Bernard, who was speaking at MediaTel’s Future of Radio seminar yesterday (Tuesday), said the future of Planet Rock and TheJazz could be at risk because the long term costs of running both analogue and digital stations is too high.
GCap pays £15million a year in transmission costs for its digital radio stations and £8million for its analogue offerings, but Bernard is adamant this is not a long-term solution.
“If you think commercial radio groups are going to be content just sitting around waiting for migration to happen in the course of time while incurring a net loss on digital of £10m a year for another 10 years, you’re not living in the real world,” he said. “We’ve stopped investment in Core and Life and are very seriously looking at a situation where this might happen more widely.”
The panel, which included ex-Chrysalis chief executive, Phil Riley, UTV Radio managing director Scott Taunton and Mindshare’s investment director for radio, Howard Bareham, debated whether Ofcom should set a date for analogue switch-off.
Taunton argued for AM radio, saying his flagship station Talksport has 10 million listeners a week on the spectrum, but Riley agreed with Bernard on the financial problems facing the sector.
“Transmission costs used to be a mere incidental to running a station but now the costs to major radio groups is huge,” he said. “From the listeners point of view it has never been better – the BBC at the top of its game and commercial radio is doing OK - but if you’re a radio company it has never been worse.”
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