tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90782627705621719962024-03-15T08:21:41.238+00:00Grant Goddard : radio blog[This blog was discontinued 2013. Check my current blog: link at top of sidebar.]
I am an independent media analyst based in London, specialising in the radio broadcast industry. I have created and implemented successful strategies for the radio sector over three decades, including: the launch/turnaround of large-scale commercial music broadcasters in the UK, Europe and Asia; investment advice to City media shareholders; and significant contributions to public policy on broadcastingGrant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.comBlogger212125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078262770562171996.post-76114263961460368592013-12-16T11:42:00.002+00:002024-01-17T14:27:07.615+00:00DAB Radio Switchover: Dead As The Dodo<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-GB">In 2004, I wrote my
first <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01MZ7YNLE/ref=nosim?tag=grantgoddard-21" target="_blank">article</a> predicting that the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">UK</st1:country-region></st1:place>'s implementation of DAB digital
radio was headed for failure. It was not guesswork. I had analysed radio
industry data since 1980. I had <a href="https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/search/label/Radio%20Authority" target="_blank">worked</a>
at The Radio Authority when it implemented DAB. I had <a href="https://peoplelikeyoudontworkinradio.blogspot.com/search/label/Ofcom" target="_blank">worked</a>
in Ofcom's radio division. I had seen DAB from inside and outside the regulator
and the commercial radio industry. Only five years after its launch, the available
evidence demonstrated that DAB was headed for disaster in the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">UK</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I continued to <a href="https://grantgoddard.co.uk/bibliography/" target="_blank">write</a> about
DAB – in press <a href="https://grantgoddard.co.uk/bibliography/" target="_blank">articles</a>, in analyst <a href="https://grantgoddard.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/enders.pdf" target="_blank">reports</a>, in my <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">blog</a>, in
my <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/DAB-Digital-Radio-Licensed-Fail/dp/095649630X" target="_blank">book</a> 'DAB Digital Radio: Licensed To Fail' – and to talk
about DAB in radio and TV interviews. I did this not because I was 'anti-DAB'
or a 'campaigner' (as <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22grant+goddard%22+%22anti-dab%22" target="_blank">some</a> described me), but because my work as a media analyst
requires me to carefully examine the facts and figures and to document their consequences.
I had nothing to gain personally from stating evident truths.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Between 2004 and
today, the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">UK</st1:place></st1:country-region>
radio industry could have scrutinised the growing collection of analyses that
demonstrated DAB consumer take-up was failing. It could have taken firm,
decisive action to transform DAB radio from failure to success. It chose not
to. Instead, I found myself on the receiving end of abuse, slander and libel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Two years ago, I
stopped writing about <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">UK</st1:place></st1:country-region>
radio in this <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">blog</a> because 'Jimmy's and 'John's were pasting my analyses
into their press articles, blogs and corporate statements, uncredited and without
permission. Those same people then e-mailed me to ask why I was no longer
updating my blog!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I write today
only to bookend this <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">blog</a>. In recent months, it has been interesting to witness some
of my 'critics' make a 180-degree turn and suddenly herald the imminent non-event
of DAB radio switchover, whilst citing my analyses (uncredited) in support of
their newly adopted viewpoint.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I wrote about DAB
because I consider that this single issue has contributed more to the decline
of the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">UK</st1:place></st1:country-region>
radio industry than all other sector issues combined. Thousands of experienced radio
professionals have lost their jobs. Hundreds of genuinely local radio stations
have disappeared. Much radio in the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">UK</st1:country-region></st1:place> has become a shadow of its
former self. The medium is suffering rapidly declining appeal to those aged under
30. The industry that I have worked in since 1972 is on the rocks. Most of the
blame for this sorry state of affairs can be laid directly at the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">UK</st1:place></st1:country-region> radio industry's
single-minded pursuit of DAB since the 1990s, at the expense of all other
objectives and at a cost of more than £1bn.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOMASdHZwnK3ycCegS3MZ9Pw-YGIzfqU_Jtdw52NObYqkpS4l2RHtdMiz43xA7KESZ-X_oJDyINEIltCzQX_dlmxKNSIEZ6MkK2xes0BUoZ_pMbDf1QTmRlJrJv-SOf0gx5xG57ys1_pE/s1600/DeadAsTheDodo.bmp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOMASdHZwnK3ycCegS3MZ9Pw-YGIzfqU_Jtdw52NObYqkpS4l2RHtdMiz43xA7KESZ-X_oJDyINEIltCzQX_dlmxKNSIEZ6MkK2xes0BUoZ_pMbDf1QTmRlJrJv-SOf0gx5xG57ys1_pE/s400/DeadAsTheDodo.bmp" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Excerpt from client presentation by Grant Goddard in January 2012</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span lang="EN-GB">In 2011, I had
been invited by the government's Department of Culture, Media & Sport [DCMS]
to participate in a consumer panel as part of its consultations about DAB
switchover. Addressing an audience of industry stakeholders, I predicted that
the government would kick the DAB radio switchover decision into the long grass
in 2013. I made the same prediction in my presentation to the board of one of
the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">UK</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s
largest commercial radio companies [see above].<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">After the close
of the DCMS stakeholder session, its chairperson, a civil servant in the DAB
radio switchover section, leaned over to me and said something along the lines
of: <i>"You really shouldn't be writing
the things you do. People don't like it, you know, and it is making them
angry."<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">She is one of a select
group of people in DCMS, Ofcom, Digital Radio <st1:country-region w:st="on">UK</st1:country-region>,
the BBC and RadioCentre who have earned their livings by pumping out factually
incorrect reports supporting their fiction that DAB radio is a massive <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">UK</st1:place></st1:country-region> success
story and that DAB switchover is inevitable. Public money and BBC Licence Fees
have paid many of these people for years to mislead the public and the media about
DAB radio.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Anyone with
knowledge of the <st1:country-region w:st="on">UK</st1:country-region> radio
industry and training in statistics could have concluded from available data
during the last decade that the implementation of DAB radio in the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">UK</st1:place></st1:country-region> was headed
for disaster. My analyses were not 'rocket science'. What riled the army of DAB
propagandists was that my published analyses directly contradicted their bullshit.
The final e-mail sent to me by the chief executive of the Digital Radio
Development Bureau (forerunner of Digital Radio <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">UK</st1:place></st1:country-region>) said:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-GB">"If you are going to deliberately mis-use the
information we provide to you to construct as negative a view as possible with
cheap shots like those below then we just won’t co-operate with you in the
future."<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">He saw only <i>"cheap shots"</i>, rather than
evidential analysis, in my 2008 Q2 commercial radio sector report published by
Enders Analysis, which had said:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-GB">"Although it remains the most popular platform for
digital radio, ‘DAB’ usage seems to be steadfastly stuck at 9.0% of total
commercial radio listening, dwarfed by the continued dominance of analogue
radio (69.2%). Whilst 87% of households now have access to digital TV, and 67%
have access to the internet, DAB penetration remained static at 27.3% in Q2
2008. Sales of DAB receivers have failed to continue the momentum demonstrated
in Q1 2008, unit sales having slowed to 108,000 in June 2008, their lowest
monthly level since June 2007. With sales of DAB receivers still concentrated
mainly in the Christmas period, the imminent danger is that the hardware’s
relatively high average ticket price, combined with the effects of the consumer
‘squeeze’, could impact the much needed winter 2008 sales peak (552,000 units
sold in December 2007).<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-GB">Despite the sterling efforts of the Digital Radio
Working Group (convened by the Department for Culture, Media & Sport) over
the past eight months, the radio industry, as yet, seems no closer to finding
an immediate solution to the problem of slow DAB take-up than it was a year
ago. Although all parties agree that it is ’content’ that will drive consumers
to purchase DAB radios, the major radio groups have still not unveiled any
plans to stimulate the consumer market with new digital radio brands."<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Five years on,
the numbers may have changed but the unresolved problems with DAB radio remain
exactly the same. My analyses and predictions during the last decade have
proven correct … while a small army of DAB propagandists have been paid
handsomely during that time to produce a massive volume of '<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">South</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Sea</st1:placetype></st1:place>
bubble' hot air about DAB radio, partly paid for from public funds. Doubtless
they will be rewarded for their failure.</span></div>
<h1 style="text-align: left;"><b><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-size: small;">Selected writings on DAB radio:</span></span></b></h1>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01MZ7YNLE/ref=nosim?tag=grantgoddard-21" target="_blank"><span style="color: purple;">Hey Hey, You You, Get Off Of My [DAB Radio] Multiplex</span></a></span><span lang="EN-GB">, November
2004</span><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07ZFR8WSP/ref=nosim?tag=grantgoddard-21" target="_blank">Channel 4: Radio Ambitions Aim Too High</a></span><span lang="EN-GB">,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="EN-GB">Enders Analysis, July 2007<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07ZG6K89L/ref=nosim?tag=grantgoddard-21" target="_blank">Digital Radio Switchover: Somewhere Over The Rainbow?</a></span><span lang="EN-GB">,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Enders Analysis, October 2007<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07ZRXG7Q7/ref=nosim?tag=grantgoddard-21" target="_blank">The Future Of Digital Radio: Is It DAB?</a></span><span lang="EN-GB">,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="EN-GB">Enders Analysis, January 2008 <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07335LJSL/ref=nosim?tag=grantgoddard-21" target="_blank"><span style="color: purple;">Tuned Into The Future Of Radio</span></a></span><span lang="EN-GB">, Broadcast,
June 2008<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07ZG167L3/ref=nosim?tag=grantgoddard-21" target="_blank">DAB Radio: Nice Platform, Shame About The Take-Up</a></span><span lang="EN-GB">,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="EN-GB">Enders Analysis, June 2008 <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07ZRTPPJN/ref=nosim?tag=grantgoddard-21" target="_blank">The Second National Digital Radio Multiplex: Waiting For Godot?</a></span><span lang="EN-GB">,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="EN-GB">Enders Analysis, October 2008<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07ZC9QGK1/ref=nosim?tag=grantgoddard-21" target="_blank">Channel 4 Radio: Six Feet Under</a></span><span lang="EN-GB">,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="EN-GB">Enders Analysis, October 2008 <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07ZN4B1Q5/ref=nosim?tag=grantgoddard-21" target="_blank">The Digital One Radio Multiplex: Desperately Seeking Subsidy</a></span><span lang="EN-GB">,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="EN-GB">Enders Analysis, October 2008 <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B06XBLPC2C/ref=nosim?tag=grantgoddard-21" target="_blank"><span style="color: purple;">Talking Radio: Grant Goddard [Channel 4 Radio]</span></a></span><span lang="EN-GB">, Broadcast,
October 2008<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/29/grant_goddard_drwg_analysis" target="_blank">In The Ditch With DAB Radio</a></span><span lang="EN-GB">,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>The Register, December 2008<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07YRVDXHC/ref=nosim?tag=grantgoddard-21" target="_blank"><span style="color: purple;">Digital Radio In The UK: Progress And Challenges</span></a>,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="EN-GB">EBU 3rd Digital Radio
Conference, June 2009<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/02/euro_dab_snub" target="_blank">Germans
And Swiss Snub DAB</a></span><span lang="EN-GB">,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>The
Register, <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city>,
July 2009<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01N5GIQ3F/ref=nosim?tag=grantgoddard-21" target="_blank"><span style="color: purple;">'Digital Britain' And The Radio Sector</span></a>,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="EN-GB">egta Radio Newsletter
no.16, November 2009<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B06X9N1LCQ/ref=nosim?tag=grantgoddard-21" target="_blank"><span style="color: purple;">Submission To House Of Lords Select Committee On
Communications: Inquiry Into Digital Switchover Of Radio</span></a></span><span lang="EN-GB">, January
2010<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01MQU523Y/ref=nosim?tag=grantgoddard-21" target="_blank"><span style="color: purple;">DAB Radio In The UK: It Ain't What You Do, It's The Way
That You Do It</span></a>,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="EN-GB">Radio Today
'e-Radio', April 2010<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://ioc.sagepub.com/content/39/2/96" target="_blank">DAB Is Dead</a>,</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></span><span lang="EN-GB">Index On Censorship,
June 2010<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08729MM47/ref=nosim?tag=grantgoddard-21" target="_blank"><span style="color: purple;">The First Annual Not 'The Ofcom Digital Radio Progress
Report' Report</span></a>,</span><span lang="EN-GB"> August 2010<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/DAB-Digital-Radio-Licensed-Fail/dp/095649630X" target="_blank">DAB Digital Radio:Licensed To Fail</a>,<span class="apple-converted-space"> Radio Books, </span></span><span lang="EN-GB">October 2010</span><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B086HW43SG/ref=nosim?tag=grantgoddard-21">
</a></span></span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B086HW43SG/ref=nosim?tag=grantgoddard-21"><!--[endif]--></a><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B086HW43SG/ref=nosim?tag=grantgoddard-21">Response to Ofcom consultation: 'An Approach To DAB Coverage
Planning'</a>, UKRD Group Ltd. et al, September 2011<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01MTBHGGM/ref=nosim?tag=grantgoddard-21" target="_blank">Low Digital Take-Up Of Local Commercial Radio Prevents Digital RadioSwitchover In UK</a>, Seeking Alpha, October 2012</span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Grant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078262770562171996.post-69460355763235637662011-08-14T13:28:00.000+01:002011-08-14T13:28:00.272+01:00Growing DAB radio usage in the UK. Confused? You should be!<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>"Digital listening at an all-time high,"</em> shouted the headline of one <a href="http://www.worldtvpc.com/blog/digital-listening-alltime-high/">online</a> news story. Yes, it was the quarterly RAJAR radio ratings, offering opportunities for some journalists to pitch their stories just about any which way they wanted. The opening sentence of this particular report said:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“The digital revolution shows no signs of slowing down, and not even the radio airwaves are set to maintain their analogue tradition, as a new [RAJAR] study suggests.”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hardly. This news story was interesting because it achieved two simultaneous feats of confusion:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• ‘DAB radio’ and ‘digital radio’ are two different things. ‘DAB’ is the platform on which the UK radio industry bet the farm in the 1990s. ‘Digital radio’ is radio received on any platform that is not analogue (AM/FM) and includes the internet, smartphones, digital TV … and DAB</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• The fact that DAB listening is growing does not necessarily mean that it is replacing analogue listening at a rapid rate of attrition. Why? Because DAB listening, even after 12 years, is still at a remarkably low level.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These confusions are not accidental. At every opportunity, statements made by Digital Radio UK have sought to confuse the public by referring to ‘digital radio’ as if it means precisely the same as ‘DAB radio.’</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A look at the graphs below of the latest RAJAR data illustrate clearly that the <em>“analogue tradition”</em> in radio remains so dominant that the real question to be asked is: how come DAB usage is still so low after so many years and after so much money has been invested in content, transmission systems and marketing?</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU2TqnMuqnMB4tmKkoIN3TILxROsTCcxhmprtU3bEszV1WFH3_yJdF3yp_hGitwYNABDhTH8bfodgG3mzgyXuUI7WG1IDpR_BN0NcZbX0DgYzommvHaMSjOv4hchHx2inNr4LiHGipPZM/s1600/RAJAR+2011Q2+DAB+1.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="235px" naa="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU2TqnMuqnMB4tmKkoIN3TILxROsTCcxhmprtU3bEszV1WFH3_yJdF3yp_hGitwYNABDhTH8bfodgG3mzgyXuUI7WG1IDpR_BN0NcZbX0DgYzommvHaMSjOv4hchHx2inNr4LiHGipPZM/s400/RAJAR+2011Q2+DAB+1.bmp" width="400px" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOiGcXuiTL-g0CTTJqM3cJAVKYKqZ8GlcZOW8briLwZdt2h6q_Z56SBmuXuybz64CeOD6wqmD9AeAjlvrqj6qMWUrM2lSmI4gRNHZ8_vn6pvXFBkscKJkIuuzEfWgwSFKDnCmRZFl3S40/s1600/RAJAR+2011Q2+DAB+2.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="233px" naa="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOiGcXuiTL-g0CTTJqM3cJAVKYKqZ8GlcZOW8briLwZdt2h6q_Z56SBmuXuybz64CeOD6wqmD9AeAjlvrqj6qMWUrM2lSmI4gRNHZ8_vn6pvXFBkscKJkIuuzEfWgwSFKDnCmRZFl3S40/s400/RAJAR+2011Q2+DAB+2.bmp" width="400px" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis66eq9S6fbbWJto1Tlkz4WH46rH70f5XBxi7Vx_Df4zt_8NVjdbx3Xx7RuIw8lfM1SBFEHQzscutHb1Z_yTkLVCSDiN-WQ6GN5vDgLf17nS1VEG5wQkw3ObzdaDCOPrBaph5UR1SqGrs/s1600/RAJAR+2011Q2+DAB+3.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="245px" naa="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis66eq9S6fbbWJto1Tlkz4WH46rH70f5XBxi7Vx_Df4zt_8NVjdbx3Xx7RuIw8lfM1SBFEHQzscutHb1Z_yTkLVCSDiN-WQ6GN5vDgLf17nS1VEG5wQkw3ObzdaDCOPrBaph5UR1SqGrs/s400/RAJAR+2011Q2+DAB+3.bmp" width="400px" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd-u502trPqsBYS80RbPCUo6Nb5zm-60U9A_whqKXfWwBDu_YLTUjtDFVV3D8EinS1lH1-m873UQI7MgTNdhKn7yNmetQH7b3oO7PhnZeCvF12M3xaj5NuPXoy2vuVxoj8QCHKwAINefI/s1600/RAJAR+2011Q2+DAB+4.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="267px" naa="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd-u502trPqsBYS80RbPCUo6Nb5zm-60U9A_whqKXfWwBDu_YLTUjtDFVV3D8EinS1lH1-m873UQI7MgTNdhKn7yNmetQH7b3oO7PhnZeCvF12M3xaj5NuPXoy2vuVxoj8QCHKwAINefI/s400/RAJAR+2011Q2+DAB+4.bmp" width="400px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The adage ‘a picture speaks a thousand words’ has never been more true than with DAB/digital radio usage. The four graphs above – all taken from the industry’s latest RAJAR data – say it all by showing:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• how little impact DAB radio has had on analogue radio usage in the UK</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• how slow the rate of growth is of DAB receiver take-up and of digital radio station listening.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Far from radio losing its <em>“analogue tradition,”</em> as the news article asserted, the old FM/AM platforms look, from these data, to be as strong as ever in the market. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One hint that some digital radio stations on the DAB platform could be on their way out is the BBC’s latest decision to aggregate listening for Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra in RAJAR. It had been doing this from the outset for Five Live and Five Live Sports Extra, on the premise that ‘Sports Extra’ was only a part-time broadcast station.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I would not be at all surprised to see the BBC:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• similarly aggregate Radio 2 listening with 6 Music</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• similarly aggregate Radio 1 listening with 1Xtra</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• downgrade its digital radio stations from full-time DAB broadcast stations to online, on-demand ‘extra content’ available via RadioPlayer, iPlayer and applications.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The problem with national <strong>broadcast </strong>BBC radio stations, whether analogue or DAB, is that the BBC Charter insists they must be made available universally to all Licence Fee payers. Given the huge cost of extending the BBC’s national DAB transmission multiplex to near-universal coverage equivalent to FM radio, particularly at a time when the BBC is having to cut budgets massively, it would be more sensible to downgrade ‘1Xtra’, ‘2Xtra’ and ‘4Xtra’ to ‘red button’ status whereby they offer additional content on a part-time basis. The consumer would access these Extra 'stations' via a complementary platform (IP) rather than the BBC having to shoulder the financial burden of programming them as 24-hour broadcast entities.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It would prove a convenient solution for the BBC. As it found with 6 Music last year, public controversy surrounds any decision to close a radio station, however small its audience in absolute terms. Alternatively, by pursuing the 'Extra' route, the digital stations can be re-branded, re-purposed and re-platformed away from expensive, fixed-cost DAB and towards IP, where the cost of delivery varies proportionately with the number of people using it. What better way to deliver value for money to Licence Fee payers? And what better way not to face public wrath for 'closing' a digital radio station.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As BBC Radio 2 DJ Steve Wright said on today's <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0134ypy">Broadcasting House</a> show:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>"Maybe full digitisation [of radio from FM/AM to DAB] may well take thirty years …"</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the graphs above demonstrate, there <strong>IS</strong> slow growth in DAB usage, but the rate is insufficient to replace analogue radio as the dominant consumer platform any time soon. It's time for BBC strategy to catch up with that reality.</span>Grant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078262770562171996.post-44379844537061637542011-08-06T11:05:00.000+01:002011-08-06T11:05:45.591+01:00UK DAB radio receiver sales fell in 2009 and 2010, but "digital radio sales have held up - they are flat" insists Mr Switchover<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For an organisation that has been charged with marketing DAB radio to the British public, Digital Radio UK has managed to remain remarkably invisible during 2011. This alone made the appearance of Digital Radio UK’s chief executive on BBC Radio 4’s ‘You & Yours’ show notable. The fact that nothing new was said was hardly surprising – there is nothing new to say about DAB.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Out in the real world, as opposed to the imaginary world inhabited by Digital Radio UK, the notion that ‘DAB radio’ will replace AM/FM radio is already a dead duck. The only believers still worshipping ‘DAB’ seem to be Digital Radio UK, RadioCentre, Ofcom and government civil servants.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7zDZMw00NguU1yQ4ZhtqFJegeAdoT3n6nAxLnMW_dzVe5R1Gy0GW9fhH_MwjgYhQ_ZLMcDCESs1ywwSagDv-5BudXp-bhpVYNaTqAparsPWkh6jN6L0YVHWyldbBPT3gysvcWH-tTPIE/s1600/DAB+radio+receiver+sales+annual+to+2010.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="235px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7zDZMw00NguU1yQ4ZhtqFJegeAdoT3n6nAxLnMW_dzVe5R1Gy0GW9fhH_MwjgYhQ_ZLMcDCESs1ywwSagDv-5BudXp-bhpVYNaTqAparsPWkh6jN6L0YVHWyldbBPT3gysvcWH-tTPIE/s400/DAB+radio+receiver+sales+annual+to+2010.bmp" t$="true" width="400px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The evidence is transparent. The number of DAB radio receivers sold in the UK fell year-on-year in both 2009 and 2010 (by 6% and 2% respectively). These data are collected by GfK and supplied to Digital Radio UK. These numbers, together with a nice colour graph, were distributed at last month’s RadioCentre members’ get-together. These are industry data of which Digital Radio UK is perfectly aware.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet, Digital Radio UK’s chief executive insisted in this interview on national radio that <em>“digital radio sales have actually held up – they are flat year-on-year.” </em>This is untrue. ‘Down’ is not ‘flat.’ ‘Down’ is ‘down.’ DAB radio receiver sales peaked in 2008 and have been falling since. DAB receiver sales in 2010 were 8% below that 2008 peak. That is clearly not ‘flat.’</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I wonder how it is that:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• The chief executive of a high-profile marketing organisation can appear on Radio 4 (audience: 11m adults per week) and flatly state something that he must know not to be true?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• The board of Digital Radio UK does not haul him in and remind him that his job description is to ‘persuade’ consumers of the value of DAB, not deceive them?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• A substantial proportion of this organisation’s funding is derived from the BBC Licence Fee, so the public is effectively paying for an executive to tell them untruths about consumer take-up of DAB radio?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>You & Yours</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>BBC Radio 4</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012r99g">29 July 2011</a> @ 1200</strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Ford Ennals</strong>, chief executive, Digital Radio UK [FE]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Wiiliam Rogers</strong>, chief executive, UKRD [WR]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Q:</strong> <em>Are you not disappointed with the lack of a rise in [DAB] radio sales?</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>FE:</strong> <em>No, I think what the Ofcom report confirms is the solid progress that is being made. We see growth in overall digital listening, we see growth in terms of the number of homes that have a digital radio receiver in there. So, 40% of all homes now have a DAB receiver in them, we know that 47% of all listeners are listening to digital radio every week, and we have seen growth in digital listening. So I think progress is being made. I think we are in a difficult sales period for overall retailers and we have seen a decline in overall consumer electronics sales. Digital radio sales have actually held up – they are flat year-on-year. We have now sold 13 million DAB digital radios, but the key thing, just lastly, to remember is that you can receive digital radio via digital television, via a computer or, indeed, via a smartphone and many, many households and consumers have those.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Q:</strong> <em>William Rogers, are you surprised by the lack of increase in interest in digital radio?</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>WR:</strong> <em>No, not in the least. And I think we have to remember that Ford, with respect to him, is being a little disingenuous because, of course, the switchover is about people being forced to move way from analogue and onto DAB. So that’s the issue we need to focus on. And what this report highlights, and I’m personally delighted to see it, is it really does shine a light on the shambles that is this proposed DAB migration.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Q:</strong> <em>But things aren’t that bad. There are increases in radio usage, as Ford has just indicated.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>WR:</strong> <em>Well, hang on a minute. The whole premise behind the switchover is that it will be, quote, consumer led. And the one thing we know from these statistics is that, whatever else it is, it’s not being consumer led. As your reporter quite rightly said earlier, of the eight-and-half million radio devices sold in the twelve-month period we are talking about, four out of five of them did not have a DAB receiver capacity. And, more interestingly, of those people who were asked whether they were likely to buy a DAB set at any time in the next twelve months, four out of five of them said they were not likely to. So the consumer is making it very clear what they want and, after eleven years, it’s time this thing was put to bed.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Q:</strong> <em>Ford Ennals, one of the things that we constantly hear from listeners is the whole issue of reception. That’s really what, I think, the message is that we get from people. That is what they are worried about. Whether they approve or not [of DAB], what they say is an awful lot of people can’t get them [DAB radio signals] and, if they can get them, they can’t get them consistently.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>FE:</strong> <em>Well, I think, where the industry and the broadcasters are absolutely unified and agreed is that digital is the future of radio in the UK. And I think it’s just a matter of the timetable and the transition path for that. One of the big issues is, as you have said, is about coverage and about the ability of everyone to get a strong [DAB] signal. Now, what Ofcom have done is developed a plan to extend coverage, both of the local services and the national services, so that people can receive those services and get more confidence. But there is a direct parallel here with TV and digital television – I ran the TV switchover programme – and, back in 2006, the majority of TV sales were analogue and only 75% of the population could get digital television. Now, what happened over the next few years is we saw a very swift transition and we saw transmitters built out that so everyone could get digital TV. We’ll see the same on radio.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Q:</strong> <em>What about that, William? We don’t jump ‘til we have to. We don’t buy ‘til we have to.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>WR:</strong> <em>Look, look. Let’s be clear about this. Ford Ennals is paid to market the DAB switchover, so I understand why he has to say what he has to say, because the message from this report is clearly embarrassing for him to make a case which clearly doesn’t exist. There are a number of points we have to remember. First of all, the comparison with TV switchover is plainly an absurd point to make. They are not remotely, in any way shape or form, similar. And people are choosing not to endorse DAB as an alternative [to FM/AM]. The critical thing we have to understand here is three elements. First of all, ….</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Q:</strong> <em>You’ll have to confine yourself to one because we are really tight for time.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>WR:</strong> <em>Okay, the fundamental problem with this whole process is that you cannot migrate an entire sector if the [DAB] platform you have chosen does not have the capacity to allow you to do so. And there are scores of radio stations in this country who will be denied the opportunity to move to a DAB platform, because the choice was wrong in the first place.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Q:</strong> <em>A ten-second response.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>FE:</strong> <em>Just finally. People love digital radio. We’ve seen it with [BBC] 6 Music and we saw the campaign to save 6 Music. We’ve seen it with the response to Radio 4 Extra. And they’ll continue to enjoy it in the future.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Q:</strong> <em>I’m sure our postbag and our e-mails will be as big as usual. William Rogers and Ford Ennals, thank you both very much indeed.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>Point of information:</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>Ford Ennals was chief executive of Digital UK, the TV switchover marketing organisation, from April 2005. He announced his departure in November 2007, the same month that the first UK region entirely switched off analogue television broadcasts.</em></span>Grant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078262770562171996.post-60570515506613402882011-08-04T00:14:00.000+01:002011-08-04T00:14:57.133+01:00UK listening growth demonstrates radio's strengths in a multi-tasking world<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The latest RAJAR ratings data for Q2 2011 demonstrate the continuing strength of the radio medium in recession Britain. Maybe if your TV or mobile subscriptions are having to be pruned, you turn to radio instead. In times of austerity, one of radio’s greatest attributes is that it appears to consumers to be available ‘free’ at the point-of-use.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXkqgLJU3vjwhWB_FfJJ6RIQ3GrbxIBie4o-zqa477MTXyCBCfBztx2J1XF1rcEP_mFMXHXUPVygaULFwAdrL_bxnvsJBr_x7HAyowLDCcEMwYsxVyPjwVAYFqZ5qKqgiSKmsdloCNgHY/s1600/RAJAR+2011Q2+1.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXkqgLJU3vjwhWB_FfJJ6RIQ3GrbxIBie4o-zqa477MTXyCBCfBztx2J1XF1rcEP_mFMXHXUPVygaULFwAdrL_bxnvsJBr_x7HAyowLDCcEMwYsxVyPjwVAYFqZ5qKqgiSKmsdloCNgHY/s400/RAJAR+2011Q2+1.bmp" t$="true" width="400px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘All radio’ listening (1,076m hours per week) is at its highest since 2003. Adult weekly reach is 91.7%. Each listener spends an average 22.6 hours per week with ‘radio.’ These are impressive numbers. In this respect, it is important to remind ourselves that the RAJAR definition of ‘radio’ excludes:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• ‘listen again’ consumption of broadcast radio (online catch-ups of ‘The Archers’, for example)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• all podcasts</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• listening to pure online radio stations</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• listening to online music streaming services or personalised online radio (Last.fm, Spotify, etc).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If these additional ‘radio’ consumption sources could somehow be added to the RAJAR data, it looks likely that, using a wider definition, ‘radio’ would be performing at an all-time high. This is not at all surprising in our time-precious, multi-tasking world. Radio proves the perfect aural accompaniment to online social activities, whereas it is nigh impossible to watch television or read a newspaper at the same time as you browse the internet. Radio is a secondary medium – it never monopolises your time.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Commercial radio has benefited from this uplift in total radio listening. Total hours listened to commercial radio (470m per week) have risen from what is beginning to look like a nadir in early 2010.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZro4O-N6N-FjJG3j7OHfAwJLY0rgOLrie_xle8GyLlhjPFrICchqG1euDzF-WdPgq_8L0eGmDcQwD-2q9krJzBABrsLycIIj6ZxjxQjOJRis_KN2muE738-SskGVkMYXM9ZPOkq0fpYE/s1600/RAJAR+2011Q2+2.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZro4O-N6N-FjJG3j7OHfAwJLY0rgOLrie_xle8GyLlhjPFrICchqG1euDzF-WdPgq_8L0eGmDcQwD-2q9krJzBABrsLycIIj6ZxjxQjOJRis_KN2muE738-SskGVkMYXM9ZPOkq0fpYE/s400/RAJAR+2011Q2+2.bmp" t$="true" width="400px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During the last two quarters, commercial radio’s adult weekly reach has jumped above the 65% threshold (65.5% in Q2 2011) that had not been breached since 2003.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWdmqLzgLBLSRDgOOK5Mo6tBDY4T7MUJVZUXQrs_ZEmPICncIklREGDrH7y4MutRC2TVIdrXj7DVWZ1LXV7lgHFh5QSPjfwXtLQuxlV6xFDLiBtou1IiT3ueifSl_O4dz84gmO9aKs06s/s1600/RAJAR+2011Q2+3.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWdmqLzgLBLSRDgOOK5Mo6tBDY4T7MUJVZUXQrs_ZEmPICncIklREGDrH7y4MutRC2TVIdrXj7DVWZ1LXV7lgHFh5QSPjfwXtLQuxlV6xFDLiBtou1IiT3ueifSl_O4dz84gmO9aKs06s/s400/RAJAR+2011Q2+3.bmp" t$="true" width="400px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In absolute terms, commercial radio’s adult weekly reach has almost caught up with the UK population growth experienced since 1999, rising to 34m in Q2 2011, marginally below its all-time high the previous quarter.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRB9YAx8OI-9UW0SdP1UWqX_U20TamClp6sjpa0wuw0SlUPCCrodbs1F-p3X92tIHUngYr0EindW4gShh-tWx62t7jeu6U5Gjo7B28ndTno1zQ3ozval4HefHzmA2MrB5PLox0PnICMJk/s1600/RAJAR+2011Q2+4.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRB9YAx8OI-9UW0SdP1UWqX_U20TamClp6sjpa0wuw0SlUPCCrodbs1F-p3X92tIHUngYr0EindW4gShh-tWx62t7jeu6U5Gjo7B28ndTno1zQ3ozval4HefHzmA2MrB5PLox0PnICMJk/s400/RAJAR+2011Q2+4.bmp" t$="true" width="400px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The remaining stumbling block for commercial radio is that its average hours consumed per listener remain stubbornly low (13.8 in Q2 2011). As noted previously, young people are spending less time with radio [see <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/when-uk-radio-listening-figures-are.html">blog</a>]. Commercial radio's audence is considerably more youth-orientated than BBC radio, which is why the average length of time for all adults listening to commercial radio remains in the doldrums.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjifyjpwN0B0YAs5cMB11aU7CRVZHXPKXxGQuTAO0BKjNwBiVLRHpYOYGwMuxykWDGVsizdPrjd45URi-fNxbOrJ6zhfa3ryJR9f3F4jMsrhLWK5i9rgrqtmskFdEp-jRIxzp6Ltp6O7pI/s1600/RAJAR+2011Q2+5.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="237px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjifyjpwN0B0YAs5cMB11aU7CRVZHXPKXxGQuTAO0BKjNwBiVLRHpYOYGwMuxykWDGVsizdPrjd45URi-fNxbOrJ6zhfa3ryJR9f3F4jMsrhLWK5i9rgrqtmskFdEp-jRIxzp6Ltp6O7pI/s400/RAJAR+2011Q2+5.bmp" t$="true" width="400px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With all this good news for the commercial radio sector, you might imagine that its share of total radio listening had started gaining in leaps and bounds at the expense of the BBC. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The BBC has benefited just as much as commercial radio has from the overall increases in radio listening. As a result, everyone’s volumes are ‘up’ and the share of commercial radio versus BBC radio has remained relatively constant. In Q2 2011, commercial radio’s 43.7% share was certainly an improvement on the situation in 2008, when it had looked as if the 40% barrier might be plumbed for the first time.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkBb3-IT-Hs-k5IkYeyWPPVx4PyFU1d9NgbmUYlVfjMvQK3IQfoYVNHAlpr6Umi8fe6PJRa5mXAVSxj9dDBrpn0pOT3zJXhZSfpLCBmJafgEO-s-jqAq9kCKqYO240Lyt-16mN8LEYwHU/s1600/RAJAR+2011Q2+6.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkBb3-IT-Hs-k5IkYeyWPPVx4PyFU1d9NgbmUYlVfjMvQK3IQfoYVNHAlpr6Umi8fe6PJRa5mXAVSxj9dDBrpn0pOT3zJXhZSfpLCBmJafgEO-s-jqAq9kCKqYO240Lyt-16mN8LEYwHU/s400/RAJAR+2011Q2+6.bmp" t$="true" width="400px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In fact, the BBC’s sustained strength in radio is becoming increasingly understated as more and more ‘radio’ listening is attributable to ‘listen again’ on-demand usage and podcasts. The BBC dominates the content available on both these platforms, whilst commercial radio’s offerings remain relatively sparse. At present, neither platform is measured within RAJAR. If they were, commercial radio’s share would undoubtedly be diminished further.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At present, this status quo (using RAJAR’s anachronistic definition of ‘radio’ as purely live and broadcast) suits both parties. The BBC does not wish to be seen to be even more dominant than it already is (54.0% of radio listening in Q2 2011). Commercial radio does not wish to be seen to be weaker than it already is (43.7%) in comparison to the BBC.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And who pays for RAJAR? The BBC and commercial radio. So we are stuck with an old fashioned metric that does not measure radio consumption in the 21st century sense of what we now call ‘radio,’ but which keeps both its paymasters happy … particularly as neither the BBC nor commercial radio would currently wish to demonstrate publicly the increasing popularity of online ‘radio’ consumption – which remains the biggest long-term external threat to them both.</span>Grant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078262770562171996.post-42673130271178440022011-07-28T17:32:00.000+01:002011-07-28T17:32:22.739+01:00UK commercial radio sector revenues Q1 2011: local advertising hits 10-year low<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Data published last week for 2011’s first quarter demonstrate that revenues of the UK commercial radio sector are still struggling to rebound from the previous two years’ ‘credit crunch.’</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A large part of the problem is the coalition government’s swingeing cuts to its marketing budget since May 2010, which have afflicted commercial radio advertising much more significantly than other media [see <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/government-expenditure-cutbacks-clobber.html">blog</a>]. Additionally, and very worryingly, in Q1 2011, revenues from local advertisers fell to their lowest level for a decade, even at a time when local radio might be thought to be making client gains from the decimation of the local newspaper industry.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As has been suggested here previously [see <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/uk-commercial-radio-revenues-q3-2010.html">blog</a>], the strategy of the largest commercial radio owner, Global Radio, to transform its local stations into ‘national’ brands would seem to be a recipe for disaster at a time when:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• the national advertising market for radio is shrinking so rapidly (down 34% in real terms between 2004 and 2010)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• the BBC continues to dominate the national radio marketplace with exceptionally well-funded, ubiquitous brands [see <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/david-vs-goliath-commercial-radio.html">blog</a>]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Ofcom’s market research points to overwhelming demand from consumers for more local radio rather than more national radio [see <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.culture.gov.uk/images/publications/An_Independent_Review_of_the_Rules_Governing_Local_Content_on_Commercial_Radio.pdf">chapter 4(d)</a>]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• many local commercial radio offices have been closed just as local newspapers have closed in many local markets.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbyTNYOj2D9WxS_FHsc7qRVJ2YCDqDM4OYTTeBWWUPBrHBWBKQhRX_3nFGm72vvVVflFc-gywwz1keLtzsR4nVTI4iZsYTV_zDlZznHrwW4Mw9pVbs3w8yAv8CNO-SuO0dBCf6DWBptdY/s1600/revenues+2011Q1+1.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="228px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbyTNYOj2D9WxS_FHsc7qRVJ2YCDqDM4OYTTeBWWUPBrHBWBKQhRX_3nFGm72vvVVflFc-gywwz1keLtzsR4nVTI4iZsYTV_zDlZznHrwW4Mw9pVbs3w8yAv8CNO-SuO0dBCf6DWBptdY/s400/revenues+2011Q1+1.bmp" t$="true" width="400px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>TOTAL UK COMMERCIAL RADIO REVENUES:</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Q1 2011: £126.9m (£137.9m in Q1 2010)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Down 8.0% year-on-year</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• First year-on-year decrease since Q3 2009</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>UK COMMERCIAL RADIO NATIONAL REVENUES:</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Q1 2011: £69.2m (£78.6m in Q1 2010)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Down 12.0% year-on-year</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• First year-on-year decrease since Q3 2009</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>UK COMMERCIAL RADIO LOCAL REVENUES:</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Q1 2011: £33.7m (£35.9m in Q1 2010)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Down 6.1% year-on-year</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Lowest quarter since Q1 2001</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOMsppoctoAhCxsN2iVRusZSTIHJDSL5Mk9TD2WNVF5NdJfqx2u5kHfFvUugFmIAZLJzy3yeDMvVTJ9t3Q9z1vJZ4tiUtZfzLy1GztQW7Tf0cj1rFQNoBYHRnXfgPSn4GgOxqXKRZCmWA/s1600/revenues+2011Q1+2.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="230px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOMsppoctoAhCxsN2iVRusZSTIHJDSL5Mk9TD2WNVF5NdJfqx2u5kHfFvUugFmIAZLJzy3yeDMvVTJ9t3Q9z1vJZ4tiUtZfzLy1GztQW7Tf0cj1rFQNoBYHRnXfgPSn4GgOxqXKRZCmWA/s400/revenues+2011Q1+2.bmp" t$="true" width="400px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although the quarter-on-quarter trend during the last three years appears to be relatively flat, once the data is viewed in the longer term, it is apparent that the commercial radio sector has been unable to grow its revenues back to the peak achieved in 2004. Adjusted for inflation, the ‘real’ peak occurred in 2000 and, by 2010, commercial radio total revenues had fallen by 33%.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXg5nEuy41ziAz91kGq7Btv-PDfzUAQIcqNiEQ4wIGdgmovIMt7TAfmSJ6Uogdr_iHZ_nqTUAslakZ_nsmF7eqdSbtec65nDYlWmLDpm6vH9Pkm91Cd1bieoyCqD59wYRsbfm_gOBqq4o/s1600/revenues+2011Q1+3.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="245px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXg5nEuy41ziAz91kGq7Btv-PDfzUAQIcqNiEQ4wIGdgmovIMt7TAfmSJ6Uogdr_iHZ_nqTUAslakZ_nsmF7eqdSbtec65nDYlWmLDpm6vH9Pkm91Cd1bieoyCqD59wYRsbfm_gOBqq4o/s400/revenues+2011Q1+3.bmp" t$="true" width="400px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Following the impact of the ‘credit crunch,’ the subsequent blow to the sector caused by the government’s slashed expenditure on commercial radio advertising from its Central Office of Information [COI] has been catastrophic. COI spend on radio in the twelve months to March 2011 was down 80% year-on-year. In the year to March 2010, the COI had been the radio sector’s biggest advertiser by a factor of eight but, only one year later, it had been diminished to almost par with the second biggest radio spender, Autoglass.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsw7un3hoZA6Gk5e6zHTyFbkXNC-TRAVO2X4BY3J8viGANgXWmFbziJKdGxyUo1Qu3vx2UVqdOm42tX2TeGX-JftcRa723arRUrcWFX6kASXI7fQr19hvAZWf-Yz9AsJAbS5ClX2gj8KE/s1600/revenues+2011Q1+4.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="233px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsw7un3hoZA6Gk5e6zHTyFbkXNC-TRAVO2X4BY3J8viGANgXWmFbziJKdGxyUo1Qu3vx2UVqdOm42tX2TeGX-JftcRa723arRUrcWFX6kASXI7fQr19hvAZWf-Yz9AsJAbS5ClX2gj8KE/s400/revenues+2011Q1+4.bmp" t$="true" width="400px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In June 2011, the government confirmed that the COI will be axed altogether, offering no respite to the commercial radio sector. According to <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jun/23/government-confirms-it-is-to-scap-coi">The Guardian</a>:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“Instead the government intends to run advertising and marketing activity out of the Cabinet Office, hiring about 20 extra staff to complement existing communications teams.”</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With local advertising revenues having hit a decade-low in Q1 2011, and national revenues having fallen 34% in real terms between 2004 and 2010, surely it should be time for commercial radio to ask itself:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• is the current local-station-turned-national-network policy the appropriate strategy for the current advertising market?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• is the current local-station-turned-national-network policy the appropriate strategy to satisfy radio listeners?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• how much longer can the ‘slash and burn’ strategy (as pursued by GWR, then by GCap, now by Global Radio) be applied to the commercial local radio industry before there is simply nothing left to cut?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• how much more shareholder value can be destroyed in commercial radio before revenues fall faster than costs can be cut?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A question I was asked by one senior radio executive last week was: how will all this commercial radio ‘slash and burn’ end? I wish I knew. Of one thing I am certain: it must eventually end in tears once the net book values of dozens of commercial radio licences have to be written down by millions of pounds in the accounts of their owners. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This process has already started tentatively:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Global Radio valued its licences at £333m on 31 March 2010, after having swallowed a £54m ‘impairment’ write-down in 2008/9</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• in 2009/10, the Guardian Media Group suffered an ‘impairment’ of its radio licences by £64m and now values them at £68m</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Times of India looks likely to have to take as little as £20m for Absolute Radio, a national station it had acquired for £53m only three years ago.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We have to anticipate more write-downs like these.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At some point, even millionaires must not enjoy watching as their radio assets are reduced to dust by shrinking audiences/revenues. But what can be done when those same owners have already starved the goose that had once laid the golden local commercial radio egg?</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><em>[Historical data from some previous quarters have been revised marginally at source]</em></span>Grant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078262770562171996.post-66003488988075625842011-07-23T16:20:00.000+01:002011-07-23T16:20:51.318+01:00Andy Parfitt leaves BBC Radio 1 on a high: separating the man from the myth<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Andy Parfitt’s departure from the station controller job at BBC Radio 1 after thirteen years marks a significant event for the UK radio sector. Parfitt’s accomplishments during his tenure were many, but did not extend to significantly turning around the station’s audience ratings.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the time Parfitt took on the controller job in March 1998 at Radio 1:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• its share of listening was 9.4%, compared to 8.7% in Q1 2011</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• its adult weekly reach was 20%, compared to 23% in Q1 2011</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• its average hours per listener per week were 8.1, compared to 7.8 in Q1 2011.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One metric did demonstrate a healthy increase – Radio 1’s absolute weekly reach was up from 9.7m adults in Q1 1998 to 11.8m in Q1 2011. However, part of that increase is attributable to the UK adult population having grown by 9% in the interim. Certainly, more adults listen to Radio 1 now than in 1998, but for shorter periods of time, and so the station’s share of total radio listening has declined.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Given this impasse to the improvement of Radio 1’s ratings, I was surprised to read in the BBC <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2011/07_july/21/parfitt.shtml">press release</a> announcing Parfitt’s departure that:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“Appointed Controller, BBC Radio 1, in March 1998, Andy has led Radio 1 and 1Xtra to <strong>record audience figures</strong> …”</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">… and surprised to read Parfitt’s boss, Tim Davie, declaring that:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>"Andy has been a fantastic Controller and leaves Radio 1 in rude health – with distinctive, high quality programmes and <strong>record listening figures</strong> …”</em></span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-v__me2f8hIGmlIp-Mmx0xpz11o3OfYPbieHVRY76a5pwqtY0k4dVmIHEYseMn3pZ6PPfTWICQ-NzBddz7HYM3dQZ1bQsDmThPfbCNGcOhfTRYvAttEf_jPr74DWHzPJbNNJRRD6ZPV0/s1600/Parfitt.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="255px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-v__me2f8hIGmlIp-Mmx0xpz11o3OfYPbieHVRY76a5pwqtY0k4dVmIHEYseMn3pZ6PPfTWICQ-NzBddz7HYM3dQZ1bQsDmThPfbCNGcOhfTRYvAttEf_jPr74DWHzPJbNNJRRD6ZPV0/s400/Parfitt.bmp" t$="true" width="400px" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The one person still working at Radio 1 who should know for sure that <em>“record audience figures”</em> had not been achieved during the last quarter, last year, the last decade or during Parfitt’s entire tenure is Andy Parfitt. Why? Because, between 1993 and 1998, Parfitt had been chief assistant to then Radio 1 controller Matthew Bannister, a turbulent period during which the station’s audience was decimated by a misguided set of programme policies that failed miserably to connect with listeners.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Between the end of 1992 and March 1998, when Parfitt took over from Bannister (whom the BBC had promoted to director of radio), Radio 1’s:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• share of listening fell from 22.4% to 9.4%</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• adult weekly reach fell from 36% to 20%</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• average hours listened per week fell from 11.8 to 8.1</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• absolute adult reach fell from 16.6m to 9.7m.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Radio 1 lost an incredible 58% of its listening, and 7m listeners, within that five-year period, a calamitous disaster from which the station has never recovered [see graph above]. Since then, Parfitt has kept the ship relatively steady, having been appointed in 1998 as a safe pair of BBC hands for Radio 1 after the tragedy of Bannister (who had come from Capital Radio via BBC GLR and had a fantastic track record in news radio, but not in music radio).</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Never again will Radio 1 achieve a weekly audience of 17 million adults, as it had done in 1992. Those days are long gone. In recent years, fewer young people are listening to broadcast radio, and they are listening for shorter periods of time. Sadly, radio does not prove as exciting for them as the internet, games or social networking.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course, it would have been nice for any incumbent to leave the Radio 1 job on a ‘high.’ But, unfortunately, it was never going to happen with Parfitt, or probably with any successor. Radio 1’s ‘golden age’ was wilfully destroyed twenty years ago. Nevertheless, somewhere, somebody in the BBC must have decided to invoke the notion of Parfitt’s <em>“record audience figures,”</em> regardless or not of whether they were a fact.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What surprises me is that every BBC press release must have to pass through endless approvals – within the originating department, in the press office and in the lawyers’ office – before it reaches the public. Did nobody out of the dozens of people that must have checked this particular press release ask the simple question: can you substantiate this <em>“record audience figures” </em>claim?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">RAJAR radio audience data are publicly available for all to see. Anyone from the BBC could have checked and found that, using every radio listening metric known to man, Radio 1’s <em>“record audience figures”</em> were all achieved two decades ago, rather than at any time during Parfitt’s tenure. Maybe they didn’t check. Or maybe they did, but pressed ahead anyway.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The ability to play fast and loose with numbers and statistics, particularly those that can be said to be at an ‘all time high,’ might appear to be endemic within the UK radio industry. I have highlighted similar instances of the industry’s abuse of statistics in other claims. Now that the consumer press only seems interested in ‘radio’ stories involving celebrities, and now that the media trade press has been reduced to recycling radio press releases, ‘myth’ can quite easily be propagated as ‘fact.’</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am reminded of a passage in my new <a href="http://www.radiobooks.org/">book</a> about KISS FM when, two decades ago, I had asked my station boss why an Evening Standard profile of him and his car had featured a vehicle that was not the one he owned or drove.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“It seemed to make a better story,”</em> he told me.</span>Grant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078262770562171996.post-16051640720633751242011-07-18T09:42:00.001+01:002011-07-18T11:06:16.611+01:00When is a consultation not a consultation? When Ofcom consults about radio<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Each of us has dozens of ‘consultations’ every day. You know the sort of thing. 'I’m going to the corner shop – anything you want? A Kit-Kat? OK.' However, if I came back with a cat rather than a chocolate bar, you would understandably be unhappy. That had not really been a consultation at all.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ofcom’s consultations on radio are increasingly like that. Ofcom pretends it is going to listen. It doesn’t listen. And then it does whatever it wanted to do in the first place. Mmmm. Surely that is not really a consultation at all.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC0vgmLYYtyr-UGfrFGKZwZB642O3gl5jEPcFqpquvLf8vs1DgfEnesaNirkLM23rFLZXdvnikLhAoOEItB1f_PZuKR5WMjrTKj5wVxa282NJYYEn-Pa01i_rEZW-2Gdd_SS33UWa-vzA/s1600/Devon+1.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="233px" m$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC0vgmLYYtyr-UGfrFGKZwZB642O3gl5jEPcFqpquvLf8vs1DgfEnesaNirkLM23rFLZXdvnikLhAoOEItB1f_PZuKR5WMjrTKj5wVxa282NJYYEn-Pa01i_rEZW-2Gdd_SS33UWa-vzA/s320/Devon+1.bmp" width="320px" /></a></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In June 2011, an Ofcom <a href="http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/consultations/dab-north-devon/summary/Exeter_Torbay.pdf">consultation</a> asked six questions about a proposal by Now Digital (owned by radio transmission provider Arqiva) to extend the coverage of its Exeter and Torbay DAB multiplex to North Devon. One of those questions was:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“Q6. Do you consider that there any other grounds on which Ofcom should approve, or not approve, the request from Now Digital? Please explain the reasons for your view.”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, Ofcom had apparently already decided that its ‘consultation’ was not a genuine consultation at all, when it explained:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“Before deciding whether to agree to Now Digital’s request, Ofcom is legally required to seek representations on the request from any interested parties. … Provided that the request meets the terms of the statute, the decision whether or not to agree to the request is at Ofcom’s discretion.”</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, Ofcom’s 21-page consultation document was really a complete waste of time and money. The decision was already made. And it would be even more of a waste of time and money for anyone to respond. But respond they did.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In July 2011, Ofcom <a href="http://licensing.ofcom.org.uk/radio-broadcast-licensing/digital-radio/Multiplex-coverage-extension/exeter-torbay/">admitted</a> that, out of 234 responses submitted to its consultation, <em>“the vast majority … were opposed to Now Digital’s request.”</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most objected on the grounds that:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>• “agreement to the extension of the multiplex would enable the holder of an existing FM local commercial radio licence for Barnstaple to secure the renewal of that licence, precluding the advertisement of a new such licence (which otherwise would have been due to take place forthwith); and; </em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>• the level of coverage of North Devon proposed by Now Digital was unsatisfactory as it would leave 30% of households in the area with no access to radio services in the event of a digital radio switchover.”</em></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0NYr6AErivMziEQ8fzwapsv7nq2Y3eBcyfrvDX8cDol906bukeniGtt3UZM0u-PSWeZ1uX3Rlq8YZVHYYp1Ihdys4uadInyfthDXML9vWKEb_I8Z_MwetS26xgvf1YV7KORcB7LjlI5Y/s1600/Devon+2.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="187px" m$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0NYr6AErivMziEQ8fzwapsv7nq2Y3eBcyfrvDX8cDol906bukeniGtt3UZM0u-PSWeZ1uX3Rlq8YZVHYYp1Ihdys4uadInyfthDXML9vWKEb_I8Z_MwetS26xgvf1YV7KORcB7LjlI5Y/s320/Devon+2.bmp" width="320px" /></a></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Did Ofcom care about this volume of public opposition? Not at all. Did it investigate why the share of listening to the merged Heart FM Devon had fallen dramatically to an all-time low last quarter (behind BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio Devon) [RAJAR, 2011 Q1]? Apparently not. Ofcom explained:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“The [Ofcom Radio Licensing] Committee [<a href="http://www.ofcom.org.uk/about/how-ofcom-is-run/committees/radio-licensing-committee/">RLC</a>] noted the strong opposition to the fact that approval of Now Digital's request would allow Lantern Radio Limited, the holder of the local [Heart] FM commercial radio licence for Barnstaple, to apply for a renewal of the licence and thereby preclude advertisement of a new licence. However, the RLC did not consider that this fact should preclude the granting of Now Digital's request.”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And why not? Because Ofcom’s wholly unrealistic policy objective, <strong>for DAB to replace AM/FM radio</strong>, is still being doggedly pursued to the exclusion of any wider regulatory issues – consumer choice, market competition or the removal of barriers to sector entry. As well as to the exclusion of the majority of the 234 respondents to this consultation.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To put the same thing in Ofcom’s own weasel words: <em>“What Now Digital Limited sought in its request is provided for in section 54A of the 1996 Act. Agreeing to the request would be consistent with the broad policy aims of that section. Namely, <strong>the extension and promotion of local DAB broadcasting</strong> with the consumer benefits of greater choice of services.”</em> [emphasis added]</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now Digital promised to launch the first of three new DAB transmitters in North Devon within six months of Ofcom’s approval. And what about the remaining two? Now Digital promised these will be installed <em>“six months after a positive decision in 2013 by Government regarding digital switchover”</em>. Oh, so you mean ‘never.’</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The ulterior objective of this proposal was that the promise to build a single new DAB transmitter in North Devon would enable Global Radio to automatically renew its existing FM licence in Barnstaple for a further eight years without a public contest, thus denying any potential new entrants. Ofcom simply rolled over and complied. And what did Ofcom suggest to the complainants who might not have felt that London-based Global Radio was offering them a genuinely local radio station in Heart FM? It stated:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“The RLC recognised the strength of feeling among many respondents to the consultation for there to be an opportunity for an alternative provider of a local radio service in North Devon to apply for a licence … Ofcom is always keen to facilitate new local radio services for listeners where such services are viable and therefore able to offer consumer benefits over the long term. To this end, the RLC noted that, in its response to the consultation, Arqiva stated that there is presently capacity for at least one further new station to be accommodated on the Exeter & Torbay local [DAB] radio multiplex.”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is patronising rubbish. <em>"Viable"? "Consumer benefits"?</em> Can Ofcom please name any DAB-only radio station that is making an operating profit as a standalone business? No? Because there isn’t one. DAB radio has proven to be one massive financial black hole that has wasted approaching £1bn. Suggesting to consultation respondents that they start their own new local radio station on DAB is akin to Ofcom recommending these correspondents burn down their own houses.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All Ofcom has done is raise two fingers to the people of North Devon in this consultation. If I were Ofcom’s director of radio, <a href="http://www.ofcom.org.uk/about/how-ofcom-is-run/committees/radio-licensing-committee/members/peter-davies/">Peter Davies</a>, I would not consider booking a holiday in North Devon any time soon.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Unless Global were to return the favour by picking up the tab for his bodyguards?</span>Grant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078262770562171996.post-33542807934898670982011-07-15T09:49:00.000+01:002011-07-15T09:49:05.283+01:00SPAIN: DAB digital radio switched off in most of country<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A new law in Spain has reduced the coverage requirement of the country’s DAB radio transmissions from 50% to 20% of the population.</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.radiodigitaldab.com/images/cobertura/Peninsula.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="176px" m$="true" src="http://www.radiodigitaldab.com/images/cobertura/Peninsula.jpg" width="200px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From 10 June 2011, a new <a href="http://boe.es/boe/dias/2011/06/28/pdfs/BOE-A-2011-11109.pdf">Royal Decree</a> required that DAB broadcasts <em>“must ensure a minimum coverage of 20% of the population,”</em> replacing the 50% requirement that had been stipulated in legislation since 1999.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Within the next three years, the government will be able to change this coverage requirement once again if digital radio does not grow its audience share to more than 10% of total radio listening. In the unlikely event that digital radio’s audience share ever exceeds 10%, DAB radio coverage will be required to increase from 20% back to 50% of the population.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As reported here in 2010 [see <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/spain-dab-enters-last-chance-saloon.html">blog</a>], commercial radio in Spain has found no incentive to broadcast on DAB because <em>“the audience is zero.”</em> This new legislation relieves broadcasters from having to underwrite an expensive DAB radio transmission system that, to date, had generated no incremental listeners or revenues.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Decree noted that:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“The development of terrestrial sound broadcasting has been hampered in recent years by, amongst other things, a lack of digital radio receivers which has significantly reduced the audience share initially anticipated and, thus, has jeopardised the possibility for station owners to achieve a return on their investment.”</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The <a href="http://www.radiodigitaldab.com/index.htm">web site</a> marketing DAB radio in Spain has not been updated since April 2008. The <a href="http://www.rtve.es/dab/">web page</a> for state radio’s DAB transmissions no longer exists. It has been reported that DAB radio broadcasts will now be limited to only two metropolitan areas.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">[thanks to Eivind Engberg and <a href="http://www.wohnort.org/dab/">Wohnort</a>]</span>Grant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078262770562171996.post-17619019943842427362011-07-12T17:19:00.000+01:002011-07-12T17:19:08.141+01:00PORTUGAL: DAB digital radio switched off<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On 1 June 2011, Rádio e Televisão de Portugal [RTP], the state broadcaster in Portugal, <a href="http://www.meiosepublicidade.pt/2011/05/05/rtp-encerra-rede-de-radio-digital/">instructed</a> Anacom, the national transmission provider, to switch off all DAB radio transmitters.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">RTP explained in a press statement that its decision was the outcome of budgetary constraints and the fact that no commercial broadcasters had agreed to broadcast on DAB. Additionally, it said that <em>“high priced radio receivers had prevented many people acquiring them.”</em></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMFiqX-PKx6J9Hu261q11H1GFUCUselG3yPe9NI__tu0TBPkRy8Kb25O03YuKingNBVvPWbzTmFo_h3q5sFqjl2_LSbv39KmruJjObKaw45KRXIzUOZaqRgTznau1gXh47gwMBdrIyBAI/s1600/Portugal.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="243px" m$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMFiqX-PKx6J9Hu261q11H1GFUCUselG3yPe9NI__tu0TBPkRy8Kb25O03YuKingNBVvPWbzTmFo_h3q5sFqjl2_LSbv39KmruJjObKaw45KRXIzUOZaqRgTznau1gXh47gwMBdrIyBAI/s320/Portugal.bmp" width="320px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.meiosepublicidade.pt/2011/04/14/rtp-pediu-suspensao-da-emissao-digital-de-radio/">According</a> to one Portuguese newspaper:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“The DAB terrestrial digital radio system was launched in August 1998 by RTP and by Anacom, which manages the national transmission system. Despite having national coverage, which was decreed by law in July 1998 that permitted broadcasts by all radio stations interested in the platform, DAB never took off in Portugal. Until now, the platform has been limited to relays of existing FM broadcasts by state radio because no commercial radio station signed up. The implementation of DAB also struggled with the fact that there was insufficient supply in the Portuguese market of DAB radio receivers, according to sources consulted by this publication. Apparently, the DAB system was costing €250,000 per annum over more than a decade. The need for RTP to invest in replacing this transmitter network may have weighed heavily on the decision to suspend the service.”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">GMCS, the Portuguese media regulator, <a href="http://www.gmcs.pt/download.php?dir=122.552&file=r_lic_dab.pdf">explained</a> in April 2011:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“RTP claims that, despite the significant investment totalling €6.3m to date, the reality is that few Portuguese used the [DAB] system, which leads us to conclude that the allocation of resources to this project does not meet the efficiency requirement and good practice required for public funds.”</em></span><br />
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<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">[thanks to Eivind Engberg and <a href="http://www.wohnort.org/dab/">Wohnort</a>]</span>Grant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078262770562171996.post-73207914862848511312011-07-05T20:39:00.000+01:002011-07-05T20:39:26.761+01:00DAB in cars: the straw that will break digital radio switchover's back<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Speaking today at the Intellect conference in London, broadcasting Minister Ed Vaizey tried to <a href="http://www.culture.gov.uk/news/ministers_speeches/8271.aspx">assure</a> us that digital radio switchover was still <em>“on course”</em> to happen in the year twenty something or other:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“On cars, the move to include digital radio as standard in new vehicles has continued over the last year. Around 14% of new vehicles have DAB as standard, up from 4% a year ago.”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Within hours, this news was misinterpreted by one online news source as Vaizey having <a href="http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/the-frontline-blog/2084108/car-industry-key-driving-digital-radio-services">said</a>:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>"<strong>Forty</strong> per cent of cars have DAB [Digital Audio Broadcasting] radios as standard now, up from just four per cent a year ago.”</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From ‘14% of new cars’ to ‘40% of all cars’ in a stroke of a keyboard! No wonder the article went on to <a href="http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/the-frontline-blog/2084108/car-industry-key-driving-digital-radio-services">assert</a> that <em>“the key driver to the take-up of the [DAB] technology looks like it will come from the car industry as manufacturers start to fit digital radios as standard.”</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How wrong can this statement be? Fewer than 1% of vehicles on the road currently have a DAB radio. That proportion is not going to increase quickly, even by 2013 or 2015, as the government wants it to. Rather than being <em>“the key driver”</em> for DAB radio take-up, cars will become THE major sticking point for digital radio switchover.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQnnXSxOU1wBCMO7AeNu6UwKWxez_FFz64DG9KajH4KIyIEP2MGa5DytnbSsUIrV1ank36oWKMNGDd3ITjyhH23cXEctrZPk6pwO7iy9crfkwBjNzZ-0MycIysa2ts2mi_Coc8mFVK-EI/s1600/SMMT1.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239px" i$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQnnXSxOU1wBCMO7AeNu6UwKWxez_FFz64DG9KajH4KIyIEP2MGa5DytnbSsUIrV1ank36oWKMNGDd3ITjyhH23cXEctrZPk6pwO7iy9crfkwBjNzZ-0MycIysa2ts2mi_Coc8mFVK-EI/s320/SMMT1.bmp" width="320px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The UK car industry appears to be nearing the end of its tether over the confused information that has been fed to consumers in recent years about the so-called DAB ‘switchover’ and FM ‘switch-off’ date(s). This frustration boiled over at the last government Digital Radio Stakeholders Group meeting on 17 May 2011, when <strong>Bob Davis</strong>, who heads the <a href="https://www.smmt.co.uk/members-lounge/sections-committees/digital-radio-committee#">Digital Radio Committee</a> of the Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders [SMMT], stood up to offer what he referred to as a <em>“naughty”</em> comment:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“Jane [Humphreys, Department for Culture, Media & Sport] said earlier ‘around 2015’ for a digital radio switchover. The automotive industry has made it very, very clear, since the process began, that it needs certainty. We’ve got 2013 [as the date for a government decision on switchover] and we think we’re working towards a 2015 switchover date. With respect, Jane, I can already see tomorrow’s headlines that DCMS says ‘digital switchover delayed from 2015’ because you used the phrase ‘around 2015’. That implies a delay. It may be what potentially happens in the market – it may be 2016, it might be a bit later than that – but, for the moment, from an automotive industry perspective, every time there’s a suggestion that 2015 has stopped being the aspirational date – or might stop being an aspirational date – all that happens is [that] the automotive industry, or parts of it, is given another opportunity to say ‘it ain’t going to happen, forget all about it’ and we will end up with the bigger problem of converting vehicles already in the parc to digital, because people will just say ‘if DCMS can’t give us certainty’ – and I accept that, at the moment, you can’t – but if DCMS are saying ‘around 2015’ instead of ‘in 2015’, it reduces the opportunity for SMMT to keep telling its members there’s a deadline, and it’s ‘this’. So please could we have a little bit of caution, from an automotive industry perspective, in (particularly) government references to switchover dates.”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Jane Humpreys:</strong> <em>“Thank you, Bob, though I think I’m right in saying that the Minister has never said ‘it will be in 2015’. He too has said that it will be in terms of … that is the target to which we are working, but what is the principal objective is that we have to meet the criteria that have been set out and we have a piece of legislation – unless I’m much mistaken – that says there will be a minimum of two years’ notice. So….”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>John Mottram</strong>, DCMS: <em>“That’s right. I’m aware of three Daily Mail articles that suggest it’s seven years, two years, five years’ delay depending upon the date, so I think in terms of coverage and it being delayed, I think that delay is already out there. But to Jane’s point, I think the Action Plan and Ed [Vaizey]’s words make it clear that it’s a consumer-led approach. The industry target date is 2015 – we’ve never shifted from that – but that decision is based on the criteria….”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At that point, the meeting was abruptly closed. What had been scheduled to be merely another ‘tick the government box’ faux consultation meeting had suddenly started to spin out of control. The natives had started to get restless. It was time to turn them out onto the street again.</span>Grant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078262770562171996.post-21193264295977906662011-07-01T22:01:00.000+01:002011-07-01T22:01:35.809+01:00Radio Invicta: the genesis of black music radio in London .... still unfulfilled<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/50492_146169279003_3827819_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" i$="true" src="http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/50492_146169279003_3827819_n.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I only knew Roger Tate through listening to his programmes on the radio. He was a DJ on Radio Invicta, London’s first soul music radio station, launched in 1970. Invicta was a pirate radio station. Back then, there were no legal radio stations in the UK other than the BBC.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The notion of a campaign for a soul music radio station for London had been a little premature, given that no kind of commercial radio had yet existed in Britain. But that is exactly what Radio Invicta did. As Roger Tate explained on-air in 1974:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“Who are Radio Invicta? You may well be asking. Well, we’re an all-soul music radio station. We’re more of a campaign than a radio station, I suppose. We believe in featuring more good soul music on the radio.”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By 1982, Black Echoes music paper reported that Radio Invicta was attracting 26,000 listeners each weekend for its broadcasts. By 1983, Radio Invicta had collected a petition of 20,000 signatures in support of its campaign for a legal radio licence. There was sufficient space on the FM band for London to have dozens more radio stations. By then, local commercial radio had existed in the UK for a decade. But nobody in power wanted to receive the station’s petition and Invicta’s Mike Strawson commented:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“I have tried to speak to the Home Office about it, but it shuts the door.”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Radio Invicta eventually closed for good on 15 July 1984, the date that the new Telecommunications Act had dramatically increased the penalties for getting caught doing pirate radio to a £2,000 fine and/or three months in jail. By then, Capital Radio had enjoyed its licence as London’s only commercial radio music station for eleven years. Its monopoly reign was still to run for a further six years.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It might have seemed in 1984 that Radio Invicta’s fourteen-year struggle to play soul music on the radio in London had come to absolutely nothing. The Invicta team went their separate ways after the pirate station’s closure. Roger Tate continued his career as a successful technology journalist. After his death in 2001, aged only 47, one of his friends, Trevor Brook, spoke of Tate’s determination to play soul music on the radio in the face of opposition from the government and the radio ‘establishment.’ His <a href="http://www2.bobtomalski.com/memorial_2001/Funeral.htm">eulogy</a> at the funeral of his friend ‘Bob Tomalski’ included these comments:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“The government told the story that there were no frequencies available. Now Bob was not stupid. He had enough technical knowledge to know that this was simply not true. So, either government officials were too dim to realise the truth of the situation ... or they were just lying. Nowadays, we have 300 independent transmitters operating in those same wavebands, so you can probably work out which it was. Anyway, in Britain, the result was that any proper public debate about the possible merits of more radio listening choice was sabotaged by this perpetual claim that it was impossible anyway.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>So, we had pirates. Other countries which had not liberalised the airwaves had pirates as well, but some of them took the refreshingly realistic approach that no harm was being caused, and they permitted unlicensed operations to continue until they got round to regularising the situation. Ambulances still reached their destinations and no aeroplanes fell out of the sky. Not so in this country though. The enforcement services here were too well funded and the established orthodoxy too well entrenched. That 'frequency cupboard' was going to be kept well and truly locked!</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>Bob had thrown himself into running a regular soul station, Radio Invicta. He built a studio, tore it apart and built a better one. He eventually sectioned off part of the flat as a separate soundproofed area. He built transmitters - and got them working. But Bob was nothing if not multi-skilled, and he excelled in producing the programmes themselves. Using nothing more impressive than an old four track reel to reel tape recorder, Bob would create highly polished jingles and station identifications. ‘Roger Tate, super soul DJ.’ Other stations, both official and unofficial, listened to what Bob and his colleagues did and their ideas were copied or imitated.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>Faced with the authorities, Bob was remarkable, because he was absolutely fearless. He was certain they were in the wrong and, given enough time, were going to lose the battle. It was a war of attrition and only perpetual piracy was ever going to bring about change. And he was quite right about that. The government kept winning the battle in the courts but began to lose the moral one. Eventually the law was changed. </em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>Do we have free radio now? In the sense that anybody can decide to start up a new magazine, find the finance and get on with it, no, we don't have that for radio. The process is bound up with a long winded regulation and approval process involving a statutory body which has had its fingers burnt in the past by the odd bankruptcy and the odd scandal. So they play safe and issue more licences to those who already have stations. The consequence is that originality and creativity get crushed into blandness and mediocrity. My own teenagers constantly flip between stations in the car, but they don't care enough about any of them to listen indoors. Fresh people don't get to control stations. Behind boardroom doors, they might think it privately, but in what other industry would the chairman of the largest conglomerate in the market dare to say publicly that even the present regime was too open and, I quote, ‘was out of date and was letting inexperienced players into the market’? That is a disgraceful statement. Where would television, theatre, comedy, the arts, and so on be, if new and, by definition, inexperienced people didn't get lots of exposure? The industry is stale, complacent and rotten. Bob, there are more battles out there and we needed you here.”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ten years later, these words are just as pertinent. It is hard to believe that a bunch of enthusiastic soul music fans who wanted to play their favourite music to their mates could have posed such a threat to the established order. But the history of radio broadcasting in the UK has demonstrated repeatedly that ‘the great and the good’ consider the medium far too important to let control fall out of their hands. Their arguments, however ridiculous, were taken completely seriously because they were the establishment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Peter Baldwin, deputy director of radio at the Independent Broadcasting Authority, said in 1985: <em>“We wouldn’t want to be dealing with two current local stations [in one area]. If it’s Radio Yeovil [operating as the only commercial station in Yeovil], well, that’s okay ... But we couldn’t subscribe to competition [for existing local commercial pop music station Swansea Sound] from Radio Swansea, unless it was in Welsh or concentrated on jazz – and there probably wouldn’t be sufficient demand for that kind of service.”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">James Gordon (now Lord Gordon), then managing director of Radio Clyde, wrote in The Independent newspaper in 1989: <em>“It has to be asked whether there is really evidence of pent-up demand from listeners for more localised neighbourhood stations ... Eight to ten London-wide stations would be enough to cater for most tastes.”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">David Mellor MP told the House of Commons in 1984: <em>“The government do not believe that it would be sensible or fair to issue pirate broadcasters with licences to broadcast. To do so, on the basis suggested by the pirate broadcasters, would be progressively to undermine the broadcasting structure that has evolved over the years.”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, within five years, the government did indeed license a pirate radio station to broadcast in London. Once Invicta had disappeared in 1984, it was superseded by newer, more commercially minded, more entrepreneurial pirate radio stations – JFM, LWR, Horizon – that played black music for Londoners. In 1985, a new pirate station called KISS FM started, quite hesitantly at first. Its reign as a London pirate proved to be much shorter than Invicta’s but, by the time KISS closed in 1988, it was probably already better known than Invicta.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">KISS FM went on to win a London radio licence in 1989 and re-launched legally in 1990. It carried with it the debt of a twenty-year history of black music pirate radio in London started by Radio Invicta and then pushed forward by hundreds of DJs who had worked on dozens of London black music stations. KISS FM would never have existed or won its licence without those pirate pioneers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sadly, the importance of KISS FM’s licence as the outcome of a twenty-year campaign seemed to be quickly forgotten by its owners and shareholders. The lure of big bucks quickly replaced pirate ideology during a period of history when ‘get rich quick’ was peddled by government as the legitimate prevailing economic philosophy. KISS FM lost the plot rapidly and soon became no more than a money-making machine for a faceless multimedia corporation.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Right now, there remains as big a gap between pirate radio and the licensed radio broadcasters as existed twenty years ago or even forty years ago. London’s supposedly ‘black music’ stations, KISS FM and Choice FM, now sound too much of the time like parodies of what they could be. Whereas, pirate radio in London still sounds remarkably alive, unconventional and creative. More importantly, only the pirates play the ‘tunes’ that many of us like to hear.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghWR_xgypz33L89IfnaaiV_zVJvyow7YKGUip4R2tPJE2WRVdfdHOB3OYF-5x-QC63GCI-teVeGSK-qJ12lS_HrjqZ41-g6tEw6tNITJHirGqxKT3XFPb1qL6h6R-GwNNAsQ60v6k918E/s1600/cover24web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" i$="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghWR_xgypz33L89IfnaaiV_zVJvyow7YKGUip4R2tPJE2WRVdfdHOB3OYF-5x-QC63GCI-teVeGSK-qJ12lS_HrjqZ41-g6tEw6tNITJHirGqxKT3XFPb1qL6h6R-GwNNAsQ60v6k918E/s1600/cover24web.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The issue of how black music was ignored by legal radio in London, and then betrayed by newly licensed black music radio stations, is on my mind because of my new book <a href="http://www.radiobooks.org/">‘KISS FM: From Radical Radio To Big Business.’</a> It documents a small part of the history of black music pirate radio in London, and it charts the transformation of KISS FM from a rag tag group of black music fanatics into a corporate horror story. I was on the inside of that metamorphosis and it was an experience that, even twenty years later, remains a sad and terrible time to recall.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://photos-h.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/168786_10150092288584004_146169279003_6079237_7666818_s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" i$="true" src="http://photos-h.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/168786_10150092288584004_146169279003_6079237_7666818_s.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1974, Roger Tate had wanted more black music to be heard on the radio in London. Ostensibly, that objective has been achieved. But the black music I hear played on white-owned stations in London (there is no black-owned station) is a kind of vanilla K-Tel ‘black music’ that is inoffensive and unchallenging.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If Croydon is the dubstep capital of the world, how come there is no FM radio station playing dubstep in Croydon, or even in London? How come I never hear reggae on the radio when London is one of the world cities for reggae? How come I had to turn to speech station BBC Radio Four to hear anything about the death of Gil Scott-Heron in May? Why is that Jean Adebambo’s suicide went completely unremarked by radio two years ago?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Legitimate radio in London seems just as scared of contemporary cutting-edge black music as it was in the 1970s when Roger Tate was trying to fill the gaping hole with Radio Invicta. Nothing has really changed. Except now there exists the internet to fill that gaping hole. And FM pirate radio in London continues to satisfy demands from an audience that legitimate radio has demonstrated time and time again that it doesn’t give a shit about. Is it any surprise that young people are deserting broadcast radio?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Forty years ago, I listened to Roger Tate and London pirates like Radio Invicta because they played the music I wanted to hear. Forty years later, I find it absolutely ridiculous that I am still listening to a new generation of London pirates because they still play the music I want to hear. As Trevor Brook suggested at Roger’s funeral, our radio system is so consumed by <em>“blandness and mediocrity”</em> that <em>“the industry is stale, complacent and rotten.”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Roger Tate R.I.P. You may be gone, but you and your campaign at Radio Invicta are as necessary as ever today. Sad but true.</span>Grant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078262770562171996.post-22719806802649687602011-05-23T16:48:00.000+01:002011-05-23T16:48:38.190+01:00GERMANY: "DAB [radio] remains a problem child"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.medientreffpunkt-mitteldeutschland.de/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Mo-02052011-Radio-02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="226px" j8="true" src="http://www.medientreffpunkt-mitteldeutschland.de/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Mo-02052011-Radio-02.jpg" width="320px" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On 2 May 2011, a <a href="http://www.medientreffpunkt-mitteldeutschland.de/programmkalender/radio-grosere-einheiten-in-der-digitalen-welt">panel</a> convened at the Central Germany Media Conference in Leipzig to discuss the future of digital radio. The panellists were: Gerd Bauer from LMS, Erwin Linnenbach from Regiocast, Christophe Montague from NRJ International Operations and Willi Steul from Deutschlandradio.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The panel <a href="http://www.medientreffpunkt-mitteldeutschland.de/radio-grosere-einheiten-in-der-digitalen-welt">felt</a> that one of the main problems around the planned (re-)launch of digital radio in Germany on 1 August 2011 was the lack of DAB+ capable radio receivers in the market. <em>“The left shoe is there, but not the right one,”</em> commented Erwin Linnenbach, who was concerned that it would be difficult to persuade consumers to buy a digital radio if they did not know what they would be able to receive on it.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Willi Steul said that he had had to visit three shops before he had found one that stocked a DAB+ radio. <em>“An ordinary customer would not make that effort, but would have bought an FM radio from the first place,”</em> he suggested. Deutschlandradio would save €12m per annum from being able to shut down its Long Wave and Medium Wave transmitters, said Steul. However, even if DAB+ were available nationwide, he did not believe that FM switch-off was an issue.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Christophe Montague suggested that, where there were already a wide range of FM radio stations, there was no need for new channels. This was the reason why it would prove so hard to launch digital radio in France. Whereas, in many parts of Germany, Montague said that it was a <em>“radio desert.”</em></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The panellists agreed that the biggest problem was the lack of DAB+ radios in shops. Linnenbach did not believe that this issue could be fixed by 1 August because there was not enough time. The objective had to be to make radio listeners understand the benefits offered by DAB+. If that succeeded, he believed the chances were good for a successful launch.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The panel proceedings were reported in the German press under sceptical headlines:</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• <em>“DAB Plus before launch – an uncertain outlook for success,”</em> <a href="http://weser-ems.business-on.de/dab-plus-radio-hoerer-erwin-linnenbach-_id17957.html">said</a> Business-on</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• <em>“Media conference – success of DAB Plus not guaranteed,”</em> <a href="http://www.digitalfernsehen.de/Medientreffpunkt-Erfolg-von-DAB-Plus-nicht-sicher.54903.0.html">said</a> Digitalfernsehen</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• <em>“Media conference – DAB remains a problem child,”</em> <a href="http://www.rein-hoeren.de/?q=content/medientreffpunkt-dab-bleibt-sorgenkind">said</a> Rein-Hoeren</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to the latter publication, Erwin Linnenbach had said that the monopoly of transmission company Media Broadcast was the major obstacle to nationwide digital radio in Germany. He felt that Media Broadcast’s requirements did not offer a sensible business model to potential DAB+ broadcasters [see <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/germany-planned-2011-re-launch-of.html">blog</a> Dec 2010]. Christophe Montague agreed and said he had the impression that Media Broadcast would make the most out of the DAB tender process.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Heinz-Dieter Sommer, director of radio at Hessischen Rundfunks, said that economically viable conditions had to be created to enable commercial radio companies to participate in DAB+ alongside the public service broadcasters. <em>“Otherwise,”</em> he said, <em>“in ten years time, FM will still not be switched off.”</em></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Two British digital radio companies have committed financial support to the roll-out of national DAB+ in Germany in August 2011. This follows the slow-down of DAB radio receiver sales in the UK in 2009 and 2010 [see <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/dab-radio-sector-rubbishes-its-own.html">blog</a>].</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In December 2010, Frontier Silicon announced that, in order to persuade four commercial radio broadcasters in Germany to persevere with DAB+, it had promised them it would purchase an unspecified amount of their advertising airtime over the next four years [see <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/germany-planned-2011-re-launch-of.html">blog</a>].</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then, in March 2011, Pure Digital <a href="http://www.pure.com/de/presse/release.asp?ID=441">announced</a> that it had forged <em>“a strategic marketing partnership with Germany’s commercial radio stations in advance of the launch of the first nationwide digital radio multiplex.”</em> It said that <em>“the partnership and financial investment”</em> it was providing would ensure that its digital radios would be <em>“heavily promoted in various German media.”</em></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Germany could be under the mistaken impression that DAB radio is already a roaring success in the UK market. It was reported in the German press last week:</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• <em>“While listening in Germany is still dominated by analogue radio, the British have long joined the digital age. Figures from RAJAR have shown that, in Q1 2011, nearly 92% of the population have listened to digital radio, on average for more than 22 hours per week.”</em> [<a href="http://www.ln-online.de/unterhaltung/portraits/3119204/Die_Briten_h%C3%B6ren_digital">source</a>]</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• <em>“Britain remains a pioneer in listening to digital radio via DAB. On Thursday, new RAJAR record figures were recorded. 47.3m listeners (91.6%) in the first quarter listened at least once a week to digital radio.”</em> [<a href="http://www.satundkabel.de/index.php/nachrichtenueberblick/radio/80867-digitales-dab-radio-wird-immer-beliebter-britische-hoerer-voll-dabei">source</a>]</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In fact, the most recent RAJAR research found that 43% of the UK adult population listened to digital radio in a week, and only 27% listened to DAB radio. The high percentages quoted in the German press are for listening to ALL radio via ALL platforms, not for digital radio or DAB radio alone.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I recall Frontier Silicon chief executive Anthony Sethill having been <a href="http://www.frontier-silicon.com/media/releases/08/1219_DRWG.htm">quoted</a> in his company's press release in 2008 saying: <em>“Digital radio is here to stay, with DAB sets outselling analogue models by six to one.”</em></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In fact, in the UK, analogue radios outsell DAB radios by four-to-one. Mmmm. It looks as if the DAB propaganda war in Germany has only just begun.</span></div>Grant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078262770562171996.post-32985098119052686702011-05-19T08:43:00.000+01:002011-05-19T08:43:31.792+01:00Government expenditure cutbacks clobber UK commercial radio<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As soon as the coalition government came to power in May 2010, it implemented Conservative Party policy to make substantial cutbacks to the amount of public money spent on government marketing campaigns. Commercial radio was hit the hardest because, more than any other medium, it had become increasingly dependent upon government expenditure on advertising airtime.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 2010, before the general election, I had predicted [see <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/uk-commercial-radios-growing-reliance.html">blog</a>] that the impact of these cutbacks would prove <em>“disastrous”</em> for the commercial radio sector. I had calculated that a 50% cut in total public expenditure on commercial radio advertising would lose the sector £44m to £48m in revenues, equivalent to 9% of total sector revenues.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Interviewed by BBC Radio Four, I was asked if my scenario was not overstating the potential impact on commercial radio. I argued that it was not – the amount spent by the government’s Central Office of Information [COI] on commercial radio dwarfed all other radio advertisers by miles. By February 2010, government expenditure on radio commercials was greater than that of the second, third, fourth and fifth largest advertisers combined.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Radio Advertising Bureau had put a brave face on the losses from its biggest advertiser. In June 2010, it <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/public-spending-cuts-impacted-2010.html">said</a>: <em>“We are optimistic that radio’s strengths will be recognised as COI budgets come under ever greater scrutiny.”</em> In September 2010, it <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/public-spending-cuts-impacted-2010.html">said</a> it was <em>“working with a wide range of advertisers to bridge the gap”</em> left by public expenditure cuts.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5EvcXzkc7LPxgma40GViGB8Ll8UAYJ7Ra7hGcNy-HdnWtXqFeuu-g8BDc9W55YAxSQWz36XzZNLQRWOancDm6ZQXd94jazVM-4zxxxboI5KyrJz5CsSLk-wzvUU6qXgeThkFeiabcAN0/s1600/COI+1.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="236px" j8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5EvcXzkc7LPxgma40GViGB8Ll8UAYJ7Ra7hGcNy-HdnWtXqFeuu-g8BDc9W55YAxSQWz36XzZNLQRWOancDm6ZQXd94jazVM-4zxxxboI5KyrJz5CsSLk-wzvUU6qXgeThkFeiabcAN0/s400/COI+1.bmp" width="400px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, the latest data from Nielsen show that the impact upon commercial radio has been even greater than I had forecast. In the year to February 2011, COI expenditure on radio advertising was down 70% year-on-year, much greater than the 50% cut that had been anticipated from previous Conservative Party pronouncements. In total, commercial radio lost £44m per annum from all public expenditure on radio, compared to the previous year.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The worse news was that, as the graph above shows, the fall in COI expenditure has become steeper in recent months. As a result, the impact on the sector in 2011 is likely to be just as severe as it was in 2010. The hard fact is that this is not a temporary cyclical loss for commercial radio – these revenues will not rebound for as long as the coalition government remains in power.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The graph shows clearly that no individual or group of advertisers have been able to substitute entirely for the losses caused by government cutbacks, although some gains were made from clients in 2010 [see <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/public-spending-cuts-impacted-2010.html">blog</a>]. No commercial advertiser spends more than £10m per annum on radio, whereas the COI had spent £58m in the year to March 2010 (but was down to £17m by February 2011). This is simply too big a gap to be filled by a few individual commercial advertisers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Media Week <a href="http://community.brandrepublic.com/blogs/takemetokansas/archive/2011/05/13/a-strong-q1-for-radio-just-don-t-look-behind-the-music.aspx">reported</a> recently that <em>“the more optimistic media owners are hoping the COI’s former spend [on radio] can be clawed back by year’s end.”</em> It is hard to see how that can be realistically achieved, given the scale of the £44m per annum loss from public sources to date, particularly in the face of declining consumer disposable incomes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In an attempt to offer a positive outlook, Media Week <a href="http://community.brandrepublic.com/blogs/takemetokansas/archive/2011/05/13/a-strong-q1-for-radio-just-don-t-look-behind-the-music.aspx">suggested</a>: <em>“But the situation is set to improve. From April [2011] onwards, there will no longer be any comparable year-on-year COI spend left in the system, as purdah [sic] kicked in 2010.”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Perhaps what Media Week was trying to say was that COI expenditure will level off this year once the savage cuts have been in situ for more than a year. Yes, inevitably, but that does not in any way help an industry that has just witnessed £44m per annum of revenues disappear into thin air. Remember that total commercial radio revenues in 2010 were only £523m, already down from £641m in 2004. Now a further huge 8% chunk of income has gone.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another commentator recently <a href="http://mediatel.co.uk/newsline/2011/05/17/can-radio-rule-the-waves-again">noted</a> optimistically: </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“The [radio] medium took £523 million in revenue in 2010, up 3.3% year-on-year, and 2011 looks like another positive year of growth, not the inevitable management of decline forecast by some.”</em></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgInnCk6g0Xh5s6X1G8vPkYd-4Opa1E7SOnfsKhcUIgOKhItTPj-zK3HpbmHQcUNeYMwb4oHfsqZnrHeihQgSQmuwUIdM-SDT7mo_jGemWuhxMLeBFNZ1m_chScMlrXbrU0SwCBSQ3WTEQ/s1600/COI+2.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="246px" j8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgInnCk6g0Xh5s6X1G8vPkYd-4Opa1E7SOnfsKhcUIgOKhItTPj-zK3HpbmHQcUNeYMwb4oHfsqZnrHeihQgSQmuwUIdM-SDT7mo_jGemWuhxMLeBFNZ1m_chScMlrXbrU0SwCBSQ3WTEQ/s400/COI+2.bmp" width="400px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, once inflation is taken into account, 2010 commercial radio revenues fell in real terms [see <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/uk-commercial-radio-revenues.html">blog</a>]. Far from a decline being <em>“forecast by some,”</em> the industry’s own data demonstrate that decline has been occurring since 2004 in real terms, long before the recent cuts to government expenditure. Adjusted for inflation, commercial radio revenues in 2010 were lower than they had been in 1998.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is not the time for spreading unfounded optimism based on ignorance of the facts. If anything, the impact of government cuts has proven to be more than <em>“disastrous”</em> and will necessitate even more restructuring of the commercial radio sector in the short term. This could include the closure of further unprofitable digital ventures and of sector support agencies whose subscriptions will begin to appear increasingly discretionary when the axe has to fall somewhere.</span>Grant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078262770562171996.post-18246241506220501572011-05-15T12:16:00.000+01:002011-05-15T12:16:33.303+01:00FRANCE: government report recommends 2-3 year "moratorium" before launch of digital radio<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A new report on the introduction of digital terrestrial radio (‘DAB radio’ in the UK) in France has recommended to the government that the launch should be delayed by two to three years. In the interim, the French media regulator CSA would be asked to establish a project to investigate the <em>“overseas experiences”</em> of digital radio, according to the government <a href="http://www.gouvernement.fr/presse/remise-du-rapport-de-david-kessler-sur-l-avenir-numerique-de-la-radio">press release</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">David Kessler, former head of state radio station France Culture, was commissioned in June 2010 by the government to produce a strategic analysis of the launch of digital radio in France. His interim report, published in November 2010 [see <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/france-digital-radio-report-for.html">blog</a>], identified the <em>“paradox of DAB radio – it is a sufficiently attractive technology to be launched successfully, but it is insufficiently attractive to successfully allow FM broadcasts to cease.”</em></span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjECqF8OoqmfUpBJyc5mQPmdNm6RbTT264YTEI_zUw40J65v6unQ3NO9jbMckDpSw-lwKOCO_aElkMvhFEyWUSRNMS0jHGiUGdFRNgnd9Hz0NeF5thGkOieeUNutzW2pfwYoGXGxuWkXyI/s1600/France+1.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320px" j8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjECqF8OoqmfUpBJyc5mQPmdNm6RbTT264YTEI_zUw40J65v6unQ3NO9jbMckDpSw-lwKOCO_aElkMvhFEyWUSRNMS0jHGiUGdFRNgnd9Hz0NeF5thGkOieeUNutzW2pfwYoGXGxuWkXyI/s320/France+1.bmp" width="223px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the final report, published this week, Kessler said that not all the conditions had been met from an economic standpoint to permit the widespread launch of digital terrestrial radio. His report identified the significantly different challenges between digital radio switchover and digital television switchover:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“An error in logic has probably contributed greatly to making the debate [about digital radio] opaque rather than transparent. The error came from having planned digital radio switchover with reference to digital television switchover, which started in 2005 and the success of which has been staggering and immediate, so that the changeover from analogue to digital TV will be completed throughout the land by 2012. Many parties imagined that the route to digital opened up by television would be followed by radio. But this plan was wrong for three reasons.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>Firstly, the television market was dominated in 2005 by five channels (TF1, France 2, France 3, France 5/Arte and M6) that attracted 75% of television viewing. The transition to a score of free channels was obviously very attractive. However, as will be discussed later, the situation in radio is quite different – the current choice of stations is one of the richest that exists in the world, after the landscape opened up in the 80s. Even if the choice is not the same in every region, none of them – some near – are in a situation where only five major stations dominate the choice.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>Second is the difference in receivers. Even if digital radio switchover had been launched simultaneously with that of television, where the evolution of televisions (flat screen, HD and now 3D) resulted in a faster replacement of equipment than anticipated, digital television was accessible without changing the set through the purchase of a single adaptor at a moderate price. Digital radio switchover requires the replacement of all receivers, and households have multiple radios and the market is sluggish. Without doubt, digital radio switchover could re-invigorate the market with a simple, inexpensive high-end (with screen) radio. At this point, no one can say how quickly take-up of replacement receivers will happen. Examples overseas – particularly Britain – demonstrate a relatively slow rate of replacement, and the different situation in countries where take-up is faster – Korea, Australia – make comparisons difficult.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>The third reason is that the history of television demonstrates that it works through ‘exclusive changes’ where one technology replaces another quickly. Colour television pushed out black and white television. Digital television is about to push out analogue television. But experience shows that far from all media work this way. On the contrary, some go through ‘cumulative change’. </em></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>Over a short or long period of time, different technologies co-exist and content is distributed through several technologies. As Robert Darnton noted about the book, we often forget that the printed word has long co-existed with the manuscript. From this perspective, the history of radio is the opposite of television: different transmission systems are cumulative rather than exclusive. This does not exclude the possibility that, in the long run, some transmission systems will decline and no longer be used, just as printing marginalised the manuscript. But what it means is that one cannot plan the launch of digital radio by imagining that all other transmission systems will be switched off, particularly FM. Even today, despite the success of FM, Long Wave and Medium Wave transmissions are still used because they reach a sufficient number of listeners not be switched off by broadcasters.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>In fact, a careful examination of the launch of digital radio in other European countries shows that a ‘cumulative change’ scenario exists that we must anticipate in France too. Indeed, the launch of digital radio in other European countries had been presented as a quick substitute for analogue radio, even though the existing choice of analogue stations was less than in France, and the choice of digital stations seemed more attractive and content-rich than offered by analogue. Even if a proportion of listeners are quickly adopting digital radio, a greater proportion are still sticking with their traditional radios, with the possible exception of Norway, where analogue switch-off seems to be seriously considered at present. This leads to a situation in which the government initially adopts a goal of analogue switch-off but then, given the impossibility of switch-off, drops or postpones the switch-off date by several years. As the choice of existing radio stations is particularly substantial in France, it would appear that this situation is most likely to be repeated if digital radio were to be launched. Radio station owners are not mistaken. Very few want a quick switch-off of FM, and some do not want any switch-off.”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These points echo <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/ggoddard.pdf">evidence</a> on digital radio switchover in the UK that I had presented to the House of Lords Select Committee on Communications in January 2010:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“With television, there existed consumer dissatisfaction with the limited choice of content available from the four or five available analogue terrestrial channels. This was evidenced by consumer willingness to pay subscriptions for exclusive content delivered by satellite. Consumer choice has been extended greatly by the Freeview digital terrestrial channels, many of which are available free, and the required hardware is low-cost.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>Ofcom research demonstrates that there is little dissatisfaction with the choice of radio content available from analogue terrestrial channels, and there is no evidence of consumer willingness to pay for exclusive radio content. Consequently, the radio industry has proven unable to offer content on DAB of sufficient appeal to persuade consumers to purchase relatively high-cost DAB hardware in anywhere near as substantial numbers as they have purchased Freeview digital television boxes.”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Kessler document should offer significant food for thought to the British government for its unworkable plans for DAB radio switchover. Whereas Kessler correctly identified that TV and radio digital switchover are two very different undertakings, our public servants working on digital radio policy in the government and in Ofcom have long failed to understand these differences. The appointment of Ford Ennals as chief executive of Digital Radio UK in 2009, on the back of his work between 2005 and 2008 managing digital television switchover, should have been viewed as barely relevant experience to achieve successful digital radio switchover.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAKsT73POPHcte2QWdcaZAvIlBYQQYUrvLzzJQlxrhLumcCXpbLvRCOsJnogmUmhoxgWxZqnvLucUz0RMoHNkagTRR7y_fvWYyxQpqOstk9XTjcQ-e59f_cudOV3JgD6GtiZrIEyP9d7c/s1600/France+2.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="222px" j8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAKsT73POPHcte2QWdcaZAvIlBYQQYUrvLzzJQlxrhLumcCXpbLvRCOsJnogmUmhoxgWxZqnvLucUz0RMoHNkagTRR7y_fvWYyxQpqOstk9XTjcQ-e59f_cudOV3JgD6GtiZrIEyP9d7c/s320/France+2.bmp" width="320px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Have any of the people managing digital radio switchover for the UK ever actually worked in the radio industry? At DCMS? No. At Ofcom? No. At Digital Radio UK? No. If, like Kessler, they had radio sector experience, they would realise that all their speeches and presentations that repeatedly cite digital TV switchover as the precedent for radio are completely off-target.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Is there any wonder that failure of DAB public policy was inevitable?</span>Grant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078262770562171996.post-29158957604456088852011-05-14T14:10:00.000+01:002011-05-14T14:10:30.824+01:00When UK radio listening figures are this good, why does RAJAR need to fib?<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is good to know that radio is still an extremely popular medium in the UK, something borne out by the latest radio audience metrics published by industry body RAJAR for Q1 2011. However, in its determination to make <strong>every</strong> quarter’s results newsworthy, RAJAR has a track record of bending the truth to achieve press headlines [see <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/what-is-rajars-function-cheerleader-or.html">blog</a> May 2010]. This latest quarter was no exception.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to the <a href="http://www.rajar.co.uk/docs/news/data_release_2011_Q1.pdf">RAJAR</a> headline:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em><strong>• “Total radio listening hours reach 1,058 million per week – new record.”^</strong></em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.rajar.co.uk/docs/news/data_release_2011_Q1.pdf">RAJAR</a> explained:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em><strong>• “The total number of radio listening hours broke all previous records to reach 1,058 hours per week …”^</strong></em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fantastic news! Except that this is not at all true. RAJAR’s own historical data tell a different story:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• 1,088 million hours per week in Q2 2001</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• 1,092 million hours per week in Q3 2001</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• 1,092 million hours per week in Q4 2001</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• 1,090 million hours per week in Q1 2002</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• 1,072 million hours per week in Q4 2002</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• 1,094 million hours per week in Q1 2003</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• 1,066 million hours per week in Q3 2003</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• 1,076 million hours per week in Q4 2003</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• 1,086 million hours per week in Q1 2004</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• 1,072 million hours per week in Q2 2004</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• 1,068 million hours per week in Q3 2004</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• 1,059 million hours per week in Q1 2005</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• 1,068 million hours per week in Q2 2005</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• 1,072 million hours per week in Q3 2005</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• 1,060 million hours per week in Q4 2005</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• 1,063 million hours per week in Q3 2006</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During sixteen quarters between 2001 and 2006, total hours listened to radio were greater than they were last quarter. <em>“New record?”</em> No. <em>“Broke all records”?</em> Er, no.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheon6hMJV_vAwqcqoIPt53A2oIiSndWXPoq3SxVZcOljIiYQIl_V-88xy6wGhfNbdiAhyN3-V9cvqQKEf-eltgr9UR7-2Ibf6RCN5M5ix_GU2xivxScVFzs6UphaAxJrtRyv0F3V8kARQ/s1600/RAJAR+2011Q1+1.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240px" j8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheon6hMJV_vAwqcqoIPt53A2oIiSndWXPoq3SxVZcOljIiYQIl_V-88xy6wGhfNbdiAhyN3-V9cvqQKEf-eltgr9UR7-2Ibf6RCN5M5ix_GU2xivxScVFzs6UphaAxJrtRyv0F3V8kARQ/s400/RAJAR+2011Q1+1.bmp" width="400px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The reality is that total radio listening has not yet returned to the level it had achieved in 2001. Except that, ten years ago, the UK adult population was 48.1 million, whereas now it is 51.6 million. So the population has increased by 7% over the last decade. Yet total UK radio listening is still less than it was then.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most statisticians I know would refer to that as a like-for-like 7%+ decline in total hours listened to radio. However, to RAJAR, it is evidently a <em>“new record”</em> that <em>“broke all previous records.”</em></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1ebCLajb0Ba-IlprdATS27qQBlPNSBXkB7RB0_OJtH2efaTy8tT4lmGPR_uXtMytpLVwq-3xV0bTcNC5vhMaKZ2kiyF74rDGAw5_eEnG7DLMYsFzatkOD3Gz4YQs-k0NSfkXhQycl8Tg/s1600/RAJAR+2011Q1+2a.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="236px" j8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1ebCLajb0Ba-IlprdATS27qQBlPNSBXkB7RB0_OJtH2efaTy8tT4lmGPR_uXtMytpLVwq-3xV0bTcNC5vhMaKZ2kiyF74rDGAw5_eEnG7DLMYsFzatkOD3Gz4YQs-k0NSfkXhQycl8Tg/s400/RAJAR+2011Q1+2a.bmp" width="400px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Why does any of this matter? Because radio broadcasters have been progressively losing usage over most of the last decade. Initially, it was 15-24 year olds that were spending less time with radio. Increasingly, it is also 25-34 year olds. For a decade, the UK radio industry has desperately needed a coherent strategy to reverse this loss of listening. The decline in young adult listening to broadcast radio does not merely impact the <strong>NOW</strong>. If these consumers do not find anything in their youth worth listening to on the radio, they will grow old without the radio habit. Their radio listening patterns <strong>NOW</strong> are likely to influence radio listening for the next half-century.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is why RAJAR’s continuing efforts to achieve yet another headline in the Daily Mail proclaiming <em>“Radio listening at an all time high”</em> are ultimately redundant. Those headlines do not impact the reality of the data collected from tens of thousands of radio listeners every month. Those data show incontrovertibly that listening is in significant long-term decline amongst younger demographics. And radio will be in mortal danger if it does not re-invent itself for the next generation.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You only have to listen to any pirate radio station in London to understand that the gulf between what young people are actually listening to and what the old fogies who run UK radio are giving them has never been wider. Chris Moyles is as passé as Dave Lee Travis was twenty years ago.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, yes, RAJAR’s fibs and the resulting Daily Mail headline will be another opportunity for champagne corks to pop in radio boardrooms across the land. But if radio doesn’t start making itself exciting and relevant to young people, broadcast radio’s future role will be relegated to a soundtrack in old people’s homes. Complacency such as that propagated by RAJAR will only make many radio businesses redundant in the long run.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">^ in a footnote this small, the RAJAR press release admits the caveat “since new methodology was introduced in Q2, 2007.”</span>Grant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078262770562171996.post-24774148966048820672011-05-08T11:39:00.000+01:002011-05-08T11:39:51.501+01:00DAB Radio Downgrade: how is '90% of FM coverage' a sensible target for DAB to replace FM?<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“Makin’ a good t’ing bad!”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Moving the goalposts. Governments are adept at doing just that to help them achieve their targets or to make figures look better than they really are. Digital radio switchover is no exception. Given the technical and financial impossibility of the task plotted twenty years ago to completely replace analogue radio broadcasting with DAB radio, it has became necessary in recent months for the civil servants and digital radio lobbyists to move the goalposts.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In a <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/dab-radio-downgrade-new-masterplan-to.html">blog</a> in April 2011, I had outlined Ofcom’s latest ruse to deliberately plan to make DAB reception worse than existing FM reception for many radio listeners. Nevertheless, Ofcom will still declare this a victory for the technical superiority of the DAB platform.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The latest proposal under consideration is to make coverage of local DAB transmitters equivalent to 90% of existing FM coverage. On the one hand, this represents a belated admission that DAB radio cannot realistically achieve the same robust coverage as FM. On the other, it is a massive kick in the teeth to radio listeners – an attempt to purposefully replace something good (FM) with something worse (DAB). Madness!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A recent presentation by DAB lobbyist organisation Digital Radio UK invoked a new, vague <em>“local digital coverage equivalent to 90%”</em> criterion [see below]:</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw6bREqaKoW2EM-rS5KHd4lpObpbpcyuaMTl9fSD9za4s2pRsRasZmv9-87pb9QxIOc70pSK2u_U4by3_TPT0apb8l9yJHx-Ptw2gXc38xS21yjEVd7kNkFCTKpa8ZCYKyb79nxO0ka9Y/s1600/DRUK+WMF+1.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="280px" j8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw6bREqaKoW2EM-rS5KHd4lpObpbpcyuaMTl9fSD9za4s2pRsRasZmv9-87pb9QxIOc70pSK2u_U4by3_TPT0apb8l9yJHx-Ptw2gXc38xS21yjEVd7kNkFCTKpa8ZCYKyb79nxO0ka9Y/s400/DRUK+WMF+1.bmp" width="400px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“90%”</em> of what? The government’s Digital Britain <a href="http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/cm76/7650/7650.pdf">report</a> in June 2009 had fixed the digital radio switchover criteria as:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>• “When 50% of listening is to digital; and</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>• When national DAB coverage is comparable to FM coverage, and <strong>local DAB reaches 90% of the population and all major roads</strong>.”</em> [emphasis added]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There was never anything in Digital Britain about achieving <em>“90% of existing FM coverage.”</em> It was always <em>“90% of the population.”</em> The goalposts are being moved to make it easier for the government and DAB lobbyists to declare that DAB has achieved the criteria. Despite this outcome making the consumer experience of radio evidently worse.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhui8D0-X65H8t61Hb25w0QOhwK8hrTy639-lP2ttERhV1rxJhL7hFRx2gh6ZLKoDMRQICGSO0Mx1vUeSf-OWBBZa8i7xZ2mIHgegOtvX3RR-2cyjLwPwbgujQh3pvWn_G-L1TezYqdg_w/s1600/DRUK+WMF+2.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="278px" j8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhui8D0-X65H8t61Hb25w0QOhwK8hrTy639-lP2ttERhV1rxJhL7hFRx2gh6ZLKoDMRQICGSO0Mx1vUeSf-OWBBZa8i7xZ2mIHgegOtvX3RR-2cyjLwPwbgujQh3pvWn_G-L1TezYqdg_w/s400/DRUK+WMF+2.bmp" width="400px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We were <a href="http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/news/1063430/Radio-industry-nears-deal-DAB-funding">told</a> that one result of the Digital Radio Summit meeting on 31 March 2011 between government, regulator and the radio industry was:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“It is understood that it will cost around £20-30m to extend the local DAB signal to 90% of the FM signal in the UK…”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At a Westminster Media Forum conference on 5 April 2011, the topic of this newly created <em>“90% of FM”</em> criterion was raised by several speakers:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Jimmy Buckland</strong>, director of strategy, UTV Media: <em>“There's a DCMS [Department for Culture, Media & Sport] plan that's been referred to today that's currently on the table that would take local multiplexes to just 90% of what FM already delivers, with no commitment on major roads. If that plan’s agreed, it just about gets us to base camp.”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">[…]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Neil Midgley</strong>, assistant media editor, The Daily Telegraph: <em>“Now the briefing that we were getting last week was somewhere below £30 million for a build out to about 90% of current FM coverage. “</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">[…]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Daniel Nathan</strong>, director, Brighton & Hove Radio: <em>“Just leading on from that, in Jimmy’s slide we saw the figure being an aspiration of ‘90% of the population’ and I was quite disturbed to hear that now that they are kind of moving away from ‘90% of the population’ to ‘90% FM coverage.’ When was that decided and by whom?”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">[…]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Jimmy Buckland:</strong> <em>“There were two different figures, there was originally a figure which was the criterion, at which point you would make a decision about switchover which was that the Government said that once we had ‘90% population coverage’ and ‘coverage of all major roads,’ you could make a decision and there were a couple of other criteria that go with that. The second figure which was ‘90% coverage of current FM’ for local DAB concerns what would be delivered by a proposal which is currently on the table. So to tie in with the previous point, what that £30 million delivers is a little bit more coverage at the local level, aggregated to 90% on a UK wide basis, so in some local markets it could be comfortably less than 90%, in other markets it could be higher and it doesn’t get you to the universality that you need for switchover.”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, two questions remain unanswered:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Who came up with the idea of ‘90% of FM coverage’ to be sneaked in as an easier criterion?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Why are large parts of the radio industry (including RadioCentre and the BBC) not publicly campaigning against this ridiculous proposal intended to make reception of their radio stations on DAB <strong>WORSE</strong> for listeners than existing reception on FM?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is hard not to conclude that the parties involved in this latest wheeze seem happy to treat the UK’s 46,727,000 radio listeners with utter contempt.</span>Grant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078262770562171996.post-40488185709260877602011-04-23T15:17:00.000+01:002011-04-23T15:17:17.774+01:00Digital Radio UK on DAB radio switchover: talkin' loud and saying nothin'<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>DAB radio receiver sales</u></strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“Ford Ennals, Digital Radio UK’s chief executive, remains optimistic and says that the DAB [receiver] market will grow by 8-10% this year [2011].”</em> [<a href="http://www.independentelectricalretailer.co.uk/news/fullstory.php/aid/1574/Spreading_the_digital_message.html">source</a>]</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzF17zEh6uOjkmEcZk7c6PgviNu0hIOyM8Bepbalvez3s_DpGTkHUCSTS2QCP7edV7qoGzq3-yDBYEEyUkkW79y9smq6aW-eH7LpAbyDYQKoq5axjsC6ssSNbLC-eKPslnqJ9CbAh3OjQ/s1600/DRUK+1.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210px" i8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzF17zEh6uOjkmEcZk7c6PgviNu0hIOyM8Bepbalvez3s_DpGTkHUCSTS2QCP7edV7qoGzq3-yDBYEEyUkkW79y9smq6aW-eH7LpAbyDYQKoq5axjsC6ssSNbLC-eKPslnqJ9CbAh3OjQ/s320/DRUK+1.bmp" width="320px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>FACTS</strong>: DAB/digital radio receiver sales volumes in 2010 were down on 2009, and in 2009 were down on 2008, although stakeholders disagree about the precise volumes and the percentage change:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• <em>“2010 was slightly down in digital radio sales volumes (-2.3%) compared to 2009”</em> [Digital Radio UK update]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• <em>“’[DAB] volume sales were only marginally lower than the previous year (-0.7%) at 1.92 million units,’ explains Simon Foy, GfK senior account manager, CE.”</em> [<a href="http://www.independentelectricalretailer.co.uk/news/fullstory.php/aid/1574/Spreading_the_digital_message.html">source</a>]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• “<em>DAB sales for 2010 were 1.91 million pieces”</em> [<a href="http://www.independentelectricalretailer.co.uk/news/fullstory.php/aid/1574/Spreading_the_digital_message.html">source</a>]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Digital radio listening reaching the 50% criterion</u></strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford Ennals: <em>“I think you can see the listening criteria’s certainly being met in the next five years.”</em> [WMF]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“Despite two thirds of listeners still using analogue radio, Ennals believes that, if you extrapolate digital radio’s recent growth pattern, the 50% target could be achieved by the end of 2014.”</em> [<a href="http://www.independentelectricalretailer.co.uk/news/fullstory.php/aid/1574/Spreading_the_digital_message.html">source</a>]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford Ennals: <em>“We are likely to hit 50%, you know, in the next five years, I would say.”</em> [DRS]</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5fl3KGC9P9zIsTCfwobEsCSnpnJCKzp9yBn_R8E_E-Zhx-i1cyDZGnQQALiuzWsPNlwLu3HsOV8lWiIzwEC9EhXNGw6SMaOKvJda4lMoinGSaUkAyq0lKI8hj6GhwD2JZzHnJXcG6gnU/s1600/DRUK+2.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="181px" i8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5fl3KGC9P9zIsTCfwobEsCSnpnJCKzp9yBn_R8E_E-Zhx-i1cyDZGnQQALiuzWsPNlwLu3HsOV8lWiIzwEC9EhXNGw6SMaOKvJda4lMoinGSaUkAyq0lKI8hj6GhwD2JZzHnJXcG6gnU/s320/DRUK+2.bmp" width="320px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>FACTS:</strong> When you extrapolate the radio industry’s RAJAR dataset, the 50% criterion is reached:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Not by the government’s target of year-end 2013</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Not by Ford Ennals’ new, seemingly variable, targets of <em>“the end of 2014”</em> or <em>“in the next five years”</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• By year-end 2018, IF growth in digital listening is maintained at the current rate</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Growth in DAB/digital radio listening</u></strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford Ennals: <em>“We've seen overall in this year, in the last 12 months, each quarter, we've seen a 20% year-on-year growth of digital listening.”</em> [WMF]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford Ennals: <em>“We’ve seen 19 to 20 per cent listening growth in the year [2010].”</em> [DRS]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford Ennals: <em>“We see about 20% growth in 19 ... sorry, in 2010, it was 14% growth in 2009 and there was about 10% growth the previous year. So, you know, we see solid growth.”</em> [WMF]</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpYycdLyxw5Vtt5sOinymdGyR-aaQPDghum6q0PUau75sh7buNoh4kkFtOPXKloQYBSBirn3cjFyOSZu6QUKzBUfeXFifH6lf2zJXTvlMYDjrvCpJjIZSGp4TpIJWXre7bVEoBBWSBF0Y/s1600/DRUK+3.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="165px" i8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpYycdLyxw5Vtt5sOinymdGyR-aaQPDghum6q0PUau75sh7buNoh4kkFtOPXKloQYBSBirn3cjFyOSZu6QUKzBUfeXFifH6lf2zJXTvlMYDjrvCpJjIZSGp4TpIJWXre7bVEoBBWSBF0Y/s320/DRUK+3.bmp" width="320px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>FACTS:</strong> According to the radio industry’s RAJAR dataset:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• 20%+ growth in digital listening was only evident in the last two quarters of 2010, not in <em>“each quarter”</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Part of this apparent growth spurt in digital listening was the result of a sudden 5% to 6% increase in TOTAL radio listening recorded in the last two quarters of 2010</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Consumer satisfaction with analogue radio</u></strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“DRUK’s Ennals is not convinced by the argument that most consumers are more than satisfied with analogue radio.”</em> [<a href="http://www.independentelectricalretailer.co.uk/news/fullstory.php/aid/1574/Spreading_the_digital_message.html">source</a>]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford Ennals: <em>“FM is full and I think almost half of the FM spectrum is taken by 5 national services, there's only 1 national commercial service, so it's, you know, in terms of the ability to give consumers more choice, it is somewhat limited …”</em> [WMF]</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiONkuIpLpdBwON-cD6qzP4mi4igtz9JUm5TIRB9TBTe_rb6dir720hpO4Jn3KFTsdD2gX14uU7A4v0ix-k8_fCp9OiEcNevQ9RA7Xm_QDsPwqiDBGXgWe5whHmYir3JAQW1WZXVezVKCM/s1600/DRUK+4.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="188px" i8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiONkuIpLpdBwON-cD6qzP4mi4igtz9JUm5TIRB9TBTe_rb6dir720hpO4Jn3KFTsdD2gX14uU7A4v0ix-k8_fCp9OiEcNevQ9RA7Xm_QDsPwqiDBGXgWe5whHmYir3JAQW1WZXVezVKCM/s320/DRUK+4.bmp" width="320px" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>FACTS:</strong> Ofcom research has consistently demonstrated the high level of consumer satisfaction with existing radio services:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Around 90% of consumers were ‘satisfied’ with the choice of radio stations in their area in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>The 2015 digital radio switchover date</u></strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ford Ennals: <em>“I'm confident [digital radio switchover] is going to happen in the near future but I don't think there's a need to have a date and certainly we won't be communicating a date.”</em> [WMF]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>FACTS:</strong> Ennals and Digital Radio UK have been busy <em>“communicating a date”</em> for digital radio switchover to anyone who would listen. Just a few of many examples:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Ford Ennals: <em>“We are confident digital listening can reach 50 per cent by 2013.”</em> [<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/7682990/Should-you-retune-to-digital-radio.html">source</a>]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Ford Ennals: <em>“We have set a course to double listening and expand coverage by 2013, and to switchover by the end of 2015."</em> [<a href="http://www.techradar.com/news/audio/hi-fi-radio/radio-industry-sets-2015-digital-switchover-date-901861">source</a>]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Ennals stressed that a target date of 2015 was <em>“challenging but achievable”</em> [<a href="http://www.techradar.com/news/audio/hi-fi-radio/radio-industry-sets-2015-digital-switchover-date-901861">source</a>]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• <em>“Ford Ennals CEO of Digital Radio UK had positive comments for the 2015 switchover date set by government and told guests to Radio Festival that plans were already in motion to meet the ambitious date.”</em> [<a href="http://www.home-entertainment-news.co.uk/category/hifi/page/2">source</a>]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Ford Ennals: <em>“The radio industry believes that these two criteria can be met at the end of 2013, for a proposed switchover to take place in 2015.”</em> [<a href="http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/comment/articles/2010-07/30/gq-comment-digital-radio-is-better-radio">source</a>]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• <em>“2015 is ‘achievable’ for an analogue-to-digital switchover, according to industry body Digital Radio UK.”</em> [<a href="http://www.sat-planet.net/archive/index.php/t-27595.html">source</a>]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>[sources: WMF = Westminster Media Forum, 11 April 2011; DRS = Digital Radio Stakeholders, 3 February 2011] [thanks to Darryl Pomicter]</em></span>Grant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078262770562171996.post-62635663534063742302011-04-16T10:46:00.000+01:002011-04-16T10:46:46.541+01:00Which? says: DAB radio switchover must be "consumer led or not at all"<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What would have to be done to make DAB radio successful?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“What there does need to be, as Freeview and digital satellite has shown in television, is simply a sufficient combination of services, technology, simplicity and price or discount to provide a value proposition for the consumer,”</em> suggested Stephen Carter in 2004, when he was chief executive of Ofcom.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“….. for the consumer”</em> were the key words. They were also the words that became forgotten. The consumer was ignored in the radio industry’s pursuit of the radio industry’s own agenda for DAB radio. As a consequence, DAB radio has still not succeeded … with consumers. The failings were <a href="http://tech.ebu.ch/docs/techreview/trev_303-howard.pdf">acknowledged</a> by Quentin Howard, one of the architects of DAB radio in the UK:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“The mistake by broadcasters was in not understanding that ‘build it and they will come’ is no longer practical in this integrated technological age.”</em></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPgrjk0IkQ5eDfhyphenhyphenV9R5TekAUCNDLmDpvA2bv7rJHkJBJ1WFNWGYPD1nHB0n6w-atCcFoWJ4CLuHmAu1si3o_lkvv3yQtzN04mNzkxMCx1jkhVAybUk6yU9Ks2xOZPQ8fR0D3DXTbbh5Y/s1600/which+report.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" r6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPgrjk0IkQ5eDfhyphenhyphenV9R5TekAUCNDLmDpvA2bv7rJHkJBJ1WFNWGYPD1nHB0n6w-atCcFoWJ4CLuHmAu1si3o_lkvv3yQtzN04mNzkxMCx1jkhVAybUk6yU9Ks2xOZPQ8fR0D3DXTbbh5Y/s1600/which+report.bmp" /></a></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Which?, the UK consumer advocacy, noted the radio industry’s lack of attention to the consumer in a February 2011 <a href="http://www.which.co.uk/documents/pdf/digital-radio-switch-over---which---briefing-247862.pdf">briefing paper</a> entitled ‘Digital Radio Switchover in 2015? Consumer Led Or Not At All’:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“The transition to digital radio is currently industry led. The benefits of a transition to digital radio over the current analogue service are not clear to consumers, and the uptake of the technology over the past 10 years reflects this.”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Which? suggested that, before the government can announce a date for digital radio switchover, the following <a href="http://www.which.co.uk/documents/pdf/digital-radio-switch-over---which---briefing-247862.pdf">criteria</a> should be met:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>• “Uptake should be a minimum of 70% of all FM radio listening transferred to digital, leaving 30% still listening on analogue (FM/LW/MW/SW) (the Government’s Digital Radio Action Plan suggests 50%)</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>• The transition to digital must not be announced until coverage, including a measure of signal quality, is better than that of FM radio</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>• DAB must have been fitted as standard in all new cars for at least two years and an effective and affordable solution to in-car conversion must be available prior to the announcement of a switchover (which costs no more than for in-home conversion)</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>• Government must conduct a full cost-benefit analysis from a consumer perspective as a priority because increasing consumer desire for DAB should not focus on cost alone</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>• Minimum standards associated with a kite mark must be ambitious and future-proofed and any incentive scheme to switch to DAB should offer only kite marked receivers</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>• Consumer group representatives must be involved in the development of an information campaign independent from industry to raise awareness of the digital switchover by consumers and ensure guidance and training tools are available to retailers. In this regard, any lessons from the Digital TV switchover should be acted upon</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>• In its assessment of the environmental impact of a switchover to digital radio, the Government must tackle the full range of issues around recycling of analogue sets and the energy impacts of DAB”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, in some of these areas of concern, current policy on DAB radio appears to be moving in the opposite direction to that advocated by Which?:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• The 50% criterion (50% of radio listening via digital platforms before switchover can be announced) is not mandatory because it was never included in the Digital Economy Act [see Jan 2010 <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/criteria-and-date-for-digital-radio.html">blog</a>]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• The latest plan for DAB is not to deliver reception even as good as FM, but to make it worse than FM [see recent <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/dab-radio-downgrade-new-masterplan-to.html">blog</a>]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Only 1% of cars have DAB radios fitted and future take-up will inevitably be slow [see recent <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/david-blunketts-opinion-of-dab-radio.html">blog</a>]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Roberts Radio reported a 35-40% customer return rate for its in-car DAB radio adaptors [see Nov 2010 <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/trick-or-treat-55m-to-be-spent-scaring.html">blog</a>]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• The cost benefit analysis of DAB radio to be considered by the government will also be authored by the government, rather than commissioned independently [see Jan 2011 <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/q-who-is-government-commissioning-to.html">blog</a>]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Roberts Radio admitted having had to pull the plug on several DAB receiver projects, including the industry’s promised ‘£25 DAB radio’, because they could not meet Roberts’ minimum quality standards</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In July 2010, after the formation of the new coalition government, culture minister Ed Vaizey had <a href="http://www.culture.gov.uk/news/ministers_speeches/7226.aspx">said</a>:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“If, and it is a big if, the consumer is ready, we will support a 2015 switchover date. But, as I have already said, it is the consumer, through their listening habits and purchasing decisions, who will ultimately determine the case for switchover.”</em> [see Sep 2010 <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/exit-strategy-for-dab-radio-switchover.html">blog</a>]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, it might appear that the Minister and Which? are, in fact, both lined up in agreement that digital radio switchover can only happen if it is supported by consumers. So why has the government not yet recognised that consumers already seem to have given the thumbs down to DAB?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because there are middle men (Ofcom, DCMS, Digital Radio UK, Arqiva, DAB multiplex licence owners) who persist in keeping the DAB dream alive in Whitehall. Yet again, consumers are being drowned out by the clamour of agencies eager to pursue their own narrow objectives. And the mantra of the middle men is: DAB crisis, what crisis?</span>Grant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078262770562171996.post-86216986793921549392011-04-11T22:30:00.000+01:002011-04-11T22:30:08.942+01:00DAB Radio Downgrade? The new masterplan to deliver DAB radio reception worse than FM<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When something works well, it just works. You do not need to analyse why it works. It just works. And nobody asks questions as to why or how. That is the case with FM radio. During half a century of development, more and more FM transmitters have been built across the UK (2,100 currently in operation) so as to reach the point now where almost the entire population receives an FM signal (maybe not always perfect, but some reception rather than none at all).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">DAB radio was intended to replace FM radio. However, it must only be worth replacing FM with DAB if DAB is actually better than FM. Why replace a transmission system that has taken 50 years to perfect with something that is going to be worse? Unfortunately, nobody thought to conduct a cost/benefit analysis during the last two decades to determine what the cost would be of making DAB radio reception as good as FM radio, let alone better. As a result, DAB radio was foisted upon the public in 1999 without a roadmap to ensure that reception was even as good as FM radio for consumers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Twelve years later, DAB reception remains worse than FM reception in many places, or is non-existent. Whereas poor FM reception gives the consumer a poor quality listening experience, poor DAB reception provides no listening experience whatsoever. With DAB, a poor signal is the same as no signal.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Instead of Ofcom valiantly admitting defeat over DAB radio – which might infer that the regulator and its predecessor, the Radio Authority, had screwed up the implementation of DAB in the UK – Ofcom presses ahead with increasingly desperate attempts to try and salvage this technological and regulatory disaster.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ofcom’s latest ‘project’ is to try and understand why FM radio, more than half a century after its introduction, gives consumers acceptable radio reception. Intrinsically, the work is redundant. If FM works well, why bother to analyse why it works? The answer is: because DAB radio does not work. In order to make DAB work, an understanding is deemed necessary of why the system it was intended to replace – FM radio – does work.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Belatedly, it has been understood by the bureaucrats that the expense of making DAB as good as FM will prove too costly. It requires too many DAB transmitters, too many DAB power increases, at too great a cost for the radio industry. Might this not be a good time for them to back away from the notion of DAB radio <strong>REPLACING</strong> FM radio because it is simply too costly, even just to make it <strong>AS GOOD</strong>?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not for the bureaucrats involved. Instead, the philosophy within Ofcom and the government is a new plan to deliberately make DAB radio <strong>NOT AS GOOD</strong> as FM radio. But still to persuade consumers that DAB is intended to replace FM radio for national and large local radio stations. Madness? Yes. Self-defeating? Yes. Contempt for radio listeners? Totally.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Peter Davies, who is responsible for radio at Ofcom, explained part of this 1984-style philosophy to replace ‘good’ FM with ‘worse’ DAB to the Digital Radio Stakeholders Group meeting in the calmest of tones on 3 February 2011. Although his presentation is lengthy, I have included Davies’ words in full below so that you too can try and decipher the logic of a solution for DAB radio that is purposefully sub-par.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Perhaps the Digital Radio UK marketing slogan next winter will be: 'Buy a DAB radio! Worse reception than FM guaranteed. But better than no radio at all.'</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiukxBiWy756vv3quPw9ku34OjLcz32YOwW2tqP1_BnPhy8FijI62mjBDLz-_P9UN9KWqzqrQ-SHDnhJ48fVOQu3D6I-UAuY1Yy5pUm5PtEmrZxPk0-7XwdMJKj5B7LkPMnnQgcSoQHkaY/s1600/DRSG2.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="246" r6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiukxBiWy756vv3quPw9ku34OjLcz32YOwW2tqP1_BnPhy8FijI62mjBDLz-_P9UN9KWqzqrQ-SHDnhJ48fVOQu3D6I-UAuY1Yy5pUm5PtEmrZxPk0-7XwdMJKj5B7LkPMnnQgcSoQHkaY/s400/DRSG2.bmp" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Peter Davies, Ofcom: </strong></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“The Coverage Planning Working Group is chaired by Ofcom, but we have effectively two groups that are feeding into this. There is the actual Working Group that is doing all the sort of hard grind of doing the planning work, and that consists of Ofcom, Arqiva and the BBC. There is also a Planning Advisory Group which consists of all the [DAB] multiplex operators, with Digital Radio UK and RadioCentre as well. So what I’m going to run you through this afternoon, quite quickly because of the time, is just what we’re doing in terms of FM. What is it we are trying to match? Secondly, how you then do that with DAB. Thirdly, looking at what we need to do to the frequency plan in the UK to achieve that. And then just onto the next steps.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>So, FM coverage. I should say we are doing this for national services as well as local. So it’s both BBC and commercial national services, as well as the local. But I’m going to focus this afternoon on the local because that’s, in a way, where some of the more difficult issues are. This is a map of Manchester. I know you won’t be able to see the detail on that, but it gives you an impression, at least. So what we’ve done in each part – in fact, in the whole country – is define a set of ‘editorial areas.’ So that’s shown on this map by that dotted line – you can see around the edge, a sort of dark purple dotted line – so that everywhere in the country is covered by one or more areas – there are some overlaps – but at least everywhere is covered by one area. So the editorial areas are areas that have been agreed by the BBC and by the [DAB] multiplex operator and commercial radio operators as being the sort of area that they would, in an ideal world, like to cover. It’s also based on [DAB] multiplex areas, so it’s a bit of a compromise.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>So, if you look at the actual coverage of BBC Radio Manchester [GMR] within this, that’s shown in the sort of standard way of measuring – 54 db – is shown in green but, actually, editorially BBC Radio Manchester would like to cover the bits within the dotted line. So there is coverage beyond the editorial area where people can pick up the service, but it’s not really intended for them. And, equally, there are bits within the existing editorial area which aren’t covered terribly well on FM but which, nevertheless, the station would like to think it serves.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>In terms of the actual [FM] coverage, it’s been quite difficult to determine what that is. The ‘54db’ is the standard internationally agreed planning measure. So that’s 54db per μv per metre, but I’m not an engineer so don’t ask me any more detail than that. But it’s a definition that was drawn up back in the 1950s and is really about reception 10m above the ground, using a rooftop aerial and it sort of tells you whether you can get a signal on your radiogram, which is not terribly useful [now]. So we know that people use radios in very different ways, but we sort of know that this works, but it has never actually been tested. So it’s a planning definition, which is very old and slightly messy.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>So what we’ve been doing as part of this work is drawing up what’s known as a ‘link budget ‘, which is effectively taking the signal strength as it leaves the transmitter and then adjusting it all the way along until it actually gets to the receiver. So, in other words, you adjust it because it’s a distance from the transmitter going over some hilly ground, going down into buildings, loss within the receiver itself and so on. So that you can work out what signal strength you will need to work to get decent FM coverage. So we’ve looked at three different strengths because we know that the 54db is probably a little bit conservative, so we also looked at 48db and 42db, again because conditions vary between what you can receive on a portable kitchen radio and what you can get in your car. We are also looking at coverage not only of households, but also of major roads as well, so it’s not just an indoor measurement we’re looking at.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>What we have seen so far is actually that the link budget we have developed is that these numbers are probably about right. So 42db is probably about right for cars. But you can see that there’s not actually very much yellow on that map, so that most places either get a good solid indoor signal, or the signal’s not good at all, basically. So, for each area, we have looked at both the BBC local service – so that’s BBC Manchester – and also the commercial coverage, and we’ve taken the largest commercial station in each area. So, for Manchester, this is ‘Key 103.’ As you can see, the coverage is very different, mainly because they are using different transmitter sites and different powers on FM. But, of course, both of those services and others are on the same multiplex for DAB, so you have to think ‘what exactly is it on FM that we are trying to match?’ It’s no good just matching Key 103, you can’t just match to Key 103 because then you would be missing out BBC Manchester and other services. In this case, commercial [radio coverage] is smaller. In other cases that we have looked at, the commercial [stations] cover one part of the county but not another, but the BBC [station] will do the opposite.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>So, what we’ve then done is to look at the composite coverage of both BBC local [radio] and the largest commercial station. So this is what we think people in the area would expect to be able to hear as a local service on FM. So you get either the BBC or the commercial radio [station] or both. So that’s the basis of what we think we should be trying to match. So it would be sort of green or blue for indoor, and the yellow bits for road coverage. As I say, we’ve done that for basically every area in the country, including the Nations services – so Radio Scotland, Radio Wales, etc for the BBC – and for the national services as well.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>The question then is ‘how do we match DAB [to FM]?’ So the approach to that again has been to build up a link budget for DAB, starting with the transmitter and going right the way through to the receiver. And we’ve been doing receiver tests as part of that. And what we tried to do – because that sort of coverage is slightly debatable on FM – is [identify] where exactly is that band, and where exactly is that field strength? The approach we have taken is, first of all, to say that, within the editorial area, let’s plan for absolutely universal coverage. So how many transmitters – if you wanted to cover it as near as possible to 100% – how many transmitters would you need, both to get indoor coverage and road coverage as well? And we’ve tried to do that in a sort of commonsense way by starting with where the existing FM transmitters are. So rather than just look for new sites, because actually if coverage from FM is good from that site, so you should get decent coverage from DAB from that site as well. And then we’ve added on transmitters at decreasing levels of coverage until you get as close as we can to 100%.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>Then, once we’ve done that, we’ve said ‘okay, actually some of those are now covering areas which aren’t covered by FM’ so actually you might not need them. So then you can then sort of roll back from that full universal coverage. The question then is ‘where do you draw the line?’ So, if you look at Manchester. Again, you’ve got the editorial area, which is a bit hard to see on this, but is the solid purple line around the edge. That is the existing local DAB coverage in Manchester, so you see 66.4% of households at the moment. In terms of households [for FM coverage], we have got 96.2% indoor at the moment, 98.2% (that’s a slightly sort of spurious measurement because it’s not actually a road measurement, but it’s households), so 96.2% for FM. So 66.4% existing [DAB] coverage from the two transmitters which are currently operating from the Manchester multiplex. It is one in central Manchester – sort of there – and there is one at Winter Hill at the top in the northwest corner.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>We then looked at ‘okay, what would you do if you just increased the power of the existing transmitters and moved them up the mast a bit?’ And, actually, that gets you, as you can see, quite significantly increased coverage. In order to do that, we need to change the frequency plan, and I’ll come back to that in a minute. So that gets you up to 82% [DAB coverage] and then we keep adding on transmitters until we get as close as we can to 100%. This goes to 99% and that means 15 transmitters which are shown by the crosses dotted all over that map.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>But then, as I say, you look at it and you say ‘well, actually, the two smallest of these – which are these two up here – actually have no household coverage at all, and the smallest one only adds 8km of road coverage.’ Now, obviously, if you’re driving and you lose your radio reception, then that’s a problem. But there’s a question as to whether that is essential for local coverage – it might be for national, but is it for local? So the question is ‘where do you draw that line in terms of a sort of cost/benefit analysis,’ if you like? You might decide, actually, you wouldn’t bother with those, but the question is ‘how far down the list of 15 [transmitters] do you go,’ as to what’s commercial viable and what provides an acceptable level of service to consumers?</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>So that’s the approach that we’ve taken. As I say, in order to do that, we need to change the frequency plan. Those are the big [frequency] blocks we use for DAB at the moment, dotted around the country. And you can see that they – the colours represent frequencies – so you can see that we have to reuse the same frequencies over and over again around the country. And that does cause interference so, at the moment, Manchester uses the same frequency as Birmingham. And, because of that, we can’t increase the power of the Manchester transmitters to get beyond that 66% to the 82% [coverage]. And that problem is repeated around the country. So what we’d like to do is re-draw the frequency map, which means that, as far as consumers are concerned, means doing a re-scan of their radio but does then allow us to boost the coverage quite significantly from existing transmitters and reduces that problem of interference which, in same places, can be quite significant. In order to that, it’s quite a long process – we need international co-ordination – but that part of the planning process we are going through at the moment.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>So, the next steps are to finalise that frequency plan and begin the international co-ordination. We’ve got to complete the FM coverage maps and just check that link budget for FM, both for local and national [stations]. And then, for each of the local DAB areas and for the BBC national multiplex and for Digital One, the commercial multiplex, to produce the coverage maps and the household count and the road count as well for all of these existing multiplexes. Once we have done all of that, we plan to publish the whole thing later in the spring or early summer in a consultation so that we can then begin a debate as to whether this approach is actually right or not, and where it gets us.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>Obviously, one of the big questions in all of that is actually ‘how much does it cost the broadcasters?’ I should say that that’s not something the Coverage Planning Group is looking at. It’s not something that we’ve been asked to look at, so it’s purely a technical approach at this stage but we think, sort of by the end of April, we should have the answers of how many extra transmitters you would need in order to achieve switchover.”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So the overarching question posed by the forthcoming Ofcom consultation seems to be: how poor can DAB coverage be made but still be accepted by consumers? If Peter Davies’ workplan, as explained here in February 2011, sounds vaguely familiar, it might be because he had addressed the Radio Festival in July 2008 and promised:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“Once we have defined what existing DAB coverage is, we then have to work out what it would take to get existing DAB coverage up to the level of existing FM coverage. Now, we have already done a lot of work on this, and certainly enough to inform the interim report, and the whole thing will be finalised in time for the Digital Radio Working Group final report later this year.”</em> [see Dec 2008 <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/dab-fiddling-while-rome-burns.html">blog</a>]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Incredibly, three years late[r], the promised work is only just being completed. An amazing lack of urgency has been demonstrated by Ofcom, despite DAB radio resulting in more <a href="http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/news/1044331/Radio-groups-plan-anti-DAB-campaign/">correspondence</a> from angry consumers to the broadcasting minister Ed Vaizey than any other issue.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What most astonishes me is that the digital radio sector is still trying to persuade people living in Manchester to purchase a DAB radio, just as it has for the last twelve years, when it knows that there is a one-in-three chance that a Manchester household will be unable to receive ANY local stations via <a href="http://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/radiolicensing/digital/DL002.htm">DAB</a>, according to Davies. I assume a similar situation prevails in other cities.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Time for a <a href="http://radiomagonline.com/digital_radio/law-firm-hd-radio-lemons-0901/">class action</a> by disappointed DAB radio receiver buyers?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>[no accompanying graphics because DCMS explained: “Peter Davies’ Ofcom presentation is not attached as the content is still work in progress. Ofcom plan to publish all of the data later in the year.”]</em></span>Grant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078262770562171996.post-87039554128199735902011-04-08T10:04:00.000+01:002011-04-08T10:04:26.872+01:00Commercial radio: "so keen to hold back the BBC?"<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>House of Lords Select Committee on Communications</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Inquiry on Governance & Regulation Of The BBC</strong> [excerpt]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.parliament.uk/documents/lords-committees/communications/BBCgovernance/ucCOMMS220311ev2.pdf"><strong>22 March 2011</strong></a><strong> @ 1515</strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Baroness Deech: </strong><em>Listening to you, I am a bit puzzled about why you are so keen to hold back the BBC. Can’t Virgin Media and the local commercial radio stations stand on their own two feet? Why have they got to hold back the BBC?</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Mr Andrew Harrison</strong> [chief executive officer, RadioCentre]: <em>I would not characterise it at all as wanting to hold back the BBC; I would characterise it as wanting a level playing field for the commercial sector to compete. The truth is that, in radio, the BBC is hardly held back. It has 55% national market share, it has the vast majority of national FM spectrum and it has a huge raft of local radio stations, so it is hardly held back. We seek the opportunity to build our own commercial businesses, entrepreneurially and innovatively, without facing the elephant in the room that, every time we try to do something new, there is a BBC service that pops up to squash it before it has time to be established.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Mr Andrew Barron</strong> [chief operating officer, Virgin Media]: <em>With great respect, I think we are in slightly different places. I would argue that Virgin Media is one of the companies pushing the BBC forward in many instances.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>[This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and webcast on www.parliamentlive.tv. Any public use of, or reference to, the contents should make clear that neither Members nor witnesses have had the opportunity to correct the record.]</em></span>Grant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078262770562171996.post-30297286229435285952011-04-06T09:25:00.003+01:002011-04-06T11:18:24.975+01:00DAB radio sector rubbishes its own digital radio receiver sales figures<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When UK companies that had once anticipated they were poised to make a mint out of ‘DAB radio’ realise that things are not going the way they had wanted, they lash out. That seems to be what happened yesterday. ‘Shoot the messenger’ appeared to be the digital radio industry’s reflex response when backed against a wall of facts that tell an unpalatable story.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the Westminster Media Forum conference on digital radio, a graph of DAB/digital radio receiver sales was displayed in a presentation by The Guardian’s </span><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/askjack"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Jack Schofield</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> (see below):</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj57MZ9HVGBORzufswaxHHPLN_3fUbPZau7ct5X0KcP4INIVm4H_Hb_6DkGKhi9sZ5LeyhEUo3BuIsk98gFQLOIeiSGJgJUzd7YFBqsqfvfUHACPJJwn0Vqvyr0VCcDDrzPLAoOSgwo2N4/s1600/You+%2526+Yours+3.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="212" r6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj57MZ9HVGBORzufswaxHHPLN_3fUbPZau7ct5X0KcP4INIVm4H_Hb_6DkGKhi9sZ5LeyhEUo3BuIsk98gFQLOIeiSGJgJUzd7YFBqsqfvfUHACPJJwn0Vqvyr0VCcDDrzPLAoOSgwo2N4/s320/You+%2526+Yours+3.bmp" width="320" /></span></a></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The graph clearly showed that 2010 unit sales were down on 2009, and that 2009 unit sales were down on 2008. This data was collected by GfK.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anthony Sethill, founder and chief executive of Frontier Silicon, took exception to this graph’s narrative of declining consumer interest in DAB radio receivers. He commented:</span><br />
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<em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“My company supplies the chipsets that drive about 80% of digital radios on the market today. So, I think the panel today, with the exception of Andrew [Harrison, RadioCentre chief executive] is a wonderful example of how the minority seem to take the stage and voice the negativity and things. And, if we were to re-run Jack’s presentation again, put some facts in the <strong>correct</strong> order, and the <strong>correct</strong> facts, I think we would have a very different read. You know, it’s very difficult, when you have people like Jack that have a national platform in terms of a national newspaper, to voice these views.</span></em><br />
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<em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So we’ll start with the GfK data. Now, GfK is actually a retail audit and, over the years, has been used by the consumer electronics and the retail trade in the UK to measure the sales of consumer electronic devices. In the last few years, GfK has been dying. The reason it has been dying is that it relies on the data – sales out data – from national retailers such as Dixons and John Lewis and Tesco and so on. Last year, Dixons pulled the plug on supplying data to GfK. That meant the largest retailer in the UK, which accounts for 25% of all sales, actually stopped giving them data. To carry on selling that data, [GfK] then had to formulate panels and most people in the industry know that, statistically, it’s not valid and that, basically, it’s falling apart. Now, you’ve quoted GfK [DAB/digital radio receiver] sales falling and I’ve given you the reasons why that data is not accurate. […]</span></em><br />
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<em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is a practical example of discrediting the data, which a number of people use to bash DAB. So this is one small example of how you’re misinterpreting and you’re misleading people. I don’t know if you understand what GfK is, or what it has done, or why it has fallen apart but, if you do, then that’s really poor. And if you don’t, before you quote it, you should learn the facts.”</span></em><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The graph to which Sethill was referring was created by me and published in this </span><a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/david-blunketts-opinion-of-dab-radio.html"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">blog</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> last weekend (Jack Schofield had asked before the conference if he could use it in his presentation). I had first published these DAB/digital radio receiver sales data in a </span><a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/dab-radio-numbers-why-do-they-keep.html"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">blog</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> in January 2011, in which I wrote:</span><br />
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<em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“1.94m digital radios were sold in 2010, compared to 1.99m in 2009 and 2.08m in 2008. Increase? No. Growth? No. Over 2m in 2010? No.”</span></em><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In March 2011, these same sales figures were reprinted in The Telegraph newspaper, which </span><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/8416909/Digital-radio-switchover-in-2015-dead-in-the-water.html"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">wrote</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> that “<em>new figures showed that sales of digital radio equipment actually fell last year.”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It should be noted:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• The sales data in my graph were distributed by Digital Radio UK, the radio industry organisation marketing DAB radio in the UK</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Digital Radio UK purchases these data concerning DAB/digital radio receiver sales from GfK</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Digital Radio UK has regularly quoted these GfK data in its press releases (most recently on </span><a href="http://www.getdigitalradio.com/dab-news/view/173"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">23 Dec 2010</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> and </span><a href="http://www.getdigitalradio.com/dab-news/view/171"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">21 Dec 2010</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">) and in its newsletters</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Digital Radio UK has never publicly challenged the validity of the GfK sales data that it is distributing and using in its marketing campaigns</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">• Until now, these data on DAB/digital radio receiver sales have been widely reported in the public domain without challenge from the wider digital radio sector.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So what is eating Frontier Silicon? It seemed wholly inappropriate for Anthony Sethill to beat up panellist Jack Schofield in public for using the digital radio industry’s <strong>OWN DATA</strong> in his presentation. If Frontier Silicon has an issue with the digital radio industry’s sales data, it should take that up with Digital Radio UK, which purchased the data from GfK and distributed them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Perhaps the real issue is that the rewards from DAB radio have evidently still not materialised for the digital radio industry. By year-end 2009, Frontier Silicon Limited had an accumulated loss of £28m. In financial year 2009, it generated an operating loss of £536,000 on turnover of £22m. Its shareholders include Digital One (owned by Arqiva) and Imagination Technologies (which owns Pure Digital). Imagination owns 9.3% of Frontier Silicon, a stake that it wrote down by £3.4m in 2008, and then finally wrote down by a further £3.6m in 2010. As Imagination’s accounts </span><a href="http://www.imgtec.com/corporate/AnnualReports/IMGAnnualReport2010.pdf"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">explained</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">:</span><br />
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<em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Due to the lower resulting valuation of the business and the impact of Frontier’s capital structure, the Group’s investment [in Frontier Silicon] has been revalued to £nil.”</span></em><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I guess it must be tough for Frontier Silicon to see a shareholder value its business at <em>“£nil.”</em> That is no reason for its unprovoked attack on Jack Schofield's presentation which had merely used the industry's own data.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">................</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I contacted GfK for its response to the comments from Frontier Silicon. Its response was (in full):</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>Date: 6th April 2011</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>GfK Retail and Technology UK response:</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>GfK Retail and Technology UK currently track over 100 individual technology product categories and partner with major UK multiple retailers within every single audited channel they report on, to complement this research and to ensure GfK cover the overall market they also have a representative sample of independent retailers working with them. This means GfK are receiving weekly data from over 24,000 individual stores within the UK. The majority of these retailers deliver weekly EPOS data on their complete sales and this allows GfK to report to a detailed level on the performance of all the leading technology categories. If faced with a retailer who is not willing to participate GfK employ a widely used global research methodology to ensure they are representing the overall market.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>When challenged on the GfK reported performance of the DAB market Commercial Director Anthony Norman commented “the overall technology markets have all come under increasing pressure in the last 12 months, the austerity measures announced and now being implemented by the coalition government have had a major impact on consumer confidence which has in turn impacted on retail sales of technology areas”. Norman continued in specific reference to the DAB market “the reported data by GfK is based on over 70% live reported sales by retailers, rather than focussing on the downturn of this market it would be more beneficial to put the whole picture in perspective. The overall technology market has experienced only 4 months of growth in the last 33 months. The average decline in this area is 6%, for DAB the market in 2010 declined by only 2%. Given the overall sector performance this is something that should be recognised. As a business GfK are committed to delivering actionable insight to the industries they operate within”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>The GfK Group</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>The GfK Group offers the fundamental knowledge that industry, retailers, services companies and the media need to make market decisions. It offers a comprehensive range of information and consultancy services in the three business sectors of Custom Research, Retail and Technology and Media. The no. 4 market research organization worldwide operates in more than 100 countries and employs over 10,000 staff. In 2009, the GfK Group’s sales amounted to EUR 1.16 billion. For further information visit www.gfkrt.com or </em></span><a href="http://www.gfkrt.com/uk"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>www.gfkrt.com/uk</em></span></a>Grant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078262770562171996.post-72401649542453729802011-04-04T22:46:00.000+01:002011-04-04T22:46:21.003+01:00AM/FM switch-off of national radio stations? An empty threat whose expiry date has long passed<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some of Digital Britain’s radio recommendations were unworkable. However, the notion has remained that FM and AM analogue transmitters of the UK’s national radio stations will be switched off once digital radio listening passes the 50% threshold. This was never practical. It was a ‘threat’ propagated by government to the public in the hope of forcing them into buying more DAB radios, instilling fear that they would otherwise lose their favourite stations. The threat failed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The problem with any threat is that, once it has failed, it remains difficult for the protagonist to climb down. So the threat continues to be propagated. For what reason now? So as not to make those who issued the threat look completely foolish. The need to save face has locked the government apparatus into a fiction that BBC and commercial radio will willingly throw away half their audiences by closing their FM/AM transmitters. This was never true.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>THE BBC</u></strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Universal’ reception of the BBC’s core public services is mandatory. It would prove impossible to levy the BBC Licence Fee on every UK household if (almost) the entire population could not receive the BBC services for which they pay.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfkRuD-w5lfPgxZ14EOzMZuAtFDzjIPs7zlgF0KjFhA9uckSOgEJ3UlXM-pI5Gh-vuWeMI546p5iWc9O4okFKnJU1q5erraD-oxoVKKNdX1ZeAiOdB7r4_aE_mQIIuNxCy9eHlCYhDRiA/s1600/AMFM+switchoff+1.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" r6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfkRuD-w5lfPgxZ14EOzMZuAtFDzjIPs7zlgF0KjFhA9uckSOgEJ3UlXM-pI5Gh-vuWeMI546p5iWc9O4okFKnJU1q5erraD-oxoVKKNdX1ZeAiOdB7r4_aE_mQIIuNxCy9eHlCYhDRiA/s200/AMFM+switchoff+1.bmp" width="140" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The BBC Charter & Agreement <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/about/how_we_govern/agreement.pdf">requires</a>:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“12. Making the UK Public Services widely available</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>(1) The BBC must do all that is reasonably practicable to ensure that viewers, listeners and other users (as the case may be) are able to access the UK Public Services that are intended for them, or elements of their content, in a range of convenient and cost effective ways which are available or might become available in the future.”</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Would the BBC switch off analogue transmissions of its national networks once more than 50% of listening was attributed to digital platforms? Of course not. You would be a complete fool to slash your radio audience by half, particularly as such an action would contradict the BBC Charter & Agreement.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Could the government insist that the BBC switched off the analogue transmissions of its national networks? Only if it wanted a revolution on its hands. It would be difficult to think of a policy more likely to lose it the next General Election.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><strong>COMMERCIAL RADIO</strong></u></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The revenues of commercial radio are directly related to the sector’s volume of listening. If commercial radio switched off its analogue transmitters once digital listening had passed the 50% threshold, at a stroke it would risk losing 50% of its volume of listening and, subsequently, 50% of its revenues. Would it do that? No, of course not.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqqG6zmtO7SkMtkQq0t7E0aCScP-RcUUcSWwT1Vu26xOLxuqTImwja5uJ8TQTLmwNs_cHucB_ITqT-Gd1u7YMhUkFohPxAm3yiExdUEgGAiOH9Z7jbPf1MUK0cosECH9hvcaqHcTM4xC4/s1600/AMFM+switchoff+2.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="193" r6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqqG6zmtO7SkMtkQq0t7E0aCScP-RcUUcSWwT1Vu26xOLxuqTImwja5uJ8TQTLmwNs_cHucB_ITqT-Gd1u7YMhUkFohPxAm3yiExdUEgGAiOH9Z7jbPf1MUK0cosECH9hvcaqHcTM4xC4/s320/AMFM+switchoff+2.bmp" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">RadioCentre’s self-interested ‘policy’ has been to argue that the BBC national networks should turn off their analogue transmitters first, years in advance of commercial radio stations. Radio Chicken, anyone? Naturally, RadioCentre failed to mention that the outcome of this proposal would be likely to significantly increase its member commercial radio stations’ analogue audiences and revenues. There is nothing quite like trying to persuade your competitor to commit joint suicide … first.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Additionally, the value of commercial radio companies is vested in the scarcity of their analogue FM/AM licences. Because no new analogue licences are awarded by the regulator, each existing licence has a significant intrinsic value, even if the business using it is not profitable. The same is not true of DAB licences. Anybody can apply to Ofcom for a DAB licence by filling in a form and paying a relatively small fee.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An example of the value of analogue licences to commercial radio owners is Absolute Radio. In 2008, Times of India paid £53.2m for Virgin Radio, comprising one national AM licence and one London FM licence. Having re-launched the station as Absolute Radio, the company lost £4.3m in 2009, but its balance sheet still retains considerable value because of the scarcity of its two analogue radio licences. If Absolute Radio were put up for sale, someone would be interested in buying it because of that scarcity.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By contrast, when DAB commercial radio services such as Zee Radio, Islam Radio, Muslim Radio, Flaunt and Eurolatina no longer wanted their digital radio licences in 2010, there was no queue of potential buyers. They simply handed their licences back to Ofcom because those licences were not scarce.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is why it would prove financially suicidal for commercial radio to switch off its FM/AM transmitters. It would have to write down the value of those scarce analogue licences to zero in its balance sheets which, at a stroke, would negate almost the entire value of the licence owners. Not a good company strategy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, when <a href="http://www.brandrepublic.com/news/1052098/Absolute-Radio-mulls-AM-switch-off">headlines</a> such as ‘<em>Absolute Radio mulls AM switch-off’</em> appear in the trade press, they should be read with a bucket of salt. The headline might as well say: <em>’Absolute Radio mulls destruction of shareholder value.’</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And, when yet another DAB proponent appears on radio or television to persuade you, in all seriousness, that the UK’s most listened to national radio services – both BBC and commercial – will imminently be switching off their AM/FM transmitters, please feel justified to laugh in their face.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is about as likely to happen as Tesco putting security guards at their store entrances to tell the public to shop elsewhere because they want fewer customers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>FOOTNOTE:</strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It <a href="http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Kultur/2011/03/31/110207.htm">emerged</a> last week that, after the Norwegian state classical music station ‘Alltid Klassisk’ abandoned FM transmission on 1 July 2009 for DAB transmission, its audience contracted from 25,000 to 10,000 per day.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now, consider that only 20% of listening to BBC Radio 2 is via digital platforms (in Q1 2010), lower than the 24% average for all stations [see Sep 2010 <a href="http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/without-local-commercial-radio.html">blog</a>]. If that average ever managed to reach the 50% threshold, it might leave 60% of Radio 2’s audience still listening via analogue. That’s 8m listeners that Radio 2 would have to turn its back on as a result of FM switch-off. Time for the BBC to start erecting barricades outside Broadcasting House.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaCFsd9CR6Z1vBHXV7Oe4NKJaT4lavuJGL-19wF2_MHtavHuXceQfy85bNtizDjBaTYfFbNG7IJHIXM_RW1GFidUhfAlj2kTIkDvMldrQqSpEYbbhz-f1gUN_98Zc3u1sxl2dLhWVAN9Y/s1600/Local+commercial+radio+1.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" r6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaCFsd9CR6Z1vBHXV7Oe4NKJaT4lavuJGL-19wF2_MHtavHuXceQfy85bNtizDjBaTYfFbNG7IJHIXM_RW1GFidUhfAlj2kTIkDvMldrQqSpEYbbhz-f1gUN_98Zc3u1sxl2dLhWVAN9Y/s400/Local+commercial+radio+1.bmp" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>[thanks to Eivind Engberg]</em></span>Grant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078262770562171996.post-60863007037648748172011-04-02T23:12:00.001+01:002011-04-03T21:55:25.686+01:00David Blunkett's opinion of DAB radio: BBC is "defending the indefensible"<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>‘You & Yours’</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>BBC Radio 4</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00fz1ft">28 March 2011</a> @ 1200</strong> [FM only]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Julian Worricker</strong>, presenter [JW]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Paul Everitt</strong>, chief executive, Society of Motoring Manufacturers & Traders [PE]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Laurence Harrison</strong>, technology & market director, Digital Radio UK [LH]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>JW:</strong> <em>Now, car manufacturers have long prided themselves on arming their vehicles with the latest groundbreaking technology, but there’s one in-car gadget which has remained stuck in the twentieth century. Radios in cars, generally speaking, are FM/AM analogue, and not digital. Around 20% of all radio listening takes place in the car, that’s according to RAJAR, the organisation which counts these things. So, if the UK is to go all-digital and the analogue signal switch is turned off – and that, of course, is the plan – cars need to be equipped with digital radios.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>JW:</strong> <em>Well, car manufacturers are planning that all new vehicles will have digital radios fitted from 2013. And, now, Ford says it will make digital radios available in its cars a year earlier than that. This will all help achieve the target that 50% of all radio listening should be digital, which is one of the pre-conditions for turning off the analogue signal. We can explore this with Paul Everitt, who is the chief executive of the Society of Motoring Manufacturers & Traders, and with Laurence Harrison, the technology & market director from Digital Radio UK, which is the company set up by broadcasters to help with the switchover. Gentlemen, good afternoon. Paul Everitt, why is the car industry pushing ahead with installing digital radios by 2013?</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>PE:</strong> <em>Well, I think there are two key reasons. The first is because that’s the agreement we had with government as part of the Digital [Radio] Action Plan. They recognised that listening in-car was a key part of radio listenership and, therefore, early introduction of vehicles with digital radio was a key part of the package that needed to be achieved. But, I think, increasingly, what we are seeing, and certainly the announcement from Ford that you mentioned slightly earlier, is actually about the consumer saying that this is something that we want. The consumer now has an increasing opportunity to experience both the listening quality of digital in-car, but also the content, the increasing content, and desirability of the content on digital, as well as gradually and increasingly improving coverage. So, it’s a combination here of ….</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>JW:</strong> [interrupts]: <em>Right, right, I just want to ….</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>PE:</strong> <em>…. both something that we have to do, or we have agreed to do. But I think, increasingly, this is a push that is now coming from consumers.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>JW:</strong> <em>Okay, I just want to scrutinise that a little, because I don’t doubt that Laurence Harrison will say the same thing because we are told this is consumer led. But, surely, the truth of the matter is that the consumer has been led because of what the government requires you and others to do, so consumer choice only goes so far here.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>PE:</strong> <em>Well, I think we can argue the finer points of this, if you like. But, from an industry point of view, we began to be involved in this discussion during the course of 2008, obviously the conditions during 2009 with the development of the Digital Britain report brought that forward, or conclusions from that report have been built into vehicle manufacturers’ plans. But, as I say, what we are actually seeing today is, you know, increasing interest in digital from consumers.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>JW:</strong> <em>Okay. Let me bring Laurence Harrison in on coverage because, as I understand it, at least 90% [population] coverage is a target. That’s part of the targets that will only allow the switchover to take place. Now, 90% sounds positive until you then think about the 10% who can no longer hear what they are listening to now.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>LH:</strong> <em>Well, I think the key thing on coverage is to become the equivalent of FM coverage. So the 90% figure you refer to is around local coverage. Actually, on the coverage of national services, we are already at just over 90%, and the BBC has just recently committed to build that out to 93% by the end of this year. And the target thereafter is to get to FM equivalence as soon as we can, so that programme is well underway.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>LH:</strong> <em>And, if we are driving from A to B a significant distance, can we be sure that that coverage will remain consistent over that distance?</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>PE:</strong> <em>So, you’re absolutely right. Of course, for the car market, geographical coverage is vitally important. What we do know now is that the vast majority of motorways and A roads have got good coverage, and significant coverage on B roads and smaller roads. But we are working with broadcasters to try and prioritise the road network going forward.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>JW:</strong> <em>Paul Everett, what about those who can’t afford to buy a new car after 2013 with a smart digital radio inside it? When that switchover eventually happens, what happens to them?</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>PE:</strong> <em>Well, this has always been our biggest – or one of our biggest – concerns, which is that how do we retro-fit the entire vehicle parc? We are currently looking at something between 25 and 30 million vehicles all up, so it’s quite a challenge. What we have seen over the course of the last year – 18 months – is relatively low-cost adaptors. I think now ... I mean the prices vary, but certainly less than £100 to adapt your vehicle, and these are sort of a relatively basic unit, so not desirable for everybody …</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>JW:</strong> <em>What does 'relatively basic' mean in terms of what it will actually do?</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>PE:</strong> <em>Well, it means you get a digital reception but you have to kind of plug it into the cigarette lighter and have a bit of an aerial up and …</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>JW:</strong> <em>It’s a bit Heath Robinson, isn’t it?</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>PE:</strong> <em>We would agree with that. From our perspective, we’ve been very much focusing on what we would see as an integrated unit. So, something that you can put into your car or have installed in your car which would effectively mean that you could just use your standard radio to receive digital broadcasts. Now, we’ve seen … I’ve seen first kind of trials of that technology. We hope that that’s going to be available from sort of around the end of this year – the beginning of next year – so we’re already seeing a market begin to develop and, as I say, I think we … well, there are two ways of looking at the problem. One is that we must all prepare because this switchover is going to happen. Or the one which we are focused on is: the more consumers have experience of digital, the more they like it and want it and therefore that’s a market driver, rather than sort of an administrative pull.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>JW:</strong> <em>No, and that’s a fair point because I read some surveys, Laurence Harrison, that I know you were quoted in in recent weeks. But the point that has just emerged from the last comment, surely, to put to you are that whatever we do here, it is going to cost us and we do not have any choice over that.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>LH:</strong> <em>Well, I think the stage we are at at the moment, as Paul said, is that we have not got a confirmed switchover date now, so what we are trying to do is build momentum.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>JW:</strong> <em>But it will happen one day.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>LH:</strong> <em>It will happen one day, but what’s going to drive people towards digital radio is the great content we’ve got. The same happened on TV. So if you look at the offering now on digital radio, you’ve got the soon to be launched BBC Radio 4 Extra on Saturday, 5 Live Sports Extra, 6 Music, Absolute 80s [and] 90s, Planet Rock, Jazz FM has just announced it is going onto the digital network, so the content offering has frankly never been better and what we do know about people that have digital radio is that once they’ve tried it, they love it.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">[The programme was followed with a Yours & Yours <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/youandyours/2011/03/getting_digital_radio.html">blog</a> which invited comments from listeners on their experiences with DAB radio in cars. David Blunkett MP submitted a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/youandyours/2011/03/david_blunkett_on_dab.html">comment</a> to the programme about his experiences with DAB, upon which listeners made further comments.]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">……………………………</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>‘You & Yours’</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>BBC Radio 4</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zt4h1">1 April 2011</a> @ 1200</strong> [FM only]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Peter White</strong>, presenter [PW]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>David Blunkett</strong> MP [DB]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Lindsey Mack</strong>, senior project manager of digital radio, BBC [LM]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>PW:</strong> <em>Now, you’ve all been writing in, telling us about your frustrations with digital radios, after Monday’s report on how Ford is planning to install DAB radios as standard in some new cars from next year. Steve told us about his A370 journey between Cardiff and North Wales: perfect listening for 30 miles outside the Welsh capital, then nothing for 150 miles. By contrast, over on Anglesey, Steve tells us the only place that silences his DAB car radio is the Conwy Tunnel. Another correspondent was former Home Secretary, David Blunkett. He’s had trouble getting a DAB signal at his home in Derbyshire. So we brought him together with a senior digital manager for the BBC, Lindsey Mack, and David started by challenging the main claim of digital supporters that DAB achieves 90% coverage.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>DB:</strong> <em>My thrust was that there are not 90% of the population with access to digital [radio], and many of those who claim to have access have intermittent or interference with the access. And I’m a classic [case] because I can just about get digital radio in North Derbyshire, where I rent a cottage, if I hold the radio up to the roof, or I find one particular spot on the kitchen window sill. Get it out of kilter and either the signal goes or, as quite often I get, even in London, it breaks up.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>PW:</strong> <em>Right, let me at this point bring in Lindsey Mack. A lot of our e-mails mirrored what David had to say, and particularly this point: that the quality isn’t adequate for many people, even if they’re … it’s said they have reception, and in that so to talk of [FM radio] switch-off at this stage, you know, seems wrong.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>LM:</strong> <em>Over the last sort of two years, the BBC has been very committed to building out its DAB coverage. We actually are at 90% of the UK population, but that doesn’t mean that everyone’s going to always get a very good reception. A lot of it does depend on the device you have, as well. There are some receivers that are a little bit more sensitive than others. And, in fact, we’ve actually just been doing some tests on the last sort of bestselling sort of ten or dozen receivers in the market.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>PW:</strong> <em>But what a lot of people said to us, and I suspect David will reiterate this, is that FM, which digital is going to replace, that has a much more stable signal and that, even if you start to lose that signal, you don’t lose it altogether in the way you often lose the digital [signal] or it just goes into sort of burble.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>LM:</strong> <em>Yes, and with DAB, you usually either get it or you don’t. I mean, looking in Derbyshire, we’ve actually got very good coverage, especially North Derbyshire, so perhaps after this we could actually talk to David about the device he’s actually got, as well, just to see which one he’s actually using. Whilst the BBC has been very committed to DAB and extending the coverage, we are now actually having to make the existing coverage more robust, and that’s actually what we haven’t been doing as much before. What we’ve done before, we’ve concentrated on just rolling out DAB. Now we know we’ve got to really look at the whole way we’re measuring DAB. We’re looking at indoor coverage in particular. You know, originally, when we launched DAB, we actually based all our coverage on car listening and then, obviously, car listening didn’t take off the same way as people are actually listening indoors.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>PW:</strong> <em>Well, it couldn’t because there weren’t [DAB] radios in cars.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>DB</strong> [laughs]: <em>Absolutely.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>LM</strong> [laughs]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>DB:</strong> <em>It is a problem, Peter, actually, that if you can’t get it and you can’t hear it, you can’t appreciate it. I’ve got no problem with the extra reach and the way in which [BBC] Radio 7 is now going to become Radio 4 Plus or, whatever, Extra. My problem is that there’s a big over-claim for this. Let’s take it steadily, let’s try and get it right, let’s not claim that people have got a service when they haven’t and, particularly, let’s not say – which was what the sell for DAB was – that this is going to be higher quality when, as you’ve just described, the burble, the break-up, the lack of a good sound... I have three DAB radios up north. I’ve tried them all in different places, so it’s: please don’t do to me and to the audience what always happens, which is: it is not the fault of the deliverer, it’s the piece of equipment you’ve got, and they’re pretty good pieces of equipment.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>PW:</strong> <em>But, David, it was your own government who published Digital Britain and it was your own government that set the 2015 date.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>DB:</strong> <em>Yeah, and I criticised them at the time. Everybody wants everything now. They want it faster, they want to claim it as the greatest quality. I mean, everything is always ‘the best ever.’ And, frankly, it isn’t and if we just accept that and say ‘lets take it steady and lets try and get it right,’ we’ll all be on the same page.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>PW:</strong> <em>So it isn’t the principle that you’re against. It’s the practice, really.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>DB:</strong> <em>Yes, it is. I mean, if FM is better than DAB, let us continue for the time being with FM and, in many parts of this country, it is.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>PW:</strong> <em>Lindsey Mack, 2015 is supposed to be dependent on, you know, the state of digital [radio listening] and the public’s attitude to it. There’s a report in the papers this week that, in fact, digital sales of digital radio have actually fallen, and fallen for the second year running.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>LM:</strong> <em>They did fall slightly down last year, compared to the year before but, to be very honest, over the last sort of quarter, the consumer electronic market has been hit very badly. Not just in terms of radio sales, but other consumer electronics as well. You know, the BBC is working very closely with commercial radio and doing a lot of sort of joint promotions. We have to get our messaging right on this.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>PW:</strong> <em>A lot of our listeners said ‘if it ain’t broke,’ you know, ‘don’t fix it.’ In other words, okay, people quite accept that you’ve got, that you should move on, and that digital probably is the next thing, but why get rid of FM before … in some ways, some people said ‘why get rid of it at all’? Why can’t they exist side by side?</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>LM:</strong> <em>But we’re not getting rid of FM totally. What we’re saying is that the BBC services – the national services – are on FM and DAB, and also we have our digital-only stations on DAB. By 2015, we have to … hopefully, we will have reached 50% digital listening. That’s not [just] DAB. It’s digital listening across all platforms. But there’s a lot that has to be done by, you know, at 2015, and beyond that.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>PW:</strong> <em>Are you happy about that 2015 date?</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>LM:</strong> <em>2015 is just … is a date that the industry can focus on. It is not a switchover date. What we have to achieve by then, though, if we can, is obviously digital listening up, we have to have good coverage rollout which has to be robust. People have to be able to turn on their radio and it has to work.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>DB:</strong> <em>Well, just one final message, Peter, which is that Lindsey’s done a pretty good job at defending the indefensible …</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>LM:</strong> [scoffs]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>DB:</strong> <em>… and I commend her on it, but don’t get carried away by the anoraks. They’ll tell you anything is working, even if it isn’t.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>PW:</strong> <em>So what would be your … what’s your solution? What would you want the BBC to do, David?</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>DB:</strong> <em>I’d want them to be absolutely clear and honest and to say: there are problems with this, we’re resolving them, we want people to buy the [DAB] radios because they’ll get the extra coverage of different channels, and we want to keep FM as long as it’s necessary for people to be able to listen to Radio 4 properly.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">[thanks to Darryl Pomicter & Luke Shasha]</span>Grant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078262770562171996.post-10846149308230408452011-03-30T19:10:00.000+01:002011-03-30T19:10:41.543+01:00Culture Secretary: "digital radio industry needs to do a lot more work ... to carry the public with it"<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>House of Commons Culture, Media & Sport Committee</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>30 March 2011 @ 1006</strong> [excerpt]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Committee Room 15 </strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><strong>Jeremy Hunt MP, Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media & Sport</strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Q:</strong> <em>What are your expectations now with regard to digital radio switchover?</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>A:</strong> <em>Well, I think the future is digital. I think the future is DAB. But I think the digital radio industry needs to do a lot more work to boost the penetration of DAB and to carry the public with it. And I think that it has not been nearly as successful as that, as the TV industry has been, in persuading the public of the benefits of digital switchover. And that’s why, at the moment, the industry is having to bear the costs of running two systems [analogue and DAB] in parallel. I very much hope that they won’t have to do that. We want to do everything we can to help the industry migrate smoothly, but we would like it to be user-led, so we have said that we are not going to have an arbitrary 2015 deadline. We will make a decision in due course as to whether we can have switchover in 2015, but we want the radio industry to step up to the plate in making sure there are better products and services available, and that consumers really can see the benefit of DAB.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Q:</strong> <em>Would your expectation be that the financial commitment of the BBC to expand the radio coverage in rural areas will remain the same or might that be affected by their review of spending?</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>A:</strong> <em>Well, the BBC are committed in the [Licence Fee] Agreement I did to national availability of national DAB channels. There is still a discussion to be had about the funding of local DAB channels, which is an additional cost. And I am closely involved in discussions with the radio industry, and very keen to resolve this as soon as possible because I think it’s a very, very important next step.</em></span>Grant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9078262770562171996.post-48546526636549716392011-03-26T12:37:00.008+00:002011-03-26T13:01:23.585+00:00NORWAY: government proposes "possible FM [radio] switch-off" and "possible prolongation of FM licences"<span style="font-family:arial;">In February 2011, some hysterical reports appeared concerning the </span><a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/pages/15661822/PDFS/STM201020110008000DDDPDFS.pdf"><span style="font-family:arial;">White Paper</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> </span><a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/kud/pressesenter/pressemeldinger/2011/fm-avvikling-i-2017--radiomediet-blir-di.html?id=632748"><span style="font-family:arial;">published</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> by the government in Norway on DAB radio. Some of these would have had us believe that Norway had made a definite commitment to switch off all FM radio in 2017. This was not true [as documented by </span><a href="http://diymedia.net/archive/0311.htm#030911"><span style="font-family:arial;">diymedia</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> and </span><a href="http://blogs.rnw.nl/medianetwork/radio-consultant-fm-will-not-switch-off-in-norway"><span style="font-family:arial;">Media Network</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">]. In fact, the government had set out several criteria that will have to be met before digital switchover can be sanctioned. The Norwegian criteria are similar to those adopted in the UK which, as commented here previously, are unlikely ever to be fulfilled, making switchover an ‘unreality.’</span><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA1ovZk3ztE29OcVCmi6wlV1-4aizO0gHN5fX9f4mrRyOO5Wo_y8gKAQX9WjrNzR_L4z_jr6tbQn_czrvYJNLGddPFqFbOGI2QKUrGF0GInILh2vv08tF-tOhxvSBa_6M11gUxUTB0ARw/s1600/Norway+1.bmp"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 159px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 229px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5588369972041297010" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA1ovZk3ztE29OcVCmi6wlV1-4aizO0gHN5fX9f4mrRyOO5Wo_y8gKAQX9WjrNzR_L4z_jr6tbQn_czrvYJNLGddPFqFbOGI2QKUrGF0GInILh2vv08tF-tOhxvSBa_6M11gUxUTB0ARw/s320/Norway+1.bmp" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">To make the situation perfectly clear, in the </span><a href="http://www.medietilsynet.no/no/Brief-news-english/PROPOSAL-ON-THE-DIGITIZATION-OF-RADIO---SUMMARY"><span style="font-family:arial;">words</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> of Norway’s media regulator:<br /><br /><em>“The following three conditions are absolute and must be fulfilled regardless of when switch-off takes place:<br /><br />1. Digital coverage for the NRK’s radio services correspond to that of NRK P1 on FM<br />2. The multiplex that carries commercial national services (Riksblokka) must cover at least 90 per cent of the population<br />3. The digital radio offer must represent added value to the listeners<br /><br />The above three conditions, as well as the two following conditions, must be fulfilled by 1 January 2015 for the switch-off to take place in January 2017:<br /><br />4. Affordable and technically satisfactory solutions for in-car radio reception must be available<br />5. At least 50 per cent of daily radio-listeners employ digital platforms, exclusively or in combination with FM-radio<br /><br />Provided the absolute criteria (1-3) are fulfilled in 2015, switch-off may nevertheless take place in 2019, even if criteria 4 and 5 are not fulfilled.”<br /></em><br />Furthermore, far from FM being switched off completely, the regulator </span><a href="http://www.medietilsynet.no/no/Brief-news-english/PROPOSAL-ON-THE-DIGITIZATION-OF-RADIO---SUMMARY"><span style="font-family:arial;">said</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">:<br /><br /><em>“The Report proposes that the majority of local radio stations should have the right to continue transmitting in FM beyond 2017. The Ministry of Culture will determine in 2015 what categories of local radio may maintain the right to do so.”<br /></em><br />The milestones anticipated by the government are:<br /><br /><em>“2011: The Ministry of Culture decides on the possible prolongation of commercial radio-licenses in the FM-network until 2017 (or 2019).<br /><br />2013: The Ministry of Culture determines:<br />· Whether the coverage obligation for NRK radio-services shall be attached to the DAB-multiplex alone, or whether it may be fulfilled by employing other technologies in addition to DAB<br />· What is to be understood by the criterion ‘affordable and technically satisfactory solutions for in-car reception.’<br /><br />2015: The Ministry of Culture decides whether the following conditions are met:<br />· The digital coverage of NRK-radio corresponds to that of NRK P1 in FM<br />· The population coverage of the national, commercial multiplex >90 per cent<br />· The Digital radio-offer represents added value to the public<br />· Availability of affordable and technically satisfactory in-car solutions<br />· Usage of digital platforms >50 % of daily radio-listeners.<br /><br />2017: Possible FM switch-off<br />2019: Prospective postponed final switch-off of FM<br />2011: Decision on possible prolongation of FM-licences<br />2013: Definition of coverage obligations NRK & in-car solutions<br />2015: Assessment whether ASO-criteria are met<br />2017: Possible FM-switch off<br />2019: Possible postponed FM switch-off.”<br /></em><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQrFhwb9ms3k144ZJLKOYzqHnSJIUlNimIUUxc2bRMlD3n_rQEZyAFWvDw_3jUnuB2lGZzjLINJsJL-hQDWnoAXKVrIacseAvhi-mPQyeo95YgXdsmDSwjrd4_dViFG9Q9Ii0LntRf73U/s1600/Norway+2.bmp"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 188px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5588370280219373522" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQrFhwb9ms3k144ZJLKOYzqHnSJIUlNimIUUxc2bRMlD3n_rQEZyAFWvDw_3jUnuB2lGZzjLINJsJL-hQDWnoAXKVrIacseAvhi-mPQyeo95YgXdsmDSwjrd4_dViFG9Q9Ii0LntRf73U/s320/Norway+2.bmp" /></a><br />In parliament, the Progress Party’s Ib Thomsen </span><a href="http://www.kampanje.com/medier/article5521069.ece"><span style="font-family:arial;">challenged</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> the Minister of Culture, Anniken Huitfeldt:<br /><br /><em>“The closure of FM radio worries the Progress Party, it worries IKT Norway and it worries consumers. To close FM radio, we need to scrap 15 to 20 million radio receivers, including even DAB radios that are not of the most modern type [DAB rather than DAB+]. This will have major consequences for consumers and for the environment.”<br /></em><br />Thomsen asked the Minister of Culture: <em>“What will the closure of FM radio cost the country? We know that it will cost consumers billions of krone, but what will it cost the state and society?”<br /></em><br />The Minister rejected categorically the notion that consumers would have to pay one billion krone, or that 15 to 20 million radios would have to be scrapped. She responded:<br /><br /><em>“It is very clear in the White Paper that the digitalisation of radio will be consumer focused. It is typical of the Progress Party to spread fear about something that has already been addressed. These figures are not correct. There are, according to numbers that I have been quoted, 3.5 to 7 million radio receivers in Norway. These devices will not be thrown out. People can buy adapters that will provide access to digital radio.”<br /></em><br /><em>“It is the simulcasting [on FM and DAB] that is the most expensive. When we published the White Paper on the digitalisation of radio, P4 responded immediately that it wanted to launch more stations. There will be more competition and more channels. It went very well when we introduced digital television. It is going to go just as well with radio.”<br /></em><br />Ib Thomsen was unsatisfied with the Minister’s response. He replied:<br /><br /><em>“The Progress Party is not the only one that is worried. IKT Norway and the rest of the world is concerned too. Adapters will cost consumers 1,200 krone. It is a pity that the Minister is not taking into account that Norway is locking itself into a technology that has already been scrapped by the European Union.”<br /></em><br />The Minister responded:<br /><br /><em>“The European Commissioner has stated that radio must be at the forefront of the digital revolution and has highlighted DAB. It is not true that no other countries are digitising radio. There is no discussion in Europe as to whether to introduce DAB or not, only discussion about the date for digitalisation. Neither is it correct to say that adapters will cost 1,000 krone. Prices will go down.”<br /></em><br />To date, sales </span><a href="http://www.kampanje.com/medier/article5478746.ece"><span style="font-family:arial;">figures</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> for DAB radios in Norway have been even less impressive than in the UK. In 2010, only 81,000 DAB radios were sold out of a total of 833,000 radio receivers. The cumulative total of DAB receivers sold is 336,000, although these are DAB rather than DAB+ and will have to be replaced if Norway changes to the latter system.<br /><br />Year: number of DAB radios sold in Norway<br />2004: 10,000<br />2005: 51,000<br />2006: 55,000<br />2007: 61,000<br />2008: 42,000<br />2009: 66,000<br />2010: 81,000<br /><br />IKT Norway has long argued that DAB radio is not appropriate as the digital platform to replace FM radio. After the White Paper was published, its secretary general, Per Morten Hoff, </span><a href="http://www.kampanje.com/medier/article5479073.ece"><span style="font-family:arial;">commented</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">:<br /><br /><em>“Norway becomes the first country in the world to decide to shut down its FM radio networks. This is a bold decision at a time when technological developments are more uncertain than ever. Closing FM radio gives you no route back. NRK has spent several hundred million krone building its DAB network, ‘a killer’, and its owner, the Norwegian state, and the Culture Minister have concluded that there is no going back. The market has said so far that it is not adopting DAB, so forcing them has been the only way forward.”<br /></em><br />There would appear to be a number of reasons why DAB is being pursued so doggedly in Norway:<br />· Norway was one of the first countries to invest in a DAB radio transmission system in 1995<br />· Jørn Jensen, since 2009 the president of World DMB (the organisation lobbying for the replacement of FM with DAB), is the chief adviser to NRK on platform distribution<br />· NRK, the state broadcaster, signed DAB transmission contracts with Norkring that do not expire until 2020, so the government cannot pull the plug on DAB without exposing an embarrassing waste of public funds<br /><br />Some of the issues facing the successful implementation of DAB in Norway would appear to be:<br />· Only 80 DAB transmitters are currently in service, although at least 650 will be necessary (TV in VHF Band III uses 2,635 transmitters and transponders)<br />· Achievement of 99.5% DAB coverage (to match FM coverage) will prove very expensive, and Norkring has only guaranteed 90% in its current transmission contract with NRK. The government will be forced to fund the difference<br />· The government White Paper noted that current FM coverage is 99.5%, although NRK FM coverage is 99.95%, a more expensive penetration for DAB transmission to match<br />· The high costs of simulcasting about which Arild Hellgren, former NRK director of technology, </span><a href="http://www.tu.no/it/article277653.ece"><span style="font-family:arial;">commented</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">: <em>“Compared to what happened when we digitised TV, we will have a very long period of parallel distribution on FM and DAB. It is very expensive”<br /></em>· The two national commercial stations will be granted automatic licence renewals ONLY IF they support the DAB platform and pay for DAB coverage up to 90%<br />· Local stations’ transfer to the DAB platform will be determined by the government in 2015 in a ‘Big Brother’-style elimination contest<br /><br />So who was the bright spark in the Ministry of Culture who decided to </span><a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/kud/pressesenter/pressemeldinger/2011/fm-avvikling-i-2017--radiomediet-blir-di.html?id=632748"><span style="font-family:arial;">headline</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> its press release: <em>“FM switch-off in 2017 – the radio medium will be digital”?<br /></em><br />By 2017, that person could have a large quantity of egg on their face.<br /><br /><br /><em>[thanks to Bjarne Boen, Darryl Pomicter + others]</em></span>Grant Goddardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13171054298318119431noreply@blogger.com0