Analogue radio switchoff by 2015? Possibly…
Raymond Snoddy wonders if grabbing the commercial radio industry by the balls and giving a hard twist will pay-off in the quest to go digital.
The experienced advertising person with a special interest in radio called with a private request for help. An internal report was being compiled on the switch-off of analogue radio in 2015 and the evidence for it happening appeared to be thin on the ground.
That’s because there really isn’t very much was the instant top of the head reply. Lord Carter’s 2015 aspiration was hedged around with caveats, there were maybe more than 180 million analogue sets out there and anyway the 2015 date hadn’t even been included in the Digital Economy Bill.
Put up against a wall and asked for a simple “yes” or “no” answer there would have to be “no” – analogue radio will not be switched off in 2015.
There are however considerable stirrings in the undergrowth, growing signs that digital radio is heading in the right direction although the tipping point remains, as it always has, tantalising just over the horizon.
The sale of the 10 millionth digital set in November was obviously a milestone of sorts before the Christmas selling season gets under way. You can probably add another 500,000 to the total by January.
Commendable, but FM sets are still reported to be outselling digital by a ratio of around three-to-one and listening on digital still only accounts for about 14% of the total.
The fact that no-one is going to sign up for firm switch-off dates until 50% of listening has made the transfer indicates the scale of the challenge.
The recent appointment of Ford Ennals as chief executive of Digital Radio UK is a positive sign. His work on switching off the analogue television signal has clearly been effective.
The completion of the move to digital television between now and 2012 has gone more quickly and smoothly than most people would have imagined at the time. Can Ennals now repeat the trick?
Radio for all its merits does not occupy such a central role in consumers’ live as television, outside breakfast and drive time. Radio will be a sterner challenge for Ennals.
The continuing fall in the price of sets to the £20 area and on downwards to £12-£15 will clearly help as will signs that after all these years digital may be about to crack the popular car market.
Ford, the industry suggests, is due to install digital radios as standard next year with Vauxhall expected to follow in 2011.
There is the slight problem of the odd £100 million that will be needed to create a suitably extensive digital transmitter network. There is an answer to that too. The existing FM network will soon need to be upgraded at a similar cost. It would, after all, be unthinkable to spend anything like £100 million on installing new analogue transmitters when that is not the way the world is going at all.
If the commercial radio industry wants to add new services and start dreaming of where it once used to be – 50% of total listening in the UK – then is can only come from digital. FM frequencies are full.
The launch of new services may seen like a laughable concept at the moment but it will not always be so. The radio industry has ridden out the advertising recession a little better than the rest of the traditional media and in the past couple of months there have been modest signs of a revenue revival.
But there is one much more powerful argument why the prospects for analogue switch-off should not be ignored totally and that is because both the Government and the regulator want it to happen.
They have gone beyond the usual carrot and stick approach and gone straight for the balls – and pulled hard.
The choice for radio companies is straightforward. Make maximum efforts in the direction of analogue switch-off and you can roll your licences over for another seven years without a contest. That equals a serious financial incentive.
Join the slow bicycle race and the licence can be truncated with only two years warning. That is why almost all the UK’s commercial radio group are prepared to salute the totem pole – at least in public.
The exception is talkSport’s Scott Taunton, who emphasises the fact that sales of DAB sets appear to have gone into reverse with 2.2 million being sold in 2008 but only 1.3 million being sold so far this year, although Christmas sales could yet take the 2009 total close to that of last year.
Taunton appears to have adopted the curmudgeonly mantel of former talkSport owner Kelvin MacKenzie who was often at odds with his peers in the industry.
UTV, the owner of talkSport, is no longer a member of the RadioCentre, the commercial radio trade body.
Taunton may simply be taking a pragmatic view of the prospects for DAB. Cynics hint darkly, however, at other more political motives, such as hoping the digital policy sinks and some nice juicy licences come up for grabs.
Where does the balance of probability reside? The switch-off of analogue will happen more quickly than it otherwise would if an almost united industry pushes towards a notional target of 2015.
Then they will have a realistic chance of making it by 2018.