Exclusive by Patrick Avenell
SYDNEY: CRA chief executive Joan Warner has hit out at what she calls “alarmist and inaccurate” reporting by a tabloid news service. In a letter received by Current.com.au, Warner ticks off a journalist for beating up a slight technical issue that arose from digital radio testing.
Warner took umbrage with claims that consumers who have already purchased digital radios will need factory resets to receive DAB+ radio. Warner accepts that some digital radios will need a retune to pick up the new permanent signal, but was not happy with the way it was reported as an issue set to cost manufacturers thousands of dollars.
“All the new station names will appear, but on some receivers…the current analogue station names will be listed but with a question mark, for example, ‘?Nova’, and if selected will read ‘station not available’,” wrote Warner in a stinging letter to this rival hack.
“To remove the old station names some radios have a ‘trim station list’ option. If the radio does not have a ‘trim station’ option, it may need a ‘factory reset’, which is obviously different on all receivers but is also an easy scroll through process, followed by a ‘full scan’ or ‘auto tune’.”
A simple process, especially when one considers that upon purchasing a digital radio, you have to go through this process at the start, so just receiving the test signal empirically shows you know how to scan for stations.
Joan Warner concluded her letter by attacking the journalist head on.
“The article was alarmist and inaccurate and would have been much more productive if it simply explained to listeners what they needed to do.”