It’s as if they’ve stuck their head in the sand and refuse to acknowledge or react to the revolution in broadcasting that’s all around them. Radio, as we’ve known it since its beginnings in the 1930s, is no longer. Up until now broadcasting has always been a simple matter of a transmitter sending out a radio signal across a designated area which then was picked up by people’s radio receivers.
Today you can listen to radio through your computer, your TV and, (yet to come in Australia), through a digital receiver complete with all its bells and whistles including a text readout, or direct off a satellite with a choice of over a hundred channels. And then there’s the mobile phone. Combine its size and portability with wireless technology and you have the heir to the transistor radio. Many of the costlier mobiles already have the ability to receive FM signals and their numbers will increase as the manufacturers look for more options for their cheaper models. Lee Cornell, Group Manager of World Audio’s Broadcast Operations, recently back from the UK after 7 years where he was Group Programme Director with The Wireless Group UK, agrees that the whole shape of radio is changing.
“The advent of digital broadcast really means thinking about radio in a different way. In terms of convergence, in terms of multi-platforms, building listening communities and real efficiencies in targeting and reaching like-minded groups with content that is compelling and matters to them,” says Cornell, adding that “it’s about being wherever the listeners are.”
The biggest challenge to terrestrial radio stations in America is satellite radio. For US$9.95 a month you have a choice of over 100 channels of music (now commercial free) and talk. And there’s an additional choice of two providers—Sirius and XM who have just announced they now have 2 million subscribers.
“Traditional U.S. broadcasters seem to think that satellite radio will end up with a share similar to cable TV,” says Cornell. “Satellite radio is delivering an array of compelling and innovative content. I think DIR or internet broadcast, despite early setbacks, is going to be a force as well. Internet advertiser spend is now very much on the media buying and planning radar. Then there’s satellite radio through TV.”
Regardless of the battle of the various digital radio formats for supremacy, (remember the fight for world domination between VHS and BETA?), there is a no doubt that digital is the radio of the future and that future is here with the current tests being conducted in Melbourne and Sydney.
“Its interesting that Australia is still in test-phase with the “DAB” digital platform right now, while DAB is already an active national and regional platform in UK/Europe,” says Cornell, pointing out that “the actual audience driver for digital listening numbers in the UK at present is through D-SAT on SKY or Freeview, which are both radio through your TV. At present there are around half a million DAB sets in UK homes, with a projection of a million by the end of 2004. SKY is in around 7 million UK homes while Freeview has around 4 million sets. 29% of adult listening to radio is through TV, while web-based listening is around 15%, and around 5% of all listening to UK commercial radio is through digital platforms.”
“Brands like KISS which is on FM in London, and only available nationally on digital platforms, claims around 1.3 million listeners a week in London, and over 900,000 a week elsewhere across the UK on digital only. So it’s getting serious with specific brands,” says Cornell.
“Having spent the last seven years in the U.K. broadcast industry, I’ve seen and been involved in the evolution of radio there as it has gone beyond narrow geographic and analogue boundaries. It’s now very much about being wherever the listeners are. And content is the driver, and that means not just replicating formats or what has gone before on analogue.
“The most successful digital brands are new, innovative, and compelling propositions like Emap’s Kerrang, and Smash Hits for example. These are formats derived from magazines. They’re already generating between 800,000 and just under a million listeners nationally a week respectively, and are solely digital although, ironically, Kerrang has just debuted as the new FM brand in Birmingham. Listener inter-activity is also a key driver for the future. As always though, it is all about content, and content is king,” says Cornell.
And that, dear friends, is the bottom line. Regardless of the method of technological delivery, digital radio, satellite, internet, TV audio channels through your phone or on that old fashioned AM/FM thing—it is what is being delivered on that system that counts in the long run.
