Media Panel Split On The Value Of Digital Radio

The value of digital radio, in terms of consumer benefit at least, was questioned by the panel of the inaugural MediaTel Media Question Time on Monday evening. Ginger Media Group’s Adam Bowie asked the panel whether they thought that radio broadcasters should offer free receiver equipment in the same way as BSkyB and ONdigital have done for television.

Responding to this Bob Wootton, director of media and advertising affairs at ISBA, said that his personal view is that “digital radio has no appeal” and that most of the services proposed by the major radio groups (mainly Emap and Capital Radio) are essentially “pointless”.

However, Wootton was much more positive about the digital audio services being proposed by Switch Digital, the consortium of Kelvin MacKenzie’s Talk Radio, Ginger Media Group, Clear Channel and Castle Transmission . Whereas Capital and Emap’s CE Digital is primarily offering the same services that are currently available on analogue radio, Switch Digital has proposed a range of brand new stations for London, available only through digital audio broadcasting (DAB). Without such an incentive to buy into DAB, Wootton asks: “Otherwise, what is the point?”

Christine Walker, managing partner at Walker Media, believes that digital radio is potentially a good thing. She sees ‘exciting opportunities’ for DAB through new delivery methods such as mobile phones.

Ray Snoddy, on the other hand, is far from convinced that digital radio broadcasters’ motives have the consumer at heart, although he does believe that the medium will be successful in the long run. He told the Media Question Time audience:

“In a curious way I think [digital] radio will do well, but slowly and inevitably over time. But let’s not be anything other than cynical about why the big groups are doing it. The people with national licence get an eight year extension to their licence and they don’t have to bid against somebody else, so of course they’re going to do digital and of course they don’t believe in it and of course they don’t want to.”