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 …

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 …

SiriusXM has been enjoying success in the USA with their satellite radio service.
It gives listeners over 180 commercial-free radio stations which can be heard coast-to-coast across the States. Channels include oldies, Top 40, Sports, Comedy and the most famous of the all, the Howard Stern channel.
Satellite radio receivers are factory installed in many cars where drivers get a three month trial period, after which, a large amount convert to paying subscribers. There are also home and portable receivers as well as online access.
This new type of radio is now coming …

A brief update on DAB worldwide, compiled by ourselves, was published in the Sunday Business Post yesterday. A scan of the article is here and full text is below;
Real growth is being experienced worldwide by DAB the new digital radio system designed to replace FM.
It’s easy to see the attraction. DAB broadcasts multiple stations simultaneously meaning significant cost savings over the, one station per transmitter, FM system. This extra capacity opens significant expansion opportunities to commercial radio and DAB’s ability to broadcast text and pictures is a bonus for advertisers. …

Massive development for DAB this week with the launch of DAB+ in Germany.
Germany is by far the largest radio market in Europe and one of the biggest in the world. Adopting DAB+ is a huge endorsement of the technology, and if it takes off in Germany, it’s not unreasonable to expect the rest of Europe to follow.
A key factor is the involvement of commercial radio. Until now, the only national German networks have been public service broadcasters. This launch of DAB gives commercial broadcasters a national platform for the first …

“Ford drop CD from In-Car radios” scream the headlines.
As ever things aren’t quite that dramatic! I was speaking with Eddie Murphy, the Head of Ford Ireland, who said any move regarding in-car entertainment is a gradual one. The future for Ford is USB mp3 drives, aux inputs, DAB and even connections to cloud services.
One gradual move becoming evident with all manufacturers is the inclusion of DAB as standard in all new car models. As a presenter of a motors programme, every day I get press releases about new motors, and …

FM in the UK continues its downward fall.
The latest RAJAR market trends released yesterday shows a market share for analogue (AM & FM) has fallen to 65.4% with the remainder of listening done on growing DAB and digital platforms.
The big winners are digital only stations like Jazz and Planet Rock. Absolute Radio have also done phenomenally well with about half their listeners tuning in on DAB, Freeview and online. Not bad for an AM licenced station!
What I also find interesting, is that this churn is actually driving an …

One of the worlds largest radio groups, Clear Channel (USA), has said the industry must “make the digital revolution come to radio”.
The call, made by Clear Channel Chairman Bob Pittman, follows last weeks call by one of Ireland’s most powerful ad agencies for Irish radio to properly embrace digital also.
Mr Pittman is particularly qualified to make the call. Before leading Clear Channel he was a co-founder of MTV and COO of AOL. Speaking at a major advertising conference he said embracing digital brings “real benefits to the radio business and …

Radio needs to embrace digital and start doing some joined up thinking. That was the message to the Independent Broadcasters of Ireland (IBI) conference this week from Peter McPartlin, Strategy Director at Ireland’s largest media buyer Carat Ireland.