Radio is finding its way into the digital world. Internet users are
tuning into stations on their PCs and radio owners are investing in
various forms of digital radio. It may not have launched with the same
fanfare as digital TV, but with strong brands and a more flexible
offering, radio could fit well into the new-media order.
None of the same conditions were in place for the launch of digital
radio last November as they were for digital TV. The Government is
committed to turning off the analogue service for TV within the next six
to ten years and operating companies have been subsidising equipment
costs for consumers. Digital radio sets are coming down in price but, at
a time when portable analogue sets can be given away in cereal packets,
pounds 500 or so still represents a considerable investment and one that
only the new technology early adopters are likely to take.
Prices of digital radios are falling faster than CD player prices when
they were launched in the early 80s, and the BBC has stuck its neck on
the block and forecast that more than two-thirds of us will have a
digital radio by 2008. That might err on the side of optimism, but the
digital multiplex licences do run for 12 years, and the operators are
confident that the digital platform will, by then, have transformed the
way radio is broadcast, if not necessarily the way people listen to
it.
’Digital radio will have near-CD quality sound and more information, but
it’s true that it will really only take off once the hardware is
miniaturised and integrated into other electronic goods,’ Quentin
Howard, the chief executive of the consortium, Digital One, explains.
’Manufacturers will build digital radio chips into Walkmans, PCs, car
stereos and mobile phones. I’ve seen prototypes - so imagine a world
where you can listen to digital radio over your mobile phone and you can
have interactivity.’
For many in the industry, digital radio will change little about the
complicated relationship listeners have with their sets. Digital radio
sets may look more futuristic but the same sonic brand triggers that
advertisers use now can still be employed. ’The screen on a digital
radio doesn’t mean that we are becoming a sort of lo-tech TV,’ Howard
stresses, ’just the same radio but with better sound and different
opportunities for listener competitions and for advertisers and so
on.’
James Smythe, the Radio Advertising Bureau’s project manager, downplays
the upheavals that many in the industry attach to digital: ’To be honest
I don’t think it has done us any favours calling it digital radio.
Because there is a misapprehension that digital involves a shift in the
way that people consume media. And that this shift necessarily involves
a change from a lean back to a lean forward medium. There aren’t going
to be dramatic changes in the way it is consumed or indeed in the way it
is planned and bought by advertisers. While there is a data capacity on
digital radio and screens, it doesn’t mean that the medium is going to
be a sort of dumb TV.’
Adam Smith, Zenith Media’s head of knowledge management, agrees: ’I’m
not sure that digital radio is going to have a profound effect on the
way the medium is consumed. Forms of multimedia have been growing up
around us for at least ten years and the young have lapped it up - the
same young people who have been tuning into commercial radio in
increasing numbers and who comprise a third of its audience.’
Other advertising luminaries have been at pains to stress the same
message, that radio is, to a large extent, insulated from the seismic
shifts of fragmentation that are predicted in other media. The RAB asked
the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising’s president, Rupert
Howell, to its conference on the future of radio at the end of last year
to help provide a corrective voice and guard against complacency in a
medium that was the biggest advertising share winner in the 90s. Howell
delivered an incredibly upbeat message, telling self-satisfied delegates
that radio was in fine shape and that other new-media developments such
as the internet were, in truth, opportunities for radio to grow still
further. That the internet, in other words, certainly didn’t represent a
real threat to the medium in the same way as it does to, say, the
newspaper market.
In fact there may be some confluence between the internet and digital
radio technologies. There is already some evidence that consumers are
happy with the idea of using their home computer for accessing the
medium despite the internet’s uneven quality. Recent research by the
specialist research consultancy, Continental, suggested that a third of
all UK online users had already accessed a radio station website and
that two-thirds were aware that radio could be listened to over the net.
And, although only 22 per cent had listened online when the survey took
place at the end of last year, 71 per cent said that they had heard a
radio station talking about its website on air.
Continental estimates that internet transmission of radio will grow at
such a rate that it would have to be included in the Rajar listening
diaries within the next couple of years. By then digital radio chips may
even be built into computers.
Radio stations are, indeed, taking the internet very seriously. They see
it as a way of introducing some of the potential benefits of digital
radio - such as interactivity and giving information on the band playing
the music or the track being played, or the product being advertised -
by having a website.
Chrysalis Radio, which has unveiled a pounds 31 million investment fund
for new-media opportunities, also has websites for its two Heart and
five Galaxy formats, and its five other stations. A deal with the
internet retailer, Yalplay, gives listeners the chance to buy tickets
and CDs online.
Virgin, which was a pioneer of internet broadcasting, has expanded its
services to deliver the same sort of interactivity and real-time links
to advertisers’ websites that will - in the future - become a staple of
digital interactivity.
According to John Ousby, director of Ginger Online, this has been the
breakthrough on the path towards new digital, and new interactive
digital services on radio. The infrastructure is now in place, he says,
to enable Virgin and the other major players to provide added-value
content to other outlets. This could happen through the use of wireless
application protocol - receiving digital radio through a mobile phone -
or through digital TV sets or conventional digital radio receivers.
BSkyB has opted to carry radio broadcasts on its Sky Digital television
service. Since November, 20 radio stations made themselves available to
Sky Digital subscribers and provided a sort of halfway house to full
digital radio. For the stations involved, the partnership enabled them
to offer listeners their first taste of the CD-quality sound which, in
the short term, will be digital radio’s best selling point. AM stations
such as Capital Gold, Virgin and TalkSPORT, whose medium-wave analogue
frequency has needed perseverence and patience from listeners, had the
chance to broadcast a national digital quality signal for the first
time.
This provided new digital channels a potential audience of some 1.8
million from launch. GWR, which took a leading role in setting up
Digital One with Talk Radio and NTL, has applied for a licence to
operate up to ten national digital radio channels. So far there is
Planet Rock, the soft rock station aimed at 35- to 55-year-olds, The
Core, a dance music station, plus a third GWR service called The Mix,
which combines 80s and 90s music with programmes such as Late Night
Love, which are already broadcast across the GWR analogue network.
The relationship between the commercial and publicly funded broadcasters
is also changing. With the advent of digital, commercial radio now has
six national stations against the five of the BBC. Commercial radio,
which already captures the bulk of 15- to 44-year-olds, is confident
that this age group will be the most responsive to digital.
’One thing I don’t think you will be seeing is subscription radio,’
Smythe says. ’The only area that might have been able to offer something
like that, which has become a staple of digital TV, is sports. But the
presence of Radio 5 will keep that from happening and the integrity of
the radio offering will be maintained.’ Only the delivery and the
reception will really be affected.
In the meantime, the pace will be almost stately. Emap, which will
operate the London licence together with Capital, says it doesn’t expect
to return a profit on this, arguably the jewel in the digital radio
crown, before 2005 at the earliest. By 2009, 40 per cent of the one
billion listening hours of all radio will be accounted for by digital,
the companies estimate.
That may be. Our progress there will be a slow and dignified one, as
perhaps befits a medium that didn’t need digital to re-invent itself as
the medium of the future.
OWNERS AND MAJOR RADIO HOLDINGS
Border Radio Holdings
Century, Sun
Capital Radio 95.8 Capital FM, Capital Gold
Network, Xfm, Life, Invicta
Chrysalis Radio
Galaxy, Heart FM
Emap Radio Kiss 100, The Magic Network, The Big City Network
Ginger
Virgin
GWR Group Classic FM, Classic Gold, The Core, Planet Rock, The Mix
Scottish Radio Holdings
Clyde, Downtown, Forth, Northsound, Tay, West Sound
The Wireless Group
The Independent Radio Group, TalkSPORT, Lite AM, Pulse, Valleys Radio,
Swansea Sound
TOP 10 STATIONS BY REVENUE FOR THE PERIOD JANUARY TO DECEMBER 1999
1 Capital 95.8 FM (London) pounds 51,993,434
2 Classic FM (National) pounds 38,141,402
3 Virgin 1215 AM (National) pounds 20,191,027
4 Clyde1 FM (Strathclyde) pounds 13,252,370
5 Talk Radio UK AM (National) pounds 12,977,325
6 KEY 103 FM (Manchester) pounds 11,870,321
7 LBC 1152 AM (London) pounds 11,703,334
8 Heart London FM (London) pounds 11,321,438
9 Capital Gold1548 (London) pounds 11,244,262
10 Magic105.4 FM (London) pounds 10,976,522
TOTAL for Top 10 pounds 193,671,435
.jpg)
.jpg)