“At the heart of our vision,” says the Digital Britain Final Report, "is the delivery of a Digital Radio Upgrade programme by the end of 2015.”

Instead of a rolling switchover, as with TV, analogue radio will be switched off overnight on an appointed day in 2015. New stations will use the more efficient coding system DAB+.

Sounds great for the trade. But who has been advising our masters on this? Have they really considered the real world facts?

Twenty per cent of all listening is done in cars, but because DAB is not widely used worldwide, the car makers still aren’t factory-fitting DAB radios. And that’s 15 years after the first BBC DAB service began. Most fitted car aerials aren’t suitable for DAB reception. So retrofitting a DAB radio isn't easy.

Try looking in Halfords for a DAB radio.

Pure’s Highway converter is a clever bit of kit. It connects to an analogue radio by very low power FM. But try finding an FM frequency that is free from legitimate and the pirate broadcasts, which Ofcom now largely seems to ignore. Then drive down the road and try again.

Kitchen-style radios don’t have Scart-style sockets for digital adaptors and they suffer from the same FM problems as cars.

In theory, more efficient DAB+ coding means higher quality, which will appeal to DAB-hating FM listeners. More likely it will be used to deliver more channels of the same low quality.

Meanwhile, with wonderful timing, the BBC has just announced plans to axe 6 Music on DAB. I wondered why the usually active Digital Radio Development Bureau had been so unusually quiet about all this?

It turns out that the DRDB has morphed into something completely different, Digital Radio UK aka Get Digital Radio. The website seems to say little to help.

Ford Ennals, who for a while ran TV switchover body Digital UK, after direct marketing for Universal Music and before going to Nike shoes, is DRUK’s chief executive.

I searched its website several times to find out what DRUK thinks about the future of DAB.

Ford Ennals seemed surprisingly sanguine about the BBC’s closure plans: “While some listeners will inevitably be disappointed by the closure of individual services, we believe the BBC’s vision as outlined in the Strategic Review will ultimately result in greater levels of overall listening to digital radio.”

I await with interest whatever DRUK has to say about the 2015 switchover plans.

Barry Fox