Some facts for people who say DAB is a failure in the UK;
• 40% of UK homes have a DAB radio.
• Half the population listen to radio via a digital platform at least once a week.
• Almost one-third of all radio listening is done via a digital platform.
• Overall radio listening is increasing.
• DAB is becoming the standard fit radio in new cars.
This has all been achieved in under ten years, without any subsidy, and against strong sentiment that DAB just doesn’t work. Well, it appears the numbers speak for themselves.
Source: RAJAR

The latest radio ratings were released in the UK and Ireland last week. While stations crow over who is No.1 we’re concerned with a basic, yet essential question; how is radio as a platform performing?
In Ireland, the news is not good, with overall listening taking another dive. Currently the Average Weekday Yesterday Listenership figure is at 84%. About ten years ago that was up at 89%. It’s clear the trend is showing less and less Irish people are listening to radio.
The opposite is true in the UK where radio …

At last weeks EBU Digital Radio Conference I saw a most brilliant demonstration of how DAB+ radio really improves our medium.
A radio show was set up and broadcast from the conference. As guests were being interviewed, simple photos of them at the microphone were added to the programmes Slideshow output. As people across Europe listened their radio displayed a picture of that speaker in the studio.
I know this is akin to having a webcam in a studio which people can see on a website but there one important difference …

As a commercial operator it was most interesting to hear what big national public service broadcasters are up to in the digital arena during last weeks conference in Brussels.
The European Broadcasting Union believes the future of radio is digital broadcasting. It will be multi-platform, with the internet complementing services not superseding them, and for all this to work Europe needs EU wide digital radio policies from government. On this everyone, including ourselves, agree.
It came across very strongly that the EBU, not only considers DAB+ as the platform of choice, but …

Having more and more people listening to radio on smart phones is great but it’s not without pain.
Most are listening on 3G with the result that listening to radio eats up their data plan and flattens their battery fast! It’s also costing the broadcaster in infrastructure costs and additional royalty payments.
The beauty of radio broadcasting is that you have flat-rate transmission costs regardless of audience size.
A new development from RadioDNS offers the best of both worlds. The listener’s app will stream as normal but when within range of an …