Western Queensland ABC Northwest Queensland. There reception line still gives impossible listening options for remote locations. The ABC is trying to kill Radio Australia On 8/7/2017 Radio Australia’s website had no programs listed, only two presenters mentioned and one program “Pacific Beat” which seems to have turned into a podcast with no mention on when new editions are posted or streamed. Program highlights only mentions “Pacific Beat” and the last highlight was in the last financial year! Note none of the podcasts work, you get a page of code instead. When Google searched it has been buried into the ABC News site. If you did not know the name of the program you would never be able to find it! The streaming program was an NRL game from the domestic ABC service. Last time I saw a program guide it was full of Radio National programs which were being repeated through the day. All non-English services have closed in February this year. http://about.abc.net.au/press- releases/abc-international-focuses-investment-in-region/?sf42744300=1 “In ways to listen” there is no mention of the ABC or other FM repeaters which are frequently mentioned as the replacement for Short Wave. It is internet only.

How can you have an audience who cannot hear you and if you can, you don’t know what is on and there are nearly no programs designed for the target audience? The ABC also owns Australia Plus which contains TV and text stories from ABC news. It contains 2 advertisers. ABC’s lack of innovation The ABC has been a poor technical performer. They were last to broadcast HD with exception of Prime TV and Imparja. It does not use FM for Local Radio in our major cities. It still has redundant AM/ FM simulcasts in a few regional areas. It is about time it was innovative and adopt DRM for regional and remote areas, which will produce large cost reductions once they switch off AM and FM. Audience figures for ABC programs which are broadcast in DAB+ and analog in 5 mainland state capitals NewsRadio AM ABC Classic FM Radio National AM JJJ FM Metro Radio AM <22, 000 <37, 000 <42,000 <100,000 <152,000 For accurate results see: http://www.gfk.com/en-au/insights/report/radio-audience-measurement- survey-summary-reports/ Having completed an accurate coverage area map as described above and as a consequence installed low powered repeaters to fill the licence area (The commercial broadcasters will want similar repeaters on common infrastructure) initially switch off 15 analog NewsRadio, ABC Classic FM and Radio National transmitters. They have a total audience of under 100,000. This only affects 0.7 % of the 5 mainland State capital population. A year later analog JJJ and Local radio should be switched off affecting another 1.8 % of the population of those cities. This will save a lot of electricity and maintenance costs. This is half the population of outback Australians who are yet to get any digital radio and some of those have Australian no radio at all. High and Medium Frequency DRM sounds better than the current AM being in stereo with the missing high pitched sounds and does not have the fading and distortion common in high frequency broadcasting. The Alternate Frequency schedule means that the listener selects the program by the broadcast name and the receiver finds the frequency and the transmission type whether it is DRM, DAB+, FM or AM. It also enable the broadcaster to change the high frequency channel at will to use the most reliable frequency it can obtain. Instead of leaving over 600,000 Australians without adequate emergency warnings and entertainment to minimise isolation the ABC Territory high frequency broadcast service must be replaced with a high powered DRM high frequency service which covers the whole continent and surrounding economic marine zone which can be achieved by a single very high powered DRM transmitter at Kulgera which is near the Alice Springs – Adelaide railway line for access. This service would need to be advertised by the ABC nationally. It could be paid for by the electricity savings by converting their existing AM and FM transmitters to DRM outside of mainland State capitals and DAB+ in State capitals.