Media buyers on the panel noted that radio was no longer considered a sexy medium. They didn't detail why it isn't sexy - was radio ever sexy? But there is a sense that radio's image suffers from its failure to exploit the digital world.
Radio people wrote off last week's Rajars, showing a fall in the final quarter of 2006 in total listening as well as commercial's radio's share, as a blip. Nobody wants to pour cold water on the industry's fortunes so soon after RadioCentre chief Andrew Harrison did so much to talk them up.
Yet, this data cannot be so easily dismissed. The opportunity to take radio to a new level through the creation, seven years ago, of the GCap-backed Digital One multiplex has been squandered. Instead of providing listener choice, it has, with a few exceptions, such as Gaydar (and please don't send me another letter, guys), been used to replicate analogue services and trial low-cost radio jukeboxes.
Still, Ofcom's creation of a second digital multiplex presents a new opportunity, and there is hope that this one will not be spurned. The arrival of three people, bringing new talents and vision to key roles in the sector, adds to that hope.
With his talent in FMCG brand marketing, Harrison's role at the RadioCentre is crucial in reinventing radio as a sexy brand. While established radio owners have vacillated over the second multiplex, Nathalie Schwarz, the impressive leader of Channel 4's 4Radio, has led the bidding for it, forming alliances with parties who can bring new content and technology.
More than anyone, Schwarz "gets" the opportunities at hand and will be a driver of radio's future, whoever wins the licence. And the appointment of Fru Hazlitt, with her new-media experience at Yahoo!, should breathe new life into GCap, the sleeping giant that has failed abysmally to lead the sector.
City investors also have to open their ears and eyes to the case for a bright radio future. And Emap, GCap, Chrysalis and SMG must be bolder in making that case.
- Colin Grimshaw is the deputy editor of Media Week.
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