I mentioned previously that I have 2 DAB radios that can tune BBC World Service, and no other BBC stations. I have several other DAB radios that cannot tune any BBC station at all. So it’s BBC-WS, or no BBC.

I was in the shop (also in Brussels) and came across a Kenwood radio that was tuned to BBC 4. Sounded like a quite interesting program. The UI on the Kenwood was quite clumbsy. I could not make it show me the frequency or any details. I changed stations while fiddling with the non-intuitive buttons. I could never get back to BBC4. It was not in the list! So how was it possible to tune it? I did a rescan, and BBC4 was not in the list.

I think the problem is that apparently all DAB radios are limited to what they can auto-tune. I have never seen one that gave a way to manually tune. I can only guess that the radio must have been in another city when stations were scanned, and it picked up BBC4. But it was cleared in Brussels, even though it received just fine.

Any theories? How can I find out where we can expect to receive BBC4?

Update

This page says listeners outside the UK can get BBC WS and BBC4 by streaming. No mention of radio.

I wonder if it’s down to luck that radio signals reach Brussels. I find no mention of BBC radio broadcasts outside of the UK.

It’s interesting how the UK is broken up in to such small broadcast regions:

http://www.frequencyfinder.org.uk/BBC_Radio.pdf

Update 2

Wow what a shitshow this is to get information. Wikipedia says “Norkring also broadcasts BBC World Service”. So there is a transmitter in Brussels for BBC WS. But strangely, nothing for BBC4. So I’m still baffled about how I got BBC4 in Brussels for a moment on a demo radio in a retail store.