British citizens have been urged to buy a hand-crank radio as part of a new United Kingdom government campaign encouraging households to prepare for emergencies, including power cuts, extreme weather and potential cyber-attacks. The warning comes amid concerns that hostile state actors and terrorists could target everyday systems, potentially leaving households without electricity and disrupting essential supply chains and everyday services.
With the world experiencing more than 100 armed conflicts, according to the Geneva Academy, spanning regions including the Middle East, North Africa, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America, administrations worldwide are issuing guidance on what citizens may want to keep on hand to safeguard families and communities.
Following the U.K. government’s advisory, sales of hand-crank analog radios in the U.K. have shot up. The hand-crank, or wind-up, radio is the brainchild of British inventor Trevor Baylis, whose idea came after seeing a BBC documentary on AIDS in Africa in 1991. This invention uses the same technology as Victorian gramophones a century earlier. The winding radio combines a small transistor radio with an electric motor and a clockwork spring mechanism. Winding the hand-crank stores energy in the spring, which drives an internal generator. The radio is self-powered, can receive AM/FM or weather band broadcasts and can charge small mobile devices via a built-in power bank. It can also include a flashlight or an SOS alarm for power outages.
The sales surge of this cheap and versatile receiver has brought radio’s popularity back into the news. One reason for this popularity is fatigue with streaming’s endless-playlist model; radio remains a simple turn-on-and-listen experience without scrolling or choosing the next track. Listeners are shifting away from algorithms in favor of human DJs, local radio hosts and personality-driven talk segments that offer warmth and genuine community connection. Areas where radio is particularly bouncing back include audio drama and news broadcasting. This is coupled with a certain nostalgia for older technology like vinyl and film cameras. Retro radios, whether analog or digital, are even popular with Gen Z. Still, a little hand-crank radio doesn’t mean we are back in the 90s.
More radio stations are now digital, carving a secure media space with good listenership and revenue. European countries have made a concerted effort to phase out analog radio in recent years, although it has taken far longer than expected. Satellite audio in the U.S., using a subscription model, has been relatively successful but is mostly listened to in cars. For the rest of the world, several big countries in Asia-Pacific, like China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan and South Africa, have opted for DRM. However, the full roll-out is still in progress.
Legacy and complexity cannot excuse a return to inefficiency
Digital radio and emergencies
The renewed interest in radio during emergencies deserves applause. But it also raises fundamental questions about digital radio. Analog FM and AM can deliver disaster warnings. Still, they are mono-lingual, not targeted and can be quite patchy — telling affected people either too little, too late or alarming people in safe areas.
The DRM Emergency Warning Functionality addresses all these shortcomings by combining three complementary elements. The first one is sending alarm signals to compatible receivers, which automatically switch to emergency broadcasts, including waking them from standby. The alarm signals are audio announcements that provide immediate warnings and instructions, coupled with DRM’s Journaline interactive text information service, which lets people browse detailed guidance in multiple languages and access information relevant to their location and needs. All three elements are delivered via broadcast radio, possibly even from outside the disaster area, without requiring an internet connection or mobile network.
So, why are we encouraged now to buy a hand-crank analog FM receiver and not a digital one? The answer is never simple. While analog radio is over a century old and ubiquitous, relatively young digital radio still needs to be accepted, promoted and fully embraced not just by voluntary organizations but by regulators and governments worldwide. Once digital radio for emergencies has been demonstrated, as in Indonesia, where nine FM DRM transmitters have EWF capability, the advantages over analog are clear, and implementation becomes more desirable and easier.
The key is integrating digital broadcasting into national disaster plans. This requires strategic control supported by a strong understanding of national preparedness, existing digital broadcast capabilities and receiver availability.
Communication during emergencies is vital, and governments are reaching for radio. They recommend a hand-crank receiver as a practical way for households to receive emergency announcements if internet access and mobile networks go down.
These receivers should be solar-powered or hand-cranked. And they should be digital. Legacy and complexity cannot excuse a return to inefficiency. Otherwise, we will soon be advised that, should all other means of communication fail, a whistle is a handy item in emergencies.
The author is chairman of the DRM Consortium.
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