Friday, 28 May 2010

Retroprogressive News

It's good to know that 25,000 people are still sticking with black and white television - not least because it's just the kind of news the tech-mad neophiliacs who run broadcasting will not want to hear, as they lead the nation into a shiny digital tomorrow. Just as many people are quite happy with B&W TV, so are many many more people - in fact virtually everybody - with FM/AM transistor radios, which are cheap, perfectly portable, function just about anywhere and can be scattered about the house willynilly so you can have radio wherever you are. If all goes to plan - and let's hope very much it doesn't - this perfect state of affairs will be swept away by 2015 and we'll all have to rely on deeply unreliable DAB digital radios, which are far more expensive, far less portable and far more prone to signal loss than FM. What's more, the wonky DAB technology will almost certainly be replaced by DAB Plus a few years later, forcing us to change our radios once more. To the barricades, retroprogressives! Save our trannies! (and I do mean radios)

4 comments:

  1. Exactly Nige, it was good enough for Madge's topping out ceremony in '53, it's good enough not to watch the World Cup on.
    Excuse me one moment while a send a message via the teleprinter.

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  2. Would it be possible to arrange a Resistance Movement of enthusiasts broadcasting on analogue? Perhaps some Mozart, some Bix and a spot of cricket news? Readings from P G Wodehouse? A live Burns Supper outside broadcast? An Eisteddfod? What else? I know, commentary of the Scotland-England Quoits match.

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  3. Brit is considering a Luddite uprising dearieme, Hovis sandwiches and Tizer supplied free, following on behind in the A35.

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  4. Digital radio is already obsolescent.

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