“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.

The UK Radio Player is up and running.
It’s a single online source for all radio in the UK. It’s very easy to use and you can search for radio by station, presenter or programme name and more. It will show results for live radio and podcasts/on-demand audio.
There are two things in particular that impress the hell out of me with this project;
1 – It’s ease of use. Simple use is a core quality of radio and we have to maintain this into the future. The various standards/players you …