The radio audience ratings service RAJAR has published the first full quarter of figures since the launch of a DAB trade-in scheme called ‘Radio Amnesty’, fronted by ubiquitous luvvie Stephen Fry. The aim was to induce households to exchange their FM radios for a DAB radio. The result? DAB’s share of digital listening has fallen for the first time.
DAB
Stephen Fry’s truly terrible mistake
It’s little wonder that Stephen Fry holds such a place in the nation’s affections. He’s earned it through a string of unforgettable performances. There’s his voiceover for Direct Line’s pet insurance, his voiceover for the 2008 Argos catalogue, not to mention voiceovers for Anchor Butter, Tesco, Dairylea, Kenco, Coca Cola, Trebor Mints and UK Online to name but a few examples. Who could forget his legendary partnership with Hugh Laurie for Alliance and Leicester?
Then there’s the quiz shows. When it comes to reading out infonuggets from pieces of card prepared for him by TV researchers, Fry is the master. And more recently, his pioneering new media work on Twitter has put him at the forefront of an elite group of British comedy talents (including Graham Linehan and Peter Serafinowicz) who have found fame by telling us when they’re stuck in a lift, or about to have lunch. Once upon a time, comedy writers and performers had to be funny, as a minimum requirement. Now, the Twittering comics have now smashed that glass ceiling.
But Fry risks throwing away this incomparable legacy, built up over a lifetime, because of a weakness. And it’s a weakness every bit as reckless as Oscar’s love for Bosie.
BBC pulling back from the DAByss?
Simply because Tim Davie, the BBC’s new radio chief, has a background in advertising and marketing, that isn’t a reason to assume everything he says is a lie. It’s more charitable to say he’s well practiced in the dark acts of spinning, having learnt the trade at Pepsi and Proctor and Gamble. And so you … Read more
OFCOM mulls legislation to save DAB
Parliament may need to step in with new legislation, to save the digital radio fail whale OFCOM admitted today.
OFCOM’s Peter Davies made the comments in front of a critical audience at the Radio Academy’s Radio At The Edge conference today. Davies was put on the spot by moderator James Ashton. After years of trying to put a brave face on DAB, the OFCOM man all but admitted the British radio industry now needed drastic action.
“Yes, it will require legislation,” he said, in order to restructure the industry, and lower costs, so that commercial operators could survive.
Davies acknowledged he’d have no choice if the commercial operators all decided to revolt en masse.
OFCOM effectively forces national operators onto DAB by making it a mandatory condition of a new 12 year analog license. But DAB is nothing but a millstone – costing about 10 times as much as analog to broadcast, and with very few listeners. If all the commercial operators handed in their DAB licenses back to OFCOM at once, what would the regulator do? Davies said that may be the cue for action. But he did warn that legislation took a year to pass through Parliament, so even if the broadcasters revolted tomorrow, it would be 2010 before
Asked if Britain hadn’t leapt into digital radio too early – the rest of the world is introducing more advanced and efficient standards – Davies said it didn’t really matter, as radios using a common profile would be technology-neutral. Which is too bad for those of us with plain old DAB.
So how low is DAB listenership?
One radio exec, Daniel Nathan of Brighton-based Juice, even went as far as suggesting that listenership was so low on the new digital stations, it might as well not go out over broadcast radio at all. Nathan pointed out that most get around 10,000 to 15,000 per half hour, and big hitters like BBC Radio 6 barely topped 50,000, with peaks of 61,000 on Saturday mornings.
“We might as well move them to IP,” he pointed out.
“Five years ago DAB looked like the future – but the world has moved on,” he said.
That was one one of the nicer things said about digital radio yesterday at yesterday’s Academy event.
DAB: A very British failure
Emergency talks to save digital radio are taking place in Manchester today, the FT reports. Unloved, unviable, and often unlistenable, DAB is a technology the public clearly doesn’t want; so it comes as no surprise to learn that coercion will be used to persuading the public to get on board. With DAB, we’re expected to … Read more