DAB Broadcasters Face Threat From Ipod Generation
Ofcom’s head of market intelligence, Peter Davies, has revealed a challenge to digital radio from Apple’s Ipod personal music player and the teenage listeners taking it to their hearts.
In a presentation to the Radio Festival in Birmingham, the regulator unveiled research into the opinions of 18 to 20 year-olds towards DAB radio, indicating a number of hurdles facing digital broadcasters in winning over younger listeners.
According to the research, the Ipod is high on the wish lists of young people, offering stylish, portable, high-quality music and threatening to poach digital radio’s young early adopters. Davies revealed that over 500,000 DAB radios had been sold up to March, with forecasts predicting one million sets in UK households by the end of the year.
However, even with one million sets in place, the figure represents a mere 1% of the total number of radios in Britain today. Something which Davies’ research blamed on the opinion of DAB radios by young listeners as “expensive and undesirable”.
The research will be uncomfortable reading for advertisers, with young listeners openly professing to switching channels at the slightest hint of radio advertising. With more choice in stations it is also expected that audience share will take a battering across all broadcasters when DAB becomes the norm.
Davies said: “The pattern of their listening is to flip between channels. There is also a zero tolerance of crappy ads, inane presenters and repetitive play-lists. This generation will do anything to avoid listening to radio advertising.”
However, Ofcom’s research gives a crumb of comfort to panicking broadcasters, with the assertion that young listeners still want radio. The regulator explained: “Radio is still important to this group. Music alone is not enough. They still want voices, it helps to fill the silence and portable radio is really important for cocooning and shutting out the world while they travel.”
Among the features of digital radio requested by the young people surveyed by Ofcom was the ability to record, personalised travel news and ease of tuning. One respondent described her perfect device as an “Ipod with a radio that would be amazing.”
Concluding the presentation Mark Ellis, director of research firm The Knowledge Agency who collaborated with Ofcom on the research, said: “There is time to act, but now is the time to think seriously about what they are saying. There is no time for complacency.”
Asked what he thought the solution was, Ellis said there is a need for more positive marketing of DAB, and for an attractive device to kick start interest in the medium. He said: “There is a communications job to be done. There is nothing as sexy as the Ipod for DAB. But those who have digital radio find it changes their lives and are advocates of the technology.”
Earlier this week, former Five and Sky executive David Elstein set out an optimistic vision for the future of commercial radio in his delivery of the Guardian Media Group lecture at the Radio Academy Radio Festival (see Elstein Sets Out Optimistic Vision For Commercial Radio).
Radio Academy: 020 7255 2010 www.radioacademy.org
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