Birdsong (digital radio channel)

Birdsong was a temporary radio channel which used to broadcast on national digital radio in the United Kingdom. The transmission consisted of a continuously looping recording of bird song. It was available via the Digital One DAB network. The recording is also available via the Digital One website until Autumn 2009 and the RadioBirdsong website. Originally starting out as a test signal on analogue radio back in 1992 and then later broadcast on digital radio from 2003 to 2005, the channel gained regular listeners, who complained when it was taken off-air. In 2008-2009, the broadcast again existed as a 'filler' transmission until a commercially operated radio station, Amazing Radio, replaced it on 1 June 2009.

When financial news station Bloomberg and rolling news station ITN News Radio ceased to broadcast within several months of one another in 2003, replacement audio services were never found due to a commitment in Digital One's broadcasting licence to provide a news station. This resulted in a station playing a 36-minute, 56-second loop of birdsong and ambient sounds, entitled 'D1 Temp' which broadcast for almost two years. In June 2005, the capacity formerly used by the speech services, and later by the birdsong, was given over to a test transmission of video to mobile phones known as BT Movio.

When the magazine-format digital radio station Oneword ceased in January 2008, the birdsong audio once again returned to the multiplex on the Oneword channel and the service name of the DAB channel changed to "Birdsong".

The dawn birdsong was recorded in autumn of 1991, on the edge of Salisbury Plain in the Wiltshire garden of Quentin Howard, the chairman of Digital One. The tape was originally made for an amateur dramatics production of When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs, which was in need of countryside sound effects, and was first heard on-air during test transmissions between July and September 1992 prior to the launch of Classic FM. It has featured in a number of TV and radio reports including Countryfile in 2008 and on BBC Breakfast TV.

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