RTÉ News report on Medium Wave closedown 24/03/08

[@quizman1967]

I enjoyed listening to RTE on medium wave from Ulverston in Cumbria. This was a sad day. Couldn't pick up RTE on FM. Thank goodness for the internet.

[@europa2000man]

Did you try getting RTE Radio 1 on Long Wave at 252khz? That's still on the air the the foreseeable future, that's if you want a free way and analog way of receiving Radio 1.

[@irishanorak]

RTÉ Radio is also available on Freesat in the UK

[@bratina501]

@FelixTheHouseFreak I don't think it will anytime soon for a few reasons. One, the US is MUCH larger than Ireland so it makes sense for an AM station to remain on the air since it carries better than FM over a wider area. Two, the AM band is found in most receivers available for sale in the US so more people can listen. And three, many of these stations are very well established in the communities and areas they serve and their listeners would be upset if the stations went off the air.

[@FelixTheHouseFreak]

Its a shame to see an era fade away. I hope AM doesnt go away anytime soon here in the US. I want to keep my old tube radios receiving AM signals without having to use my own transmitter for everything.

[@tripledonkey]

I'm just glad we have analog radio at all still. I can forsee a day when it's all gone, and I will have to be using a mini transmitter to feed my analog radios from some horrid digital signal.... :(

[@gmcjetpilot]

Those are great accents, its so Irish! Ha-ha. In America Medium Wave is just "AM Radio". AM in the USA is still popular for talk, news & sports. AM in the USA has really been helped by political talk radio the last 15 years. There are many 50,000 watt AM stations that can be heard 300-1000 miles away at night, but it's correct, internet streaming audio, podcast, satellite and FM is competition. In the USA, LF and shortwave is really only popular with radio hobbyist not the general public.

[@Live1052]

My god the size of that transmitter system!! Thats insane!

[@Cringle84]

well I guess Ireland is a small continent, so a Mediumwave may be a bit bulky in coverage, but mind you, how about replacing the huge transmitter with a smaller more efficient solid state one, here in Australia, we have commercial stations that transmit 5000 watts and they cover nearly thousand kilometres, thats like the power draw of two kettles, its not much! analog radio should still be kept alive, digital radio is flawed and FM stereo is old 50's technology... go 1980's AM Stereo technology!

[@irishanorak]

I would like to believe this, but somehow, I can't see this catching on. Internet Radio is the way to go now.

[@mikemlw]

Big mistake closing medium wave. Also at 1:28 he says really positive things about LW 252 and now there planning on closing that aswell. Wonder what he's thinking now

[@irishanorak]

In the end, they left the 252Khz transmitter on air. However, as you can imagine, energy costs have gone through the roof, so it will be very difficult to justify the huge energy bill for this LW transmitter.

[@Cringle84]

the methods they use on encoding digital radio has extremely agressive compression algorithms, resulting in rather artificial sound quality. Mediumwave better potential in Australia because our towns are not so close together so AM stations can broadcast wider bandwith, which cant be done in ireland. Its a shame because AM stereo actually sounds really good, I actually have AM stereo tuners, and the sound quality is comparable to FM, better on my own LP transmitter due to less audio processing.

[@digitalmediafan]

Christopher O'Reilly are there any stations still broadcasting in am stereo in Australia I wonder...I think not ?

[@sinusgolf]

let the big radio's leave mw and sw so that pirate stations can take over.

[@cerinolancerinolan7148]

The end of an era

[@gramach]

very good, nice bit of history

[@andy240190]

I don't know if it a good thing are what

[@AnthonyClan1912]

Click didn't last long