Station List Sorting

Radio station lists should be sorted based on Station Name and presented in the order:

• Letters
• Numbers (and Stations with no Station Name)
• Punctuation and other characters.

This ordering disincentivises stations adding superfluous and unhelpful leading characters to their names to try to “top the list”. (e.g. “0000 Best Radio”).

Service lists should ignore case sensitivity of alphabetical characters, and use Unicode UCA to get the correct alphabetical and numerical ordering for the current Locale.

Where a Station Name is not available, use the Frequency as the Station Name. For example, a radio station with no name on 95.8MHz would be sorted along with the radio station names that begin with numbers.

DAB/DAB+ List Ordering

Never use the Component Order or Service Identifier (SId) parameters as a way of ordering services for the user.

DAB/DAB+ Ensemble Information

The ensemble name and the ensemble frequency / channel are superfluous and unhelpful information in the primary navigation. They should either not be shown, or only accessible through a low-priority navigation to additional information.

🇺🇸 🇨🇦 North America - List Sorting

In North America, if there is one harmonised list of stations, sort the list by

• FM stations, then
• AM stations

Within each system (FM/AM), sort the list by ascending frequency. See the section on Basic Station Information for information on presenting the Frequency and Radio Statio Name in North America.

Service selection by direct entry of a frequency should be considered a secondary navigation method, accessed by choosing an alternative navigation mode.