Introduction

The UK has relatively few FM stations compared to most other countries. For example, London has 14 city wide stations on FM; Birmingham and Glasgow have 11 large scale stations licensed; Manchester, Cardiff and Edinburgh have 10; while Leeds, Newcastle and Bristol have 9. By contrast, Paris has about 30 city wide stations, Amsterdam 23 and Berlin about 25. Looking at smaller cities, Eindhoven and Frankfurt both have 13 FM stations. This article explores the reasons why.

Universal coverage versus city stations

The more radio stations with universal coverage a country has, the less spectrum is available for extra stations in the main cities. The UK has 6 universal coverage services on FM: Radios 1 to 4, BBC local and regional radio and the first tier of independent local radio. Classic FM has near universal coverage. By contrast, France has 4 universal and one near- universal coverage services, the Netherlands has 5 universal coverage services and Germany has 4 or 5, depending on the state. Consequently, other countries have more space for city stations.

Geography

The UK is a densely populated country, with major towns and cities close together. The number of stations in Birmingham affects the number of stations you can have in Coventry and Wolverhampton. The same applies with Manchester and Liverpool, Bristol and Cardiff, Leeds and Bradford and so on. In more sparsely populated countries, such as France and Spain, the main population centres are much further apart, enabling them to have more radio stations without interfering with their neighbours. The Netherlands is also a densely populated country, but has been able to take advantage of its biggest cities being near the coast; inland, there is less station choice.

For national stations, the UK's geography is an advantage. Frequencies for high power (~100 kW) transmitters can only be re-used every 500 km or so. In mainland Europe, around 3.5 MHz is needed for a universal coverage network, whereas in the UK, it has been possible to accommodate the national networks in 2.2 MHz each, albeit with slightly poorer coverage than some other countries. This is because the UK is a long thin island, so there are much fewer distant signals coming from East and West. In the 1970s, the UK provided more choice in its 9.5 MHz FM band than most other European countries did in 12.5 MHz. For local radio, lower transmitter powers are used, so frequencies may be re-used at smaller intervals, reducing the advantage of the UK's shape. Thus 6 MHz is allocated to provide two universal coverage local radio services.

Planning standards

The UK has planned the FM band relatively conservatively. Consequently, there is very little interference to stations within their intended coverage area. Some other countries implement more relaxed planning standards, giving more choice of station in some places at the expense of poor reception in other places. For example, the outskirts of Paris is infamous for poor radio reception. In the Netherlands, when the number of commercial stations was increased in 2003, reception of some of the public stations in a number of major cities was disrupted, so extra filler transmitters had to be quickly installed.

Sub-bands

The UK (and to a lesser extent the Irish Republic) is unique in dividing the FM band into distinct sub-bands, each dedicated to a different radio service. This makes it easy to follow the national stations from transmitter to transmitter in a car without RDS, but has the disadvantage that spare frequencies can be left empty because they're in the wrong part of the band.

Synchronisation

In the Netherlands, synchronisation technology has been used to enable transmitters carrying the same programme to broadcast on closer frequencies. This partly enabled the major expansion of national commercial radio in 2003. France and Germany are currently considering re-planning their FM spectrum to take advantage of synchonisation.

More stations for the UK

It would be undesirable and inequitable to reduce the number of universal coverage services or relax frequency planning standards. However, there is considerable scope to increase the number of FM stations in the UK by relaxing the division of the FM band into sub-bands and implementing more synchronised transmitters. This is explored in detail elsewhere on Frequency Finder - see the side bar.