Dutch commercial radio stations on mediumwave
I've had several enquiries as to when I expect the new mediumwave stations awarded licences last week to start broadcasting. Some people, it seems, imagined they would materialise out of the ether immediately. The simple truth is, nobody knows - not even the people who got the licences.
Those of you who have been following the long-running saga of the debates over the procedure for allocating licences will know that they should have been awarded last year. The politicians wanted to delay the process even longer, but a judge finally said enough is enough, and the uncertaintly has to end.
So a three man commission was appointed by the government, and the judge said it had to announce its decisions before 1 June. That was the date already planned for the completion of the so-called zerobase project, a complete reshuffling of frequencies. One of its provisions was an end to the duplication of FM services on AM. The two transmission providers, Nozema and Broadcast Partners, said that they would press ahead according to the agreed timetable regardless of the arguments about licences. That's what they did, and that's why the public broadcasters vacated 1008 kHz.
What all this means is that the transmitters are ready, but some of the broadcasters aren't ready to "move in." Except Radio 538, which gets a mediumwave channel to cover the extreme south of the country where it has no FM coverage. According to Wian Stienstra quoted in DX Listening Digest, they're waiting for an audio processor to be installed at Hulsberg, and when that's done they'll start using 891 kHz.
For the rest, we'll report developments as soon as they happen, but as I told one correspondent today, I don't have a crystal ball. But I'm not expecting anything to change imminently, so you mediumwave DXers out there can enjoy the bonus of a few relatively clear frequencies if you live in countries close to The Netherlands :-)
8:26:43 PM 
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