The Digi Thing

I'm taking a risk here by owning up to reading this article. (My name is Shooting Parrots and I am a Daily Mail reader.) Embarrassment aside, the nub and gist of the piece was that digital radio is headed the way of Betamax and Stereo 8 to be consigned to the dustier corners of technology/marketing obscurity because is doesn't do the job and we just don't buy the kit and are happy with analogue.

I don't buy that. Or rather I did. The Parrot household may be atypical, but I did a quick tot up of the digital versus analogue radios in regular use here in plumaged land. (The 'regular' discounts all the things that could deliver radio -- tellies, PCs, sound systems and in-car etc -- that could do radio but we can't be arsed -- just the ones we as a family use in a rather discordant, out-of-synch, different station sort of way.

Of the eight, five are digital, although one is portable and so only gets used when Mrs P is walking the dog when there is a ManU match on R5 or I'm mowing the lawn and need something to break the tedium. But 8/5 seems a pretty good ratio and one that the digi-blokes should hold on to, as well as their nerve.