What's the deal with digital radio station on-screen names?

[Spencer For Hire]

I would imagine the case of the name displayed on DAB sets is decided entirely by the station in question.

I once had the job of submitting the RDS info for a commercial station I worked at, ahead of getting new kit at the transmitter. I had to fill in a form, entering the 8-character station name plus radio text, and choosing the PTY type. I entered it all in mixed case as I thought this looked better - entirely my decision, with no dictats from head office, or style guide to consult.

Some groups are probably stricter - for instance when GCap introduced the new logos for the One Network stations with the name all in lowercase, the RDS on all stations changed to lowercase to match.

I guess there are some programmers out there who prefer capitals as they think it stands out more. Some who don't realise you can use lowercase, because their car radio only displays capitals, and some who don't really think about it either way.

[Orry Verducci]

As I understand it, the short 8 DLS used on DAB is made up by selecting 8 letters from the full 16 letter DLS rather than it being a seperate label. I imagine most stations will want that 8 letter DLS to match their RDS to be consistant on DAB Car Radio's switching between DAB and FM, and for listeners migrating to DAB to quickly recognise the station. Therefore, it's possible they are forced to capitalise parts of the name such as "SMOOTH" simply so the 8 letter DLS is the same as their RDS.