Norway Kills The FM Radio Star – Could It Happen Here?

Norway became the first country to begin a campaign of shutting down FM radio signals this week. The nation’s “Radio Digitization” program began on 1/11 at 11:11 am – a start time with a very “digital” feel. The FM shutdown will run through 2017 county by county, until the last FM signal is squelched and the airwaves over Norway go cold and silent in mid-December.

FM radio was once the centerpiece for generations of music. The very term “FM radio” conjures nostalgia for a time when everyone’s music came from only a handful of local stations. The same hot new song that everyone was talking about could often be heard from different directions, spilling out over a humid summer night.

By the late 70s, FM also had its detractors in a generation of young people frustrated by the centralized control of popular music by an FM oligarchy. The term “FM rock” was used as derisive shorthand for formerly relevant 60s musicians who had grown old and overblown. For all their technical intricacy the music was often sterile with self-indulgent arena performances complete with laser shows. Rock was ripe for disruption. But the beat of FM rock would go on, with many of those same young people of the late 70s and 80s bringing rock and roll back to its roots and driving it to dominate the FM airwaves right through the 90s.

It’s funny how much passion and social significance can be assigned to an electromagnetic spectrum of analog frequencies that blanket a nation. Ask yourself - how would Americans feel if the country was about to permanently switch off FM radio?

Why Norway Killed FM
Norway broadcaster NRK says the country decided to shut down FM stations and turn to Digital Audio Broadcasting to take advantage of the format’s many digital features – including better sound quality. But the Norwegian government says the switch will save the nation some 180-million Kroner per-year, or about 25 million dollars. Due to Norway’s natural landscape with mountains and fjords, covering the country in FM radio signals was never easy. According to Oyvind Vasasen at NRK, “The costs of maintaining an upgraded FM system would in the long run affect the quality of programs we can offer the listeners.”

Predictably, dropping FM radio signals has brought a spike in radio sales to Norway. DAB radio sales tripled in the months leading up to Christmas. The demand was particularly high in the county of Nordland, the first county to lose FM signals on Jan. 11.

Are Nationwide Shutdowns of FM Likely to Spread to Other Nations?
Large-scale movement away from FM toward Digital Audio Broadcast could very well spread in the EU. Sweden has already considered the idea but is probably (wisely) waiting to see how the conversion works for its Scandinavian neighbor.

But it will be a long time before the US is ready to shut down FM. Part of the reason is that there is no obvious radio successor to replace it. The DAB radio standard has never really caught on in the US. In fact, many radio stations across the US and Canada use HD radio, which can send a digital signal over conventional radio frequencies.

But that doesn’t mean the place of FM radio is safe. On the contrary, the business has been on a decades-long downturn.

According to a 2016 report by Strategy Analytics, AM/FM radio is still the top source of in-car infotainment in the US. But the study concludes that daily use of traditional airwaves is in steady decline. Not surprisingly, the percentage of consumers who even want a conventional car radio that includes AM/FM and a CD player is also trending downward.

The Real Radio Killer
Traditional broadcast radio in North America probably has nothing to worry about from DAB, HD or satellite radio. Instead, America’s FM airwaves killer is likely to be digital networks. As digital expands and becomes more stable, cost per Meg declines, and in-car integration becomes easier with new systems from Apple, Android and Microsoft, fewer people are switching on the radio.

Any government program aimed at replacing FM with a competing broadcast standard is more likely to simply kill broadcast radio for good. Many feel this way about Norway’s effort to move to DAB from FM. For many, the in-car radio is just a Bluetooth conduit for content available on their phone or other in-car devices.

As Norway kills FM with a dramatic final flick of a switch, our method of execution may be different but we could be in the midst of the dying days of FM on our side of the ocean too. For us the death of FM will be a slow, gradual decline as the only ones left listening are an aging demographic that remembers when FM airwaves once pulsed with the dreams of a young and passionate generation.