Absolute Radio launches a new DAB digital service – Absolute Radio Extra

14Jul

Absolute Radio is launching a brand new DAB service,  Absolute Radio Extra, which will provide a dynamic content channel to the existing family of radio brands; Absolute Radio, Absolute Radio Classic Rock, Absolute 80s, Absolute Radio 90s.

Whenever Absolute Radio has exclusive and extended digital content such as uninterrupted live stage sets, football commentary or full-speech comedy programming, Absolute Radio Extra will allow listeners to choose between the services.

Absolute Radio Extra is pioneering premium and exclusive ‘red button’ style content on DAB Digital Radio to encourage further take-up. The new service will launch on Saturday August 14th with live and exclusive Barclays Premier League football commentary. The service will offer a mix of music, football commentary and content from the station’s prime talent; 

  • Extra football  content – 32 Live & Exclusive Barclays Premier League commentaries – ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Football Live’ on Saturday afternoon’s from 3pm, kicking off on August 14th on Absolute Radio Extra. An additional service to compliment Absolute Radio’s existing Rock ‘n’ Roll Football mix of music and goals fronted by Russ Williams.
  • Extra Music – Absolute Radio Extra will broadcast full live sets from Paul Weller, Paolo Nutini, Madness and Kasabian from the V Festival on the 21st/22nd of August and Kings of Leon at a future date.
  • Extra Comedy & Talent  -  Christian O’Connell, Frank Skinner, Iain Lee, Dave Gorman & Geoff Lloyd –listen again plus new and exclusive audio content.

Absolute Radio is leading the radio industry into a digital age. The station currently has 55% digital listening nationally, 48% for the family of Absolute Radio brands combined.

This new national service is being created by the station splitting its existing DAB bandwidth to create a brand new service.

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Posted by jonny on July 14, 2010

Comments (21)

  1. Gordon S Valentine @ July 14, 2010 at 10:57 am | Permalink

    Sounds good, till you read the “splitting its existing DAB bandwidth” guess I mean, they will up end up being in mono, which is bit crap.

  2. Mark @ July 14, 2010 at 1:43 pm | Permalink

    Absolute currently have 256k at their disposal (2 X 128k) on Digital One so I guess this means Absolute Radio 96k mono, Absolute 80s 80k mono, Absolute Radio Extra 80k mono.

    Not much point buying a stereo DAB radio anymore.

  3. adam @ July 14, 2010 at 3:38 pm | Permalink

    Yes – Absolute Radio and Absolute 80s will drop to mono during the period that Absolute Radio Extra is on-air. However, this is not a 24-hour service and will largely only be broadcasting during the football programming on Saturday afternoons, and the comedy programming during Sunday evenings.

    We know that many of our listeners enjoy our current music and goals coverage, and so we wanted to offer a choice of this or our live commentary. Going mono on DAB for a short period of time is the quid pro quo for being able to provide this choice of services. Dropping bit-rates for short periods of time is something that the BBC has also had to do accommodate additional services – for example in the recent Wimbledon fortnight.

    There will be one-off events such as our V Festival coverage, however look towards that *not* being in mono.

    For well over 95% of the week Absolute Radio and Absolute 80s will remain stereo services. We’re committed to offering as high quality music services to listeners as we’re able to.

  4. Adam @ July 14, 2010 at 3:38 pm | Permalink

    Great idea but if it’s in mono then what’s the point?

  5. adam @ July 14, 2010 at 3:43 pm | Permalink

    @Adam (“other” Adam that is)

    As explained above. The service will only be mono for a handful of hours per week.

  6. James @ July 14, 2010 at 6:54 pm | Permalink

    So when will Absolute be encouraging the Govt / Ofcom to launch DAB+ as the rest of Europe is using? So we can get real DAB+ radios in cars?

    This shows that the MP2 based DAB is a joke, Absolute *was* the best station at 192kbps, but now with the launch of more and more services, the bitrate has dropped to worse than FM.

    Thankfully Internet Radio is future, DAB is a horrible transition technology the UK made a big mistake deploying, as this shows very vividly.

  7. David, Northern Ireland @ July 14, 2010 at 7:29 pm | Permalink

    Once again I must voice my frustration and disappointment at DAB coverage. Northern Ireland only has 1 DAB multiplex which is operating at capacity. As an Absolute radio listener I am very much aggrieved that I am missing out by being unable to listen to Absolute Radio and its sister services on DAB. I sense a strongly worded letter of complaint to Ofcom coming on, calling for expansion of DAB services in Northern Ireland.

  8. Senior @ July 14, 2010 at 9:12 pm | Permalink

    On Digital One, will the football be on Absolute Radio or on Absolute Radio Extra? Will Freeview users hear what’s on Absolute Radio, or what’s on Absolute Radio Extra?

  9. jimbo @ July 14, 2010 at 11:52 pm | Permalink

    Will the football commentary be on satellite, or just DAB and MW?

  10. adam @ July 15, 2010 at 9:15 am | Permalink

    @David – Recent legislation brought about by the Digital Economy Act has put in place the ability of Digital One to broadcast in Northern Ireland. Prior to that, it wasn’t allowed by law strangely. I couldn’t say how quickly any expansion into Northern Ireland would take place, so you’d be better contacting Digital One.

    @Senior @jimbo – The football commentaries will be available on all our digital platforms: so DAB, Freeview, Sky, Freesat, Virgin Media, online, our mobile apps etc. And it will also be available on AM/MW. So during periods of the football, these services will all effectively be carrying “Absolute Radio Extra” programming.

    The music and goals service (that we currently offer) will continue to be available on DAB nationally, online and on FM in London.

  11. Gary Patterson @ July 23, 2010 at 8:27 pm | Permalink

    I would dearly love to have Absolute available to me on DAB in Northern Ireland as the am signal that I pick up can be a bit suspect at times. Please do some thing for your legions of fans here.

  12. Peter Henderson @ July 31, 2010 at 1:18 am | Permalink

    David/Gary:

    I’m also totally frustrated that Absolute Radio (and Digital One in general) aren’t available in NI (apparently due to the ROI’s television service still being on VHF). When I e-mailed Digital One a while ago, they did tell me they weren’t licenced to broadcast in the province so it’s good news this has now changed.

    By the way, BBC Radio Foyle are currently testing on the commercial multiplex (so there must be some free space). When the test is in progress (during the morning/early afternoon) both BBC Radio Ulster and Radio Foyle are at 64 kbps in mono. At other times the Radio Foyle place holder relays Radio Ulster and both are at 128 kbps in stereo. Surely Absolute Radio would have been a better addition to the multiplex ? There must also be enough space for at least one more station at either 118 kbps or 128 kbps in stereo.

    So come on Absolute. Why not do something for the deprived listeners in NI.

  13. Peter Henderson @ July 31, 2010 at 1:22 am | Permalink

    P.S It’s diabolical that the only way some Norn Iron listeners can get a decent signal from Absolute Radio is via the internet. Crazy in this day and age.

  14. Mark @ August 2, 2010 at 6:50 pm | Permalink

    The BBC has an allocation of 128kbps on the one commercial multiplex in NI (Block 12D). Sometimes this is split into 2 X 64kbps to allow Radio Ulster & Radio Foyle to broadcast separate programming, but at other times both station labels are pointing at the one 128kbps service. There is currently no spare capacity on this multiplex to allow for further stations.

    As stated above Ofcom has the power to vary the licence areas of multiplexes under the provisions of the Digital Economy Act 2010. If Digital One applies for an expansion into NI it will probably be approved although it will only be able to broadcast on low power in the Belfast & Antrim areas (on Block 11D) until the date when Irish analogue TV in Band III is switched off (probably December 2012).

    If Channel 4 had gone ahead with their proposed national DAB multiplex (on Block 11A) they would have faced the same issue. Only Channel 12 is clear for DAB use in most of NI until the date when RTE switches off its Band III TV transmissions.

  15. ian @ August 22, 2010 at 12:14 pm | Permalink

    I thought Absolute radio Extra said that sets would be full and uninterupted? Then why was Paul Wellers set only a pathetic 26 mins?

    Please explain?????

  16. ron dobbyn @ October 25, 2010 at 11:37 am | Permalink

    Lets have 90,s country on absolute that was a great time for country music

  17. Pete @ November 19, 2010 at 3:59 pm | Permalink

    When DAB was first launched, national radio stations were broadcast at 192 kb/sec and sounded great! Since then bit/rates and in turn sound quality have been steadily reduced in an attempt to cram a few extra channels per multiplex. When Virgin was broadcast at 160 kb/sec it sounded a lot better than Absolute radio does today at 128 kb/sec. These days the internet, freesat and sometimes freeview provide higher sound quality than DAB. If we must be bombarded with lots of extra channels, “Please do us all a favour and keep these off DAB”, so that we can have decent sound quality back. If Absolute radio ever returns to 192 kb/sec on DAB, I and I suspect many others will be listening! (even if its in the middle of the night). I’d say lets have DAB+, but then thats likely to go the same way as DAB, more channels > lower sound quality.

  18. Mark @ November 19, 2010 at 6:39 pm | Permalink

    I think you’ve been taken in by the bit rate on your display when it comes to the audio quality Pete.

    When Absolute (previously Virgin) was broadcasting at 160kbps they were using 10 year old encoders and transcoding. When they dropped to 128kbps they bought brand-new more efficient encoders and stopped transcoding to make the audio much cleaner, so the audio was actually improved compared with the 160kbps output (Virgin at 160k had never sounded anything like BBC R3 at 160k). Someone who used to work at Virgin has confirmed this. The MP2 encoders have become more efficient in the last ten years so the bit rate can be lower for the equivalent audio quality.

    In general people prefer the extra choice otherwise there is no point in ditching FM/AM. This was proved recently when 6 Music was in danger of being scrapped with many comments such as “I might as well go back to FM now”.

    Personally I would like to see Absolute Classic Rock on D1 as well, but I guess it would have to replace Planet Rock.

  19. Peter Henderson @ November 20, 2010 at 5:22 pm | Permalink

    Personally, I’d like to see some form of Absolute Radio on DAB in Northern Ireland at least.

    Currently we have Q102.9 from Londonderry (Derry) and it sounds absolutely awful, even at 128 kbps. The volume is way lower than all the other stations and it’s also slightly distorted. I would imagine there are probably very few listeners to this station, especially in the graeter Belfast area.

    In my opinion, it would be better if the local commercial multiplex in NI dropped this station in favour of Absolute Radio instead. At least then we would have all the National commercial stations on DAB here.

  20. James @ November 20, 2010 at 7:44 pm | Permalink

    Mark – surprised at your comment. I own a Roberts DAB and WiFi radio, and the difference between DAB and internet quality is out of this world.

    Most of my friends have tried DAB and gone back to FM. Luckily we live in an area where Absolute’s main service is available on FM; and we are in a “high quality” Digital One reception area.

    MP2 just doesn’t cut it now that we have AAC (mpeg 4 audio) playing iPhones and Android devices.

    Where’s DAB+ Ofcom?

  21. Pete @ November 22, 2010 at 10:49 am | Permalink

    Mark – Thank you for your insight and for correcting me. All I can really say is in my experience (apart from Radio 3) Virgin/Absolute on DAB used to sound better than the other stations. Listening over the weekend, I’m not sure I can tell the difference anymore, and previously put this down to the broadcast bit/rate. That said, there could be many reasons for this etc.

    To come back to the subject of the original thread. I do understand the need for a commercial DAB commentary type service of which ARExtra will provide. Enabling people out and about to keep up to date with major sporting events. Presumably (and I am not one), there are enough people with DAB enabled car radios or portables to make such a service worthwhile. To be fair to AR (Absolute Radio), the implementation of DAB in the UK is nothing to do with them.

    My original comment was more of a complaint about DAB audio quality and the continuing reduction in bit/rates. Apparently though according to the DAB industry and Ofcom it is only a very small minority who have any issue with DAB sound quality, ref: http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/consultations/futureradio/summary

    Lastly, I am actually a big fan of DAB and like everything about it (fast on/off, rewind, pause, record from EPG etc) and try very hard to ignore my brain which keeps telling me that music should sound a lot better than it does.

    For those people not happy with DAB, (or if you live in NI) try for example listening via your PC to the AR Ogg Vorbis 160k feed available at: http://www.absoluteradio.co.uk/listen/on_your_computer.html?utm_source=left_nav

    (see the info on the 1mb bit feed to install VLC)

    Want to go back to DAB now ?

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  1. Tweets that mention Absolute Radio launches a new DAB digital service – Absolute Radio Extra – One Golden Square -- Topsy.com
    @ July 14, 2010 at 10:13 am

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Absolute Radio. Absolute Radio said: Want extra music? Extra football? Extra comedy? Nodding furiously yet? A new service is coming – Absolute Radio Extra: http://bit.ly/ARExtra [...]

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