Medium Wave Radio

With so many radio stations available on FM, Dab, Freeview and Sky nowadays, does anyone still listen to medium wave (MW)?

Here are the national stations you can get on it:

BBC Radio Five Live 909 and 693 (990 in some areas)
BBC World Service 648
talkSPORT: 1053 and 1089 (plus 1107 and 1071 in certain places)

Plus various local stations.

Sound quality never has been that brilliant on medium wave, has it? FM offers superior quality, and in stereo if you have a stereo radio. Medium wave is only mono. Why, in the 21st century, is medium wave only mono? If they can transmit stereo sound on FM, why not on medium wave?

In my opinion, medium wave sound quality gets worse after dark. It tends to sound "hossily" (background squeaky / whining noise) in the evening / through the night? Anyone know what causes that "hossily" sound? You don't get that on FM.

My radio at home (Bath) is only ever tuned to Bath FM. I mostly listen to the 8am news and weather when having my breakfast, though sometimes I put it on Bath FM for a bit in the evening, close to bedtime (when a tape / CD has finished playing and there isn't time for me to play another tape / CD in its entirety before bed). I never put my radio on medium wave or long wave.

The reason MW is still used is because most of us only have FM/MW sets in our cars, so the only way to listen to sports coverage is by listening to Radio 5 on MW.

What does "hossily" mean

AM Stereo has been possible for many years, and trialled on MW in the UK a couple of times. I have recollections of Capital using it for a while on their AM frequency in the 80s?

It was more popular in the US - where AM MW is more popular in general because it covers a wider area than FM VHF.

However AM MW Stereo will never sound as good as FM stereo because it has less bandwith (i.e. less space to carry the audio) and uses a less robust modulation scheme (AM is more susceptible to clicks and pops than FM)

DRM is the digital system proposed (and adopted) to replace most AM radio broadcasts, and DAB/DAB+ is likely to replace VHF FM stuff in the fullness of time (before 2020).

The EBU/EICTA? is aiming to produce a "Digital Radio" spec I believe which will combine DAB/DAB+ and DRM technologies into a single unit, and market it in the same way that "HD Ready" has worked for TVs. (Buy one unit knowing it will work across Europe irrespective of local standards)

Another issue that needs to be sorted in the UK is that FM VHF has a more effective travel/traffic news implementation than DAB - which still doesn't have a decent TA implementation (I believe one reason for this is that the BBC RDS Travel system is running on ancient hardware with an unknown code-base so can't be ported to other platforms and would require a start from scratch approach?)

LW is the one that's not really used in the UK that much anymore is it? Apart from Radio 5 Live the only other station I can remember on there was Atlantic 252, which went bust a few years back IIRC.

Regarding the old FM/AM, once they stations are made to move off of those frequencies who or what is going to use them?

I don't think Radio 5 has ever been on LW ... always been 909/693 even before the 'live' bit.

Were you thinking of Radio 4?

By that I mean the background noise you tend to get on MW at night. If you've ever listened to MW stations in the evening / night, you may have noticed a squeaking / whining noise in the background. That's what I mean by "hossily".

IIRC, that is interference from the rest of the continent. For some reason, and I'm no scientist so don't ask me why, the phenomenen only happens during the hours of darkness.

The original Radio 5 never was on long wave. When it launched on 27 August 1990, it was on 693 and 909 kHz AM medium wave.. Those were the frequencies previously used Radio 2 from 23 November 1978 to 26 August 1990. The present Radio 5 Live replaced the original Radio 5 on 28 March 1994. Why the change I don't know. Pie in the sky really. Apart from appending "Live" to the back end of the name, what else changed about the station?

Radio 4 has been on 198 kHz long wave since autumn 1978.

I don't listen to LW/MW myself, although I do listen to the MW stations such as 5 Live and Absolute Radio on my DAB radio. The simple reason for this is the sound quality, especially on the days MW becomes more suspectible to 'whining' in the background, which can get very annoying, very quickly. Even though I don't normally listen to LW/MW, I do have LW/MW tuning on the FM tuner I have, and the reception on it is rather good.

Oh right, of course.

If you think it's bad trying to listen to MW output, try broadcasting on a MW station and listen to the off air output through your headphones. It's like an endurance test.