On Thu, 02 Aug 2007 13:46:40 -0700, laura halliday wrote:
There are still Radio 1 repeaters on AM in small towns. All the new
stuff is on FM. There was a major stink a few years ago when CBC
Toronto traded in their old AM frequency for the last available FM
frequency in the Toronto/Hamilton/Buffalo area.

Absolutely, though those are disappearing too. I saw one in Iron Bridge,
Ont. two years ago - a wire about 15m long strung between two phone poles,
a surprisingly stout building housing the 40-watt transmitter. Maybe that
was Premiere Chaine, not Radio 1? I forget...

One issue that has been raised as a stumbling block to DAB in the
Americas is that multiplexes require stations to share a frequency -
stations that are otherwise competitors.

Here in the States duopolies have led to the situation where one owner
would be able to use an entire multiplex pretty easily. I think the real
stumbling block here was that Eureka would give Acme Radiocorp's 250-watt
daytime-only AM station exactly the same coverage (and full-quality audio)
as XYZ Broadcasting's 100kw FM. XYZ would rather not have the
competition.

The only remaining multiplex here has the three CBC English networks and
the two CBC French networks. The other multi- plexes, before they were
turned down, had stations owned by the same companies on them (Corus,
CHUM).

Radio 3 is on the air on DAB?

We (hams) have oodles of bandwidth in our microwave bands. We could play
with this stuff too.

German hams have been messing with amateur digital TV - their board
supports our ATSC standard too.