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Old 30th Sep 2017, 7:25 am   #21
JohnBHanson
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Default Re: Don't know how to use a radio anymore?

I heard this too, so I thought I would try and look up the frequency of Radio 1 on the BBC website as it is not a station I listen to. I was surprised on how hard it was. I to remember it on 247m MW but I could only find a VHF listing on the BBC website. Very strange that it was that hard to find - but I don't use the internet that much anyway.
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Old 30th Sep 2017, 7:55 am   #22
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Default Re: Don't know how to use a radio anymore?

Regarding using a radio.....
How many here on this forum have ever used a reaction control?
.........or turned up the volts on a bright emitter !!
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Old 30th Sep 2017, 10:52 am   #23
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Default Re: Don't know how to use a radio anymore?

If its intended audience do not use radio, why does Radio 1 still have a national FM chain dedicated for it? Perhaps it should follow BBC3? Maybe someone else could use the FM for something more useful?
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Old 30th Sep 2017, 11:13 am   #24
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Default Re: Don't know how to use a radio anymore?

Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnBHanson View Post
I heard this too, so I thought I would try and look up the frequency of Radio 1 on the BBC website as it is not a station I listen to. I was surprised on how hard it was. I to remember it on 247m MW but I could only find a VHF listing on the BBC website. Very strange that it was that hard to find - but I don't use the internet that much anyway.
R1 hasn't had a MW frequency since 1994. The FM network mostly uses frequencies around 99MHz freed up when police transmissions left the FM broadcast band.

It has indeed been suggested that R1/R1Xtra move to an internet streaming model similar to Spotify. Not only would this free up the FM network, it would allow the remaining BBC radio services on Freeview and (especially) DAB to use more acceptable bitrates.
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Old 30th Sep 2017, 11:55 am   #25
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Default Re: Don't know how to use a radio anymore?

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Originally Posted by G8HQP Dave View Post
If its intended audience do not use radio, why does Radio 1 still have a national FM chain dedicated for it? Perhaps it should follow BBC3? Maybe someone else could use the FM for something more useful?
Indeed. Perhaps entertainment for (dare I say) the older demographic who still have radio sets and feel ignored by the BBC and commercial stations and for those who prefer intelligent conversation between musical entertainment to non-stop pop, inane prattle and the homogenised dumbed-down output of mainstream radio.

You probably wouldn't have to pay a £1.5 million for a capable presenter either.
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Old 30th Sep 2017, 12:15 pm   #26
Al (astral highway)
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Default Re: Don't know how to use a radio anymore?

I used to work for the BBC. Even ten years ago, the BBC went through a conceptual shift partly as a result of cost-cutting and partly in response to the digital challenge.

The shift was from making 'programmes' to one of making 'content.' According to this shift, content is something that can be experienced through a variety of 'platforms', which include online, TV and radio sets and mobile devices. 'Content' can be accessed through all of these things.

There's absolutely no reason why a kid exposed to this paradigm shift should have even seen a radio, let alone understand how it works or how to 'tune' it.
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Old 30th Sep 2017, 1:43 pm   #27
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Default Re: Don't know how to use a radio anymore?

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Originally Posted by paulsherwin View Post
It has indeed been suggested that R1/R1Xtra move to an internet streaming model similar to Spotify. Not only would this free up the FM network, it would allow the remaining BBC radio services on Freeview and (especially) DAB to use more acceptable bitrates.
Given that R1 and R2 have consistently the highest listenership of any BBC radio stations, I would think it expedient to keep them both available on as many platforms as possible including FM: if anything should be shoved off into a corner it's low-listenership Radio 3, the stupid "R4 LW Optout" stuff [Test match special and the daily service] and most of BBC local radio [or "Care Home FM" as a friend calls it].

[I always thought it utterly daft that R1 was the last of the BBC National stations to get a permanent FM allocation back in the early-1980s. Given their listenership they should have had first claim on a FM slot, if only to help the under-25s establish a 'listening to the BBC' habit...]
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Old 30th Sep 2017, 7:51 pm   #28
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Default Re: Don't know how to use a radio anymore?

One off topic post deleted.
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Old 2nd Oct 2017, 12:09 am   #29
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Default Re: Don't know how to use a radio anymore?

Most of the kids will listen to radio from time to time. When they are in cars and some public places. For example our doctors have the radio on, but I find it annoying. They also have to pay a licence for it! Money that could be better spent elsewhere.
Like most things the fact that young people don't know how to use an old radio doesn't mean they are stupid or loosing touch with reality. I think the news report was more or less aimed at older people and designed to ridicule young people for the benefit of the older people, who think that young people are daft. Exactly the same way as Private Pike is treated in Dad's Army. That BBC report was the same as saying "you stupid boy".
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Old 2nd Oct 2017, 11:51 am   #30
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From working in a small comunity station there used to be a book published with suggested questions, on this day and such useful items!
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Old 2nd Oct 2017, 12:39 pm   #31
Al (astral highway)
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Default Re: Don't know how to use a radio anymore?

A smartphone, of course, is among other things a radio receiver and transmitter. Most in the peer group of my young teenage son have a smartphone. Probably not one thinks of it as a kind of radio.

My son sees the stuff I repair all around here but has little interest in its historicity or aethetics, and nor do his friends.

The world they're in is much more about gaining social currency or increasing the value of their personal brand by actually producing content on various platforms - Instagram among others, but YouTube is the 'go to'. They want subscribers and have barely-veiled fantasies of becoming Vlogging multi-millionaires.

My son has certainly been all over film production to a high standard for a while, using nothing more than a smartphone. The results are easily as what a film school student could do with a lot of effort in the 1990s.

Things move on. Radio sets don't look like they did, but here we are carrying around with us broadcast radios that work around a couple of GHz, without even thinking about it.
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Old 2nd Oct 2017, 2:28 pm   #32
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Default Re: Don't know how to use a radio anymore?

Quite. Not just radio either, television and a music centre too, with satellite navigation thrown in for good measure!
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Old 2nd Oct 2017, 2:55 pm   #33
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Get lost! (GPS reference) Not a rebuke but a way of finding stuff you never knew existed. It is all to "up to you" these days and all that will happen is people get more and more self centred.

Yesterday I went to a planned point (Farnham Castle) this bit was programmed (sat nav on). On the way back I got a bit lost (sat nav off, I know where I live) and found a Saxon church, wonderful building, got a cup of coffee and a guided tour too. I would have missed that if I went home by sat nav let alone the 5 mile queue into Bracknell. "Your computer says go this way"
BTW I don't have (and never want) a mobile 'phone.

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Old 2nd Oct 2017, 3:33 pm   #34
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Default Re: Don't know how to use a radio anymore?

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I don't have (and never want) a mobile 'phone.
My smartphone keeps me in touch with my family, wouldn’t be without it. I was out last night, volunteering, phone rang, my 8 year old granddaughter, her mum had ask her to call me, on her mums phone. Wonderful, that 5 mins would not have happened without the mobile, even better it was a video call.

So if you don’t want one that’s ok, but I would miss those sort of moments. Same with my other grandchildren, none live local to me.
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Old 2nd Oct 2017, 4:28 pm   #35
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Default Re: Don't know how to use a radio anymore?

You would have to pry my smartphone out of my cold dead hands. It allows me to leverage many critical advantages in life which free up a lot of time and make a lot of money. For example I did my food shopping today in about 10 minutes and it'll be delivered tomorrow. That's a two hour job if I have to go out. I can actually manage an entire 114-strong software team from it. It's amazing little box.

If I was to reset my brain entirely and put my spock ears on, I can say there's no reason I would purchase a radio today, not even a DAB one as there's no advantage to leverage, and that's where the people they interviewed are. I only like playing with the things because there's a raw closeness to the physical universe that isn't hidden by layers of abstraction. Call it elegance in simplicity instead. Perhaps it's the ability to comprehensively understand the entire system; a difficult feat today with very modern technology. That and some nostalgia of my youth and the fact the parts are big enough for me to see. None of that really has much point to it, but I enjoy it and that's good enough for me.

Incidentally I gave my eldest, who is 14, an AM/FM radio and she worked it out in two minutes flat and it was discarded in about a week. My father-in-law gave her a portable DAB radio, she found Kerrang on it and within a week was back streaming again because they didn't play what she liked. I'm kind of with her on that; most of my content is streamed and I'm a glutton for choice.
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Old 2nd Oct 2017, 6:25 pm   #36
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Default Re: Don't know how to use a radio anymore?

The problem with one device doing everything as opposed to separate devices each doing only one thing, is that they all break together -- you can't listen to the radio when the TV is not working, or write a letter when the phone is out of action.
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Old 2nd Oct 2017, 6:31 pm   #37
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Default Re: Don't know how to use a radio anymore?

That’s what AppleCare is for. If I break it, they courier me a new one out next day and a box to put the dead one in and send back or I can go into an Apple store and get it swapped out there and then.
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Old 2nd Oct 2017, 8:36 pm   #38
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Default Re: Don't know how to use a radio anymore?

I think few would have just one device so being without completely I think would be rare. Of course I only know those in my circle but they at least have a radio, TV and a phone of some type.
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Old 2nd Oct 2017, 8:51 pm   #39
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Default Re: Don't know how to use a radio anymore?

I have a thickphone. It's so stupid it doesn't know it's supposed to break when dropped. It's so ancient it still thinks that a battery is a jolly good place to keep some electricity.

And when I'm in the back of beyond, mine's the one which can still get a connection.

I'd quite like a smartphone, but before I get one, they'll have to at least equal what a twelve year old thick one can do. I'm not prepared to take a retrograde step on their performance as a telephone.

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Old 2nd Oct 2017, 9:18 pm   #40
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Default Re: Don't know how to use a radio anymore?

When it comes down to it, we get what suits us, as it should be.
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