The Brexit Effect

There's a list of DAB stations available in Malta at http://www.wohnort.org/dab/malta.html

This.

I would be surprised if there is a country in the EU with a more onerous broadcasting licensing regime than Ireland does, as the hoops UTV Ireland had to jump through demonstrates. There’s a reason Saorview has a sum total of 3 private sector channels all operated by the one broadcaster. The only other private sector broadcasters in Ireland apart from VMTV are eir Sport and Premier Sports which are niche services. Virtually everything else comes from the U.K.

Actually Premier Sports are in the interesting position of being in the reverse position - Irish broadcaster broadcasting into the U.K., and presumably have had to take out a U.K. license if they haven’t already.

I believe the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany are the countries most broadcasters are moving too. And have similar light touch rules regarding advertising. IE a number of Norwegian channels broadcast from the UK as ofcom allowed advertising of alcohol and selling of adverting on Christmas Day. Not sure where these channels have moved to.

We get our own feed of RT with UK specific news programming, which as a technically separate service requires it's own separate license. Therefore RT have to either start uplinking the Pan-European feed for Ireland, or get a license for the UK service.

Sky require broadcasters to send them their licenses for both the UK and Ireland to secure EPG carriage in the respective territories, so either RT haven't yet got around to providing their license to Sky, or for whatever reason they've not bothered to get a new license (yet).


I suspect the Global station carried in Malta aren't officially sanctioned by Global, but are rather being rebroadcast by the local DAB multiplex operator. I don't know but it may be that Maltese law allows this, much in the same way Swiss law allows their TV platform operators to rebroadcast any channel that can be received in the country.

It's very likely they're rebroadcasting the online stream or picking it up from the Astra (Sky) satellite. With a big enough dish Malta is just in coverage of the Pan-European beam, which I believe both the Sky/Freesat feeds of the individual stations and the UK DAB mux distribution feeds are on.

You do realise stations can be transmitted internationally by satellite and the internet, right? They don't need some mega strong DAB signal from the UK...

Relaying UK stations overseas isn't anything new either. I remember that there was one of the middle eastern countries, either Qatar or the UAE that had Capital FM London on FM in the 90s because one of the Royals over there loved Capital when in London and wanted to hear it when they returned home.

I do realise that, but I never thought that a place as far away as Malta could get these stations on satellite, because I thought that the Global stations are on the UK spotbeam on Astra


In this case I presume that in Malta they are using a 3 meter diameter satellite dish in order to get them, but I would love to know if the people at Global Radio are aware of the fact that their stations can be received in the island, also in order not to get off topic, I now think that when the Brexit transition period will end on the 1st of January then the stations will no longer be received in Malta...



In the 90s??? Then they must have got a really big dish in the Gulf..... Thank you for answering me, I keep learning new things here on this forum! I love it!!

I don't know if Global know about the DAB service, but Global will definitely be aware that their satellite service is on the Pan-European beam and can be received across Europe. They're very likely ok with it, much in the same way their online streams aren't blocked outside the UK. They will happily take all the listeners they can get, wherever they are.

As to whether they will still be there past Jan 1st, that depends on Maltese law. If stations require individual licenses, as they do here, then Global's Ofcom licenses will no longer cover Malta and therefore they will have to go. If Malta only requires the mux operator to have a license, or allows off air retransmission, then the stations will likely be allowed to stay.

They’re distributed via satellite, aren’t they?

The Digital1 and BBC MUXes used to broadcast on alternate weeks in Berlin. This was about 20 years ago.

An entire DAB mux is only a payload of 1.3 Mb/s, very easy to transport anywhere in the world via the vanilla internet! (Albeit without any professional level of resiliance)

There's obviously some form of conversion at the mux end as that Maltese mux is running the Global stations at 48kbps DAB+.

What have broadcasters like ITV, BBC, Ch4, Ch5 and Sky done? Have they just got extra licenses in Ireland or elsewhere in the EU.

Presumably whoever distributes the BBC in the Netherlands has had to obtain a license?