As mentioned yesterday, Ed Vaizey, the new Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, has today given a speech at a London conference outlining the new government’s support for digital radio, and launching an action plan.
How his speech has been been interpreted depends on where you read about it. At Media Guardian the headline is “Ed Vaizey’s praise for digital radio stops short of switch-off date” whereas the BBC initially referred to the action plan as a “setback” before amending their headline to “Changes to digital radio dependent on listener numbers“.
I think that in the end, both of these headlines ended up accurate reflections of what Vaizey said and what the action plan says.
It’s natural that radio should have been an outlet for this announcement, and Vaizey did the rounds of BBC Radio this morning appearing on Today and Five Live’s Breakfast. The discussion was a little off-beam on today, with Grant Goddard the radio consultant getting a little bogged down in the technical history of DAB. Ben Budworth, who used to run OneWord, is fairly embittered about the whole thing which I think is a shame. OneWord’s failure was probably a combination of coming too soon, and poorly executed programming with 80 part adaptations of Oliver Twist demanding far too much of the audience.
Goddard is right in arguing that DAB growth has to be consumer led. But I think the cost issue is misleading with early Freeview boxes easily costing more than DAB radio sets. He says that the average listener can get 12 services, and therefore perhaps unlike Freeview, where viewers may only have had 5 services previously, the demand for the new services isn’t there. I don’t believe that’s the case. The average listener has five BBC national services and then – depending very much where they live – a selection of local and national commercial services. But that selection won’t include any classic rock, jazz, urban, alternative or any one of a dozen other radio formats. I’d direct anyone who believes listeners already have enough choice to the music TV section of Sky where dozens of channels fight it out with their own distinct mixes of music genres.
On Today, Vaizey tried to make clear that actually what he’s saying does not differ in any degree with what the last Government said. Instead, he’s been putting together a structure that’s required to get digital radio “off the ground”.
The 2015 date isn’t set in stone, but as Vaizey said, it’s useful for there to be a target to move towards. But it’s driven by the listener.
The Action Plan lays out five key objectives: consumer choice, quality, affordability, accessibility and awareness. I think they’re all legitimate areas to be addressed.
I’m particularly interested in seeing new digital only services and information delivered via radio in innovative ways. I’m currently in the market for a radio that will record programmes in advance – ideally via an EPG. This is effectively the technology that has seen DVRs take-off in the TV world. Sky+ led the way, but inexpensive Freeview boxes are readily available, often with additional functionality like DVD burners. It’s disappointing that there are relatively few DAB radios with SD card (or HD) recording functionality, and those that do exist are relatively expensive. Wifi radios still haven’t hit the mainstream either, and you only have to look at the success of things the BBC iPlayer on consumer devices like the PlayStation 3 or Nintendo Wii to realise that the ability to listen again directly from your radio, or to record programmes and listen back at your convenience later – perhaps on your mp3 player – is really valuable functionality.
Coverage is also a critical area that needs addressing, while affordability and especially in-car issues still need to be addressed.
I’m also pleased to see that Ofcom will be publishing an annual review of the digital radio market with its first report being published in Q3 2010. Ofcom has long published a quarterly digital television market update, and if anything, an annual report isn’t frequent enought. I’d like to see some new research to supplement the data that already exists in the marketplace. One shortcoming of the radio industry to date has been to rely too much on slivers of data garnered from other research – be it consumer questionnaires bundled with sets to over-reliance on RAJAR.
For example, nobody is really in a position to say which digital TV platforms perform best. Sky has the largest selection, but Freeview is more likely to be available on second and third TV sets in households.
Looking at replanning some aspects of DAB is also essential, including both local and regional multiplexes. Given some of the changes we’ve seen in ILR licences with the forthcoming Heart super-stations, and the move to Digital One of Smooth, as well as the significant number of FM services for whom DAB is not currently an option, there is potentially a smarter way to do things.
Also speaking at the Intellect conference was Tim Davie, BBC Director of Audio and Music. He outlined the BBC’s measures to support digital radio.This is activity that supports the Digital Radio Action Plan.
The BBC will roll out an additional 61 transmitters to take in-home coverage of DAB from 85% to 92%. This measure will also increase motorway coverage of DAB to about 93% of the motorway network.
London is getting a particular boost with four extra transmitters to match the BBC’s FM coverage, reaching 99% from today’s 89%.
There are other measures including the relaunch of Radio 7 as Radio 4 Extra, using BBC expertise to help the industry including after-market DAB radios, and funding the marketing of all digital radio platforms.
Finally, there’s the forthcoming launch of the Radioplayer – “a single online console that will offer all UK radio in one place.”
I think that these are great moves, although I think that in medium term the BBC needs to do more to drive digital. It will need to include plans to migrate some of their most popular services across to digital to drive take-up.
The conflation of “DAB” and “digital radio” is a major issue here. It’s often confused, but in both announcements today, it’s clear that the term “digital radio” means more than just DAB. I mention this only because some seem perversely keen to believe that digital radio only means DAB and not internet listening. Both Ed Vaizey and the BBC make that clear in today’s announcements.
In summary, there really wasn’t anything that new today, aside from giving digital radio a bit of impetus. It’s now down to station groups and manufacturers to take up the cause and give consumers a reason to want to go digital.
(As an aside, the Daily Express, published by pornographer and sometime Nazi-impersonator Richard Desmond, today followed up yesterday’s Mail with an inaccurate story about radio being switched off. Frankly, the horrificly homophobic cover offends me to a far greater extent, and the paper has such low editorial values, that I’m not going to dwell any further on it.)
Other reading:
Matt Deegan’s writing a series of pieces on digital upgrade. Here’s part 1, and here’s part 2.
James Cridland has some interesting thoughts on a Government-mandated switchover, although I’m not sure I agree with them fully (I’ve commented on his site).
These views are mine, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.