Absolute Radio on 1215 / 1197 to be switched off.

Yep, must have been some shock to move from 647 which was a clear frequency for the most part. Although I recall reading that even as early as 1978, most Radio 3 listeners were on FM so it wasn't as much of an issue.

Shortly after the last TX was turned off Bauer informed the UK regulator that it had turned off its AM transmitters.....8 years ahead of schedule !

Bauer now have to explain their actions which will see the AM licence revoked and a fine .

How big that fine will be is unknown , and there is an additional issue around DAB coverage as the DAB distribution was a result of holding the AM licence.......

Separately there have been a few reports of Bauer turning down the power on some of its FM outlets but nothing official.

Re 5 live & Talk sport, the last Rajar showed 40% AM listenership.

The figures are the official figures, not anecdotal or an attempt to discredit DAB !

Talksport will not leave AM before 5 live.

'Declining ' not dwindling.

There proposal was a reaction to Absolute switching oFF some of its AM TXs.

If 40% of your audience are listening on AM and your main competitor is also on AM you are not going to be leaving AM anytime soon.

Re: The "investigation" by Ofcom by Bauer switching off their MW network for Absolute Radio - it was confirmed back when they were seeking (and got) permission to close some low power sites and reduce the ERP of the main high power sites from Absolute Radio that at any stage the owners of the station could formally hand back the INR2 MW licence without penalty at any time. If Bauer are playing stupid gits by not formally handing back the INR2 licence ASAP or with notice, then they deserve to be fined (plus it'll not help their relationship with Ofcom in the future if they want some concession etc.) but it's largely a storm in a tea cup for now and any fine is likely to be negligible in the greater scheme of things. As concerning capacity on the Digital 1 DAB ensemble, the rules as I understand it for the INR stations are that they are given "priority" preference for any available capacity. In theory, were the INR2 licence to be re-advertised and awarded, then the new licence holder would be able to gain preference to any newly available capacity on Digital 1 were it to become available - but this wouldn't affect Absolute Radio in its current form as long as they remain on the platform. In any case, Ofcom haven't signalled any intention to readvertise the licence, though wherever it might be forced legally to do so due to the conditions in the UK Broadcasting Act 1990?

To to MW listening concerning BBC 5 Live & Talk Sport, the last figures I seen for both stations gave around 30-35% of their listeners or listening hours accessing the station via MW transmissions. I suspect that most such listening cases are in cars where the radio hasn't DAB available, or with bedroom clock radios. Otherwise they're available on DAB, Freeview, satellite (both Sky & Freesat), Virgin Media & online for home listening. As more older cars get taken off the road and newer cars are being fitted with DAB as standard in all cases, even a relatively low bitrate MP2 DAB broadcast is almost always better than listening to the MW broadcasts from both stations with suffer a lot from co-channel interference & fading where recent observations of both networks shows that co-channel transmitters are well out of sync with each other. 2027 is the provisional date being penciled in for the shutdown of all MW broadcasts in the UK (with a few exceptions possibly for community broadcasters - I can see Radio Caroline wanting to keep going), and Talk Sport have already shut own a few of their low-powered fillers inc. the one in Derry. Another issue for these broadcasters is that in terms of equipment, maintenance & electricity costs, MW transmitters are relatively expensive to run for a declining audience, something like 2% of the total radio listening in the UK but 35% of the electric & maintenance costs.

Also, to be fair to Absolute & Virgin before it, they knew when they launched nearly 30 years ago that they had a sub-standard transmission network even back then, so they were often one of the first in the UK - if not thee first - to use or promote alternative listening methods. For example, Richard Branson was looking to get the station on to FM by replacing BBC Radio 4's FM network (Good luck with that! Although by that stage the 105-108 MHz portion of the FM Band was still empty of broadcasts in the UK), they got an FM licence for London, they made sure they got in plenty of low-powered filler stations in key population centres that had reception issues on 1215 kHz, they promoted receiving the station on analogue satellite in the 90's more than pretty much any other national station did that also was available (it used two audio subcarrier channels on the same transponder as Sky News) and later on were on Sky Digital pretty much from the start, they started internet streaming in the mid-90's (1996 I think) and even more than 20 years ago they were promoting their availability on DAB, giving away receivers as prizes on air, to promoting high-bitrate internet streams including lossless FLAC & OGG formats - unfortunately Bauer taking over the station saw these high-bitrate streams close down, with the "free" streams now limited to MP3 & AAC formats, 128kbps at best.

We're well in the twilight years of MW & LW radio in this part of the world, even the Spanish broadcasters aren't replacing any MW transmitters that are breaking down., and scanning the MW band here at night would see about half of all frequencies if not more occupied by a Spanish TX The only country that seems to be maintaining their multiple AM networks for now is Romania (as well as Ukraine & Russia bring out some TXs that were mothballed - though these are extraordinary circumstances and it's debatable wherever these broadcasts have more than a negligible effect in terms of propaganda/narrative).

This is old news from 3 years ago, 2020 and was already implemented then.

It was the closure of 7 smaller sites (the southwest of England being particularly impacted with 4 sites there closed) :

"closing seven transmitter sites. These transmitters are located at Rosemarkie (Inverness), Redruth (Cornwall), Redmoss (Aberdeen), Londonderry (Northern Ireland), Occombe (Devon), Plummers Barracks (Plymouth) and Pearce’s Hall (Devon). "

The closure of the Derry 1053 transmitter would obviously have impacted neighboring Donegal as well with areas which would have had a good reception from it (the site continues to transmit BBC on MW:.

https://www.google.com/maps/@55.0052288,-7.3680819,3a,75y,190.26h,102.94t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sAAjCqo3_8DNwvODYZJUDzw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

http://tx.mb21.co.uk/gallery/gallerypage.php?txid=890

All transmitting aerials have their radiating elements correspond to a large extent to the transmission frequency they are used for - this is no different for MW & LW broadcast transmissions. Ideally for good groundwave coverage from a site at such frequencies you're looking for a radiating mast, tower or some other element (e.g. sloping wire, like is used for the MW transmissions on Sherrif's Mountain in Derry or Crystal Palace in London) correspond to a length between 0.25 to 0.62 of the wavelength to be broadcast. Usually it is the case outside of this that the radiating element(s) are less than 0.25 of a wavelength long, but at long as the mast isn't too short to use it can be used at the expense of some efficiencies e.g. the main radiation lobe being a bit higher than ideal, and less TX power received at the antenna being radiated** - however a radiating element beyond a length of 0.62 wavelengths is to be avoided at pretty much all costs because beyond this the lobes start to become "broken up" with more of the power directed skywards and less hugging along close to the ground, hence the likes of the Blaw-Know mast at Lisnagarvey getting decapitated - even on the link on my last post, they mention that even going to 0.62 (or 5/8ths) of a wavelength is getting uncomfortably close to having a significant high-angle component reducing the fading-free area, and that the ideal would be just over 0.5 (or 1/2) a wavelength long. Then you might introduce complications where multiple transmissions might use the same radiator - some setups in the UK used to have up to five services broadcast from the same antenna (this included the Derry & Enniskillen sites in the past), but if they don't have services using tens of kW of power each and they aren't too close in frequency to each other, then it's less of a problem.

Again, as the linked article mentioned, the ideal behind the Blaw-Knox design was one of marketing & hype than any actual breakthrough RF engineering discovery, and the BBC weren't going to get fooled again after Lisnagarvey was in service. And while some Blaw-Knox masts are local iconic landmarks in other parts of the world, there's no such sentiment for the Lisnagarvey one that I'm aware of. Once BBC Radio 4 is switched off on 720 kHz eventually, I reckon the mast will eventually be dismantled with little fuss.

(** A lot of the low power RSL or MW community stations in the UK use or used to use quite short towers for the frequency the broadcast on, IIRC the 1 watt BFBS long-term RSL MW transmitters that they used to use in NI needed around 30-40 watts of transmitter power to give 1 watt ERP output, even when using an inductive loading coil to "tune" the antenna and a fairly modern & efficient AM transmitter.)