Radio At The Edge

Apologies upfront for the rawness of this text. I’ll tidy it up later.
To Radio at the Edge (where there’s some free WiFi), to hear about the latest goings on in the audio world.
After introductions from James Cridland, and an opening from Nick Wallis, a familiar face – to me at least – Clive Dickens, presented the changes that have been made as Virgin Radio changed to Absolute Radio.
This included the Google Trends information as well as details about our ongoing advertising campaign.
Finally, Clive talked about Open Mic, a new initiative to talk to the Absolute audience about what the station is doing right, and what it’s doing wrong.

DAB – Dead and Buried?

James Ashton of the Sunday Times introduced the session reading out a series of stats about the state of play with digital radio in a basically very factual manner including set sales, and recent things that have happened with Channel 4 Radio and the question over what Global will do with Digital One.
Tony Moretta of the DRDB opened things up with a “defence” of DAB radio – one in three households have a device, with 14m people listening a week. And these people listen to more services.
He confronted what he called urban myths noting that it was the “only” way to hear stereo Absolute outside London (not strictly true if you listen via TV or online, but very important, certainly). He said that 88% of people rated audio quality as good to excellent. “DAB doesn’t work in cars” – well it doesn’t if you don’t have an in-car DAB, he pointed out.
He also said that the internet isn’t the future of radio; it’ll be part of the ecology, but DAB will be the mainstay. The iPlayer’s great, but it won’t work in the car, walking around or even in the kitchen.
He concluded that it was very healthy at the moment, and he urged people to focus on things that will appeal to a wide variety of products. Add in colour screens, EPGs, PVR functionality, and WiFi.
Paul Fairburn of Smooth said that GMG weren’t “rabid enthusiasts.” They’d see how it went, although they saw the costs as very high. He said that they were on all the usual platforms – and indeed they may withdraw from the odd one if the costs didn’t add up. But they’d be stupid to drop DAB. 8.5% of his listening comes from DAB. He talked about cars being important, but while screens might be nice, he didn’t want to have to stump up to pay for additional “bits.”
There were a couple of references to some “machinations” within the digital radio industry – and he wouldn’t say what platforms they would come off. The emaill had gone out however…
Mark Friend at the BBC referenced a recent fall in listening off a high in 2004. He said that we can’t just rely on internet or similar. He said that contrary to what some people seem to think, the BBC doesn’t deliberately degrade its signal online [who’s suggesting that?]. There have to be a wide choice of devices and wide choice of listening options.
Multicast and WiMax will be critical in the future, but key is the cost. The killer at the moment, he said, was analogue and digital dual cost. He asked, rhetorically, whether we should pull out of DAB as Finland did, but referred to all the sets in the market. Universality is key to the BBC and DAB is part of that.
He said that a switch off of the national networks on FM was part of a possible future and that the BBC is working with the DRWG to determine whether and when national networks might be moved across.
Ashton asked if the BBC could lead the “Freeview moment” for radio. But Friend said that it had been a unique case, and he wasn’t sure what it actually meant in terms of radio.
He said that the BBC’s share of digital listening was the same as analogue listening. [That’s not quite true – particularly for DAB where it’s more like 65% of the market compared with 57% of analogue listening. I think that commercial radio is strong in the digital realm in spite of this].
Peter Davies of Ofcom also addressed the “Freeview moment” and pointed out that there were only 600,000 ITV Digital/OnDigital devices when Freeview launched. DAB’s much further down the path. He talked about new launches of digital radio internationally – and acknowledged that different tehnologies were being adopted in places like France and Germany. But these differences didn’t matter, because the overall standard that had now been agreed allowed for this.
He said that the DRWG was very important with everyone sitting down at the same table. But DAB has problems structurally, with cost, and the downturn of the commercial radio market. He said that restructuring talks were ongoing and nearing a conclusion, although Channel 4 radio had obviously changed things during the process.
Ashton asked if licencing D2 was a mistake. Davies replied that it had been driven by the market, with everyone except Gcap being keen on it.
Handing back digital licences is tricky, with most analogue stations having taken 12 year rollovers. If a station hands back its digital licence they’d probably lose their analogue licence. He said it would be unfair not to enforce those rules even if lots of people did it at the same time. It’d be unfair on other stations who hadn’t adopted DAB.
He said that there were probably structural issues as to where and how services were placed with national stations being carried on local muxes but that perhaps that left local muxes short of services. The picture is not quite how it might at first appear.
He was asked about the possibility of a hybrid national/local multiplex. He said that it wasn’t wasy as at the moment nationally you can’t offer local advertising opt outs on the national mux because it’s a single frequency network. So quite how the restructure might work is not straightforward.
Darryl Pomicter of Ressen Design talked about internet radio from a prepared statement about the strengths of internet radio.
There was then something of a discussion about various numbers – particularly in relation to downloads.
There was a strongly made point from the audience about how the two real reasons for many still being in DAB is the 12 year rollover and the profits accruing from owning multiplexes.
Peter Davies refused to be drawn further, but said that stations didn’t have to get into DAB when they had. It was however, argued that the picture had been different five years ago.
Nick Piggott asked about what the costs for IP radio delivery would be. Mark Friend said that he’d not looked at it in cost terms. Peter Davies said that DAB was cheaper nationally than FM, but that the problem was dual broadcasting.
Paul Fairburn said that last time he’d looked at the numbers, it was vastly more costly to reach everyone with a stream than using broadcast technology. Pomicter said that it was more a complementary medium.
Tony Moretta said that we shouldn’t hold out hopes on WiMax which will need the infrastructure of mobile phone networks, and few would be investing in that kind of technology.
From the audience, Matt Degan said it was great if you had an FM licence, but hours generate cash, and of all the platforms, hours come digital radio. He said that we should look at some of the Asian services that know their markets very well to make them work.
A commenter said that if you actually look at the more niche services like 6Music, Planet Rock or even Five Live Sports Extra, the numbers at the peak were relatively small and they could use IP as a cost effective alternative.
Mark Friend said that if you didn’t use DAB then even fewer would listen to it.
Bits, Bytes and Boats – Kelly Shepherd
BBC World Service Future Media

Shepherd began her presentation with a number of stats: 183m listeners and a combined 13m users per week for the website of the BBC World Service.
They decided last year that they should put audio at the heart of their redesign. This was done by creating a community to help carry out redesign. It was relaunched in December 2007 and removed many of the feeds that the previous site had been a mish mash of.
Currently they offer podcasts of 35 programmes – predominantly in English. They’ve had a podcast offering since 2005.
[Like Absolute] the BBC WS realises that iTunes is an important place to get podcasts.
An important part of the offering is mobile. All the sites either are, or will be available in mobile form. There is also a JAVA application for updates available in several languages.
And like other parts of the BBC they’re embedding video into their sites. Arabic has already had a huge impact in the first few weeks. Persian is next up.
The language video content is now also available on YouTube in their own channels.
The audience also wants to know about the presenters and the site has individual video introductions to them all.
Shepherd said that the title of her presentation in part refers to a project based around a Bangladesh river journey looking at climate change, but using blogs, inertactive maps, Twitter and so on.
The BBC WS sites also have user generated elements. There are messageboards in a variety of language, and they even offer virtual keyboards to let people use languages in internet cafes.
There is also a “global conversation” in multi-lingual debates. People have been able to submit audio and video using services like Odeo to capture it. These elements have in turn ended up in programmes.
The BBC WS sees it as important to change as the audience changes.
Getting Intimate with the Audience
Fi Glover’s chaired this session with Iain Lee (Absolute Radio), Rory Cellan-Jones (BBC) and Dan Heaf (C4).
Iain began by getting upset (!) when Rory started using Twitter from the stage.
Fi wanted to know what the “hot ticket-est” stuff that Heaf was doing now that he couldn’t have done five years ago. He said that it was using data that’s now available, and what it now meant to be someone’s “friend”.
Rory said that it was all working, but said that he didn’t think he was working. He’s been blogging and putting videos on YouTube. He said that he’s been Twittering like mad. He then get out a piece of paper (!) with things that people had said in response to a question that he’d earlier asked the Twitter audience.
But is it a good use of his time to “broadcast” to his thousand followers instead of talking to many millions on the Today programme.
Iain Lee said that he still thought it was worth talking to his audience online rather than using a broadcast on the radio.
Heaf thought that if you have a large audience, you should make sure that you don’t give a disproportionate amount of your time to a tiny subset of your audience.
The discussion moved on to paid-for options for podcasts, with discussions around Danny Baker’s podcast. Iain Lee mentioned that only Ricky Gervais had made it work although Stephen Fry was moving that way. He said that if he charged for Shindiggery then he’d only get about 10 subscriptions and they’d share it with their friends anyway.
Heaf thought that a Russell Brand podcast might do quite well just now.
Rory says that you have to be cautious with online information. He suggested that you start by disbelieving it, and then see if you can verify it. The BBC also has problems with impartiality. If someone’s on Facebook should they talk about their feelings towards political figures.
Iain Lee spoke about how he’s learnt his lessons about what you can and can’t say on-air, and he can be looser online. He said that you can try stuff that might not work on the radio and if you fall flat on your face, then so be it. It’s not “better”, it’s “different”.
Heaf thought that there aren’t enough people in the UK creating their own content and we should do more to encourage them.
Fi Glover wondered if there wasn’t an element of the emperor’s new clothes about it all. Do a small number of people have disproportionate impact? Cellan-Jones said that you have to be wary of that, and there are special interest groups that can try to bias you.
Asked whether it changes the way you listen, most said no. Most people listening to a phone in can’t be bothered to text or email in. Lee says that he’ll happily shout at an idiot like Jon Gaunt, but he won’t bother phoning in.
Heaf said that, for example Twitter, was more about content discovery than what someone else had for breakfast.
UGC, says Cellan-Jones, is a long way in, with the phone-in programme on the radio being the best and most mature example. Perhaps, he thought, there’ll be less one-size fits all stuff, but he wasn’t sure that there’ll be much more in the way of getting more stuff online.
It can be useful for chasing down case studies. But there is a fightback from some staff asking whether they should be using it all the time. Should someone’s mobile phone photo be used ahead of a professional image of the same thing.
Heaf thought that the rise of on-demand media is going to change the nature of editorial and also the distribution mechanism.
Glover wondered if this was a generational thing. Most of the audience had grown up like this, but with on-demand media, younger listeners might expect things very differently. Heaf thought that while you might want live news in the morning, the daytime could be very different.
Lee thought that radio stations will be primarily radio stations. He said that Tommy Boyd was trying to set up a radio station that was all pre-recorded for self-scheduling. He said that he listens to a lot of radio on-demand, but not necessarily live. But he thought that there’ll still be people who want live programmimng.
Glover wandered if Lee downloaded things he didn’t like. He said that he tried stuff and would give it a chance. He talked about people who phoned up and said that they didn’t like him. He asked why they listened?
In response to a question Cellan-Jones said that there was a certain crisis of confidence when people spent too much time looking at the most read items e.g. man marries goat.
Are Rory’s followers ambassadors to his audience? Definitely. He said he uses at a sounding board and a resource. But it is a promotional mechanism. He’ll advertise forthcoming stories and get instant feedback when they air. But it’s “dangerously seductive.”
Glover wondered about the time constraints on him. He said that it is very time consuming – he spent a lot of the weekend on this.
A respondent wondered about Fi’s own stuff – with Facebook profiles and blogs for Saturday Live. Glover said that they’d responded to a specific need. The blog has been less successful but Facebook has worked really well some of it down to the nature of the programme and to “feel the love when we weren’t on air.”
A question from the audience asked about reaching hard-to-reach audiences using these technologies. Heaf thought that some of these tools offered the single most useful mechanism to allow feedback, but are these organisations listening and engaging.
There was something of a discussion about the Brand/Ross affair, and the difficulty in responding to it, and the level of what would be appropriate.
– Lunch –

Death by a Thousand Cuts: More Choice = More Noise

Nick Wallis chaired this session about personlised music, with representatives of the BBC, Sony (not SonyBMG any longer) We7 and last.fm.
Jonoas Woost of last.fm which, of course, is all about personalisation. He explained how last.fm works and scrobbles your music to determine what you might want to listen to.
Frederico Bolza of Sony has a job discovering how to stay relevant in the new world. He said that his job was to find artists and then to get the music to them. Last.fm, We7 and the radio are all channels for them to get their music out to listeners.
He said that 90% of their revenue comes from the sale of recorded music with most of the remainder coming via PPL from radio. These new areas don’t yet pay very much.
“Choice doesn’t necessarily help you find things.” Discovery is important. Without it, you’re left with infinite choice you have no choice..
Steve Purdham of We7, which launches tomorrow, said that it can be like a needle in a haystack. He said that having found something in particular, people then get lazy and want to go back to the radio model. So you get into the recommendation phase via either friends, automated systems or radio producers. He said that We7 were trying to harness those choices. He said that he had to offer something that was better than the pirate options.
When asked how it was better than last.fm, Purdham said that it was a different model. It was up to the consumer to determine what the preferred model of consuming music would be.
Woost said that there were still lots of different methods of delivering music.
We7 works on an audio advertising basis, whereas Joost relies on display advertising. Both sites sell music too via third parties or otherwise.
Chris Kimber of the BBCpointed out that most people still find out about new music via the linear radio. “John Peel was a filter,” as is Zane Lowe. It’s how to filter this music perhaps using useful web apps. He said that the BBC wanted to be able to tell you more about what you’ve just heard on air. Until now, you’ve had to go hunting around the web, and he saw that as crazy. Similarly, if you discover someone online, what programmes should the consumer listen to in order to hear more?
Kimber’s worried about staying ahead of the curve. He felt that they’ve fallen behind it to some extent – there’s no personalisation currently.
The currency is still the artist said Bolzo; that’s the starting point. The band is the brand. “Don’t wait as long as we did” – he said that Sony was slow. He said that the old model was broken – and the bigger part of the challenge now was the mindset and how it can work. Technology wasn’t the real problem. He said until now, it’s still easier to do the usual radio plugging. Bolzo sees all these technologies as complementary. He’d love the ability to press a button to feed back what the audience thought of a track.
Kimber said that the Now Playing info was easy if you’re limited to 300 tracks played on hard disk. 57% of Radio 3 output is non-standard CDs, so without employing people to type in details live, it can be hard to provide up to date information all the time.
Purdham said that radio has to get onto the conveyer belt sooner rather than later. You should be able to get more information about any track you hear online or on the radio immediately. Technology allows us to do that now he said.
Purdham: “We’ve been doing this for 18 months and we have no idea how we’re going to make money out of it.”
He said that we don’t yet know how large the pie is.
Wallis wanted to know how radio stations were going to get a cut of it. He wondered if Apple hadn’t already walked away with it. Purdham said that in some cases it could be easy, but that didn’t work on the tube.
Woost wasn’t sure what the battle actually was. What pie is commercial radio wanting a slice of he wondered. Where is the Zane Lowe of commercial radio, he wanted to know. He said commercial radio had to take risks.
“I don’t trust a single commercial radio station in this country,” he said.
Bolza pointed out that the last.fm application was one of the most successful applications on the iPhone.
Kimber pointed out that there was no point to the BBC doing a last.fm type thing. “Zane Lowe is going to give you something that the wisdom of the crowds isn’t.”
He thought that there was a big opportunity here for doing something more mainstream. Most music discovery services are still quite “geeky.” The BBC would be targeting that mainstream.
Wallis wanted to know about futurology. What was going to happen to that great live moment when you know that 4m are listening. Kimber thought not – we’d have both. There are still going to be times when you just want to put the radio on. And there’s the boredom aspect that means on demand services don’t offer – serendipity.
In the future listeners will listen to on demand and live services thought Kimber. He also said that programmes will have to be broken up so that someone can get, say, everything about the Killers.
Purdham says that they have to chase the fans’ desires and “feed” people as they want to be. Technology will make this easier. It all comes back to the consumer he thought.
Wallis wondered how music might suffer from all this as a result. Are all bands going to sound the same – losing regional identities. Bolza said that you can’t hold it back. He said that record companies have to work harder and be more attentive. A fan’s attention has to be earned and deserved. Fans will go wherever the hell they want.
Woost saw more of the same in the future as they’re a media company. At the moment, their audience is still quite geeky but is changing. Amazon is mainstream and that’s what they need to be. But the social context of last.fm is important.
There was a question from the audience about the use of the data. Everyone was concerned about privacy issues.
Another questioner wondered about competition from mobile operators such as Nokia’s Comes With Music initiative. Perhaps it’ll compete with us, thought Woost, but he wasn’t too worried seemingly. The audience can already get it free. Kimber thought that 1m tracks on a mobile phone was scary. Bolza said that it was to do with the editorial controls and filters.
Matt Wells at The Guardian wanted to know about the BBC’s personalisation plans. Kimber said that it was about using experts in their fields to provide recommendations. He said that he didn’t see the option to listen to specific tracks on demand being on the BBC’s roadmap. He said that it wasn’t about the BBC offering that track. Purdham pointed out that the links could come out of the BBC elsewhere.
Visualising Radio – John Ousby of the BBC and Robin Pembroke of Global
John Ousby began by presenting something that was remarkably similar to a presentation I saw him give at The Digital Radio Show last week.
But it’s a good presentation with demonstrations of TV, online and radio visualisations. He demonstrated a recent experiement the BBC recently had with Scott Mills being webcast from his flat.
He also ran through various other experiments with different BBC networks including Adam and Joe on 6 Music and Radio 4 as well as user generated animations.
He then did a live demo of Radio 1’s Band in Your Hand. And it worked – well worth trying yourself if you have a Windows PC and a webcam.
Ousby reminded us of the Lobster – a mobile that was available via Virgin Mobile that for a while allowed you to listen to radio (and watch TV – but few did) on a mobile using DAB.
He talked about the opportunities from Slideshow on DAB devices, as well as what’s available on DTT and cable.
Finally he showed us a possible way of pulling in and displaying a variety of information on appropriate platforms.
Then we moved onto Robin Pembrooke’s presentation – he trailed an exciting new iPhone application that we’d have to wait to see.
At a tough time for commercial radio, Pembrooke thought that some of the ideas that visualisation brings could be a “game changer.”
The key information is still what’s playing. He said that the last 10 played tracks on Heart’s website accounted for 40% of traffic. “That might say more about Heart’s website.”
He highlighted some research that shows that audio and the web work well improving clickthroughs. And of course commercial radio is able to monetise those clickthroughs.
But of course commercial radio doesn’t have the resources of the BBC. It can be labour intensive (although he pointed out that Chill’s data was excellent), but the can also be bandwidth intensive. And it can make things more memorable than we might wish (we saw a still from YouTube of Brand/Ross).
And of course, users don’t always want to see everything visualised.
He pointed out that mobile streaming isn’t scalable and that it kills battery life. He hopes that DAB will be paired in a slightly more elegant way than currently.
The Pure Evoke – I didn’t win one in the draw – is mentioned and the congratulated.
“Black and yellow is a step forward.”
But it’s still a clunky interface.
“Audience = £” read a big slide.
Pembroke then move onto his new iPhone App. Previously they’d been the first to offer streaming, and now offered additional functionality with now playing, news etc and commercial opportunities.
It looks quite smart and allows tagging to come back to the information at a later date. This allows them to buy the track via information and allow commercial opportunities to link through to advertisers’ websites.
Overall commercial radio can’t afford the “specials” but there are options for visualisation.
The Chief TwiT Speaks – Leo Laporte
Possibly the most technically challenging thing ever attempted at a Radio Academy event was the session with Leo Laporte session via Skype. Needless to say, all wasn’t smooth immediately, but eventually we got online.
Leo began by letting us know who he is and where he comes from.
TwiT reaches 175,000 – 250,000 downloads a week by unique IP addresses. He mentioned the various other shows he produces. Co-hosts get paid and then there’s advertising co-op money. In total 470k a month in reach in the US and 50 hours a month.
He said that the advertising was all US only. Although the companies are usually global, they’re not able to monetise a third of t he audience as it’s outside the US.
Then he spoke about the video service he’s launched. They’ve got as high as 10,000 simultaneous people watching live. Last night’s TwiT was 5,000.
He said that it’s all relatively cheap with the bandwidth being the most expensive with various dedicated lines for them.
The downloads are the hardest part with 4-5TB of data downloaded a day, but nearly all the revenue would go towards this if they weren’t able to do deals. That could be as much as $40,000 a month otherwise.
So far, Laporte says that advertisers are fairly conservative. At first they charged around $35 cpm but it’s now closer to $70 cpm. This is big premium over radio which is at around $5-10 cpm (cpt).
Although the prices are high, they’re maintaining good usage. They’re now earning between $500 and $15,000 an episode in revenues. They know that a downturn is coming. But they know that they’re reaching the right audience. And with costs so low, they can continue on, and by the time advertisers are back, audiences will have grown and they’ll be in a good place.
He sees NPR as some of the biggest competition at this point. He sees more mainstream media coming into the market. As a result he sees smaller players falling by the wayside.
Asked about how the video is able to make money – Laporte replied that it had grown audiences by about 10%. He said that it also increased the engagement of that audience.
“Our audience take pride [in taking down] any site we mention.”
He says that so far they’ve not charged extra for video. But they’ve tried product placement. He gave the example of an energy drink which they drank on the show. They’ve also tried selling clothing.
He pointed out that he has explain the metrics to a lot of advertisers and education is important.
Asked about whether he’d give up his regular radio gig, he said that he wasn’t going to give it up as it allowed cross-promotion, and in any case was his primary source of income.
When asked whether or not it would work in other subject areas with non-tech areas, he thought they could. It was all about providing content that was otherwise unavialble.
Finally, when asked about the future of radio in the US, it was clear that it probably isn’t HD. He says when asked this by radio executives he gets out his iPhone and demos one of the apps on it from radio operators.
Newspapers are a real challenge; radio less so.
He sees radio over IP as offering a challenge to terrestrial. It won’t necessarily takeover. Radio has to create a community, and that’s more than request lines and phone-ins.
Overall, it’s a competitive challenge and radio could come out better in the end.
Collings and Herrin
I’m not sure it’s worth me blogging this, as it’s obviously going to be a podcast (as is much of the rest of the day). So I’ll leave it there. A very good day. And Ben’s asked me to say that his session was best. Where’s my fiver?


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