A Digitial Radio Mondiale (DRM) receiver and demodulation method includes a programmable downsampler and a programmable N-point Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to recover and demodulate the OFDM symbols in a received DRM-encoded RF signal. The received signal is digitally sampled at a rate operably integer downsampled to achieve a number N samples in the useful portion of the OFDM symbol for input to an N-point FFT, where N equal to a power of two. The downsampling rate and size (N-points) of the FFT depend on the DRM encoding and transmission parameters, notably the robustness mode and spectrum occupancy. This reduces the processing/computational requirements and the design complexity of the DRM receiver.