Digital Britain
OFCOM, the UK broadcasting regulator, have made several interesting proposals in their response to the UK governments Digital Britain report. Some are very good and some are very very bad.
On the good side, OFCOM have backed DAB as the main digital platform for the future. They agree with the long term view being taken in the UK that national and regional stations eventually migrate to DAB-only.
Their intention is to allow regional stations to merge and provide a quasi-national service on DAB. With many of these services being niche formats it gives them a big enough market to survive while bringing more choice to listeners. All round this is sound logical thinking.
On the bad side, OFCOM has sounded the death-knell of local radio. Their view is that local services need a much larger potential audience to make a station viable. Instead of the current population base of 300,000 needed to sustain a local service, OFCOM feel a larger population of 1m is now required. Accordingly they will allow smaller local stations to merge and share programming.
This is very very bad news. The number one strength of radio, the magic, is its ability to connect with it’s audience. That connection is strongest and most relevant at local level. By increasing a service area to 1m a lot of that localness will be gone and the connection people make with their local station lost with it.
Ireland has an incredibly strong local radio network. Many stations serve a population base of just 100,000. Key to the connection with their audience is the requirement for 20% of a stations output to be news and current affairs related. This has led to a lot of local content and huge listening figures from the local communities. Perhaps OFCOM should look at the Irish market and re-think their strategy.
Our company view is that the future for Ireland is a mix of FM and DAB services. FM for our current strong local radio market augmented by as many as 20 niche national services on DAB.
The ultimate winner is the listener, particularly those outside the major cities, who will enjoy a content led relevant local service with more music focused national stations to choose from.
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