The lighting could have triggered a safety mechanism in the transmitter equipment, resulting in an automatic reset after 3-5 seconds, hence the silence you experienced. Just a thought.

WestinghouseCeramalux described the situation with the AMs here perfectly...the translators with the unprotected status are everywhere in many markets, with marginal at best signals. 

Generally speaking I'll listen to FM, but here being so rural I still listen to nighttime AM skywave frequently. 

Whenever I go somewhere new (which is often) I always intentionally check out the radio stations (at least FM) in said place.  Anyone else do this? It's always interesting what you hear.  Commercials for regional things etc.  In Kansas it was soil acidity/PH reports for corn...in North Dakota it was PSAs joking about blizzards and schools closing and "grocery store fist fights over the last one-half gallon of one percent milk". 

I would love to get AM for my Vintage sets, but here on the continent there are not many am Stations anymore. And if there are they are very week. With luck you get in the night Radio China International , Romania international  or Korea international.

No AM anymore in Switzerland except for the ones we can receive across the border.
FM will be completely shot down in 2024 here!

The lighting could have triggered a safety mechanism in the transmitter equipment, resulting in an automatic reset after 3-5 seconds, hence the silence you experienced. Just a thought.

That's kind of what I was thinking, too.

No AM anymore in Switzerland except for the ones we can receive across the border.
FM will be completely shot down in 2024 here!

That's a bit excessive, isn't it..? 

FM will be completely shot down in 2024 here!

So is there a replacement? Or will you guys just not have broadcast radio anymore??

So is there a replacement? Or will you guys just not have broadcast radio anymore??

Since the year 1999 we had DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) and now since about 8 years we have DAB+ which is again the replacement for the DAB which shutdown in 2016. All radio stations are now moving to DAB+ and at the end 2024 FM will be no more.

I much prefer listening to FM broadcasts, but we get a really poor signal here so we have to use DAB 

Here we don't have DAB, but a Techmoan video exposes its quality. I think DAB is comparable with the audio of online classes or worse. 

Here we don't have DAB, but a Techmoan video exposes its quality. I think DAB is comparable with the audio of online classes or worse.  

DAB quality is whatever the broadcaster wants. But usually they are cheap on license, so share single channel with more stations or use the stronger error coding option (so are allowed to reduce their PEP so broadcast license cost)

Here we don't have DAB, but a Techmoan video exposes its quality. I think DAB is comparable with the audio of online classes or worse. 

It's not anything like a good quality FM transmission, but it's useable. Without a decent external VHF antenna though, FM is just not worth bothering with 

Here they have 'HD Radio' which is a digital broadcast, but it works off the existing FM or AM transmission (no need to stop broadcasting analog)
A thing to note 'HD' doesn't stand for 'High Definition' as is often incorrectly stated, even by radio stations themselves. (the quality often sounds just like a low-bitrate MP3 to me.)

The DAB transmissions here are on a completely different frequency band from either AM or FM, they're up in the 220-230MHz region, see here.

This is annoying for several reasons, not least of which it sits right on top of the 1.25m (220-225MHz) amateur radio band, which we in the UK have never been allowed to use as before DAB there was VHF TV allocated there 

Uncompressed stereo PCM 44KHz sample rate will take huge amounts of bandwith way more than 64 or 32 kbps mp3, even more than the great "uncompressed" FM, that digital quality, as well as taking bandwith, the encoders will be expensive. FM quality is completely dependant of your recever quality and the broadcast quality, since if their audio comes from an original CD will be ok, but if comes from spotify or youtube the quality will be worse.

Do the DAB and digital tv works on squarewaves? Since chop waveforms creates armonics that can affect you and your electronics if you live too close to an antenna.

@sox35:
Interesting on the DAB.
I believe the 'HD Radio' here just uses some of the 'space between stations' on FM (or AM)

Uncompressed stereo PCM 44KHz sample rate will take huge amounts of bandwith

1.4 megabit I believe. I don't remember what the quality/bitrate on HD Radio is, but it does vary depending on how many streams  they're running - gets pretty low if they're doing multiple since its a fairly limited total bandwidth to begin with.

since if their audio comes from an original CD will be ok,

Used to. Its pretty much all on computer now. And with atleast some stations, its MP3 - there have been times I've heard it and "that sounds like a MP3". Most use high enough bitrate files so that "MP3 sound" so you don't hear it. (and honestly for radio, it makes allot more sense to have all the music stored on computers...as long as they keep the quality up)