As someone who’s had DAB in his car for many years now, I know from personal experience that DAB already delivers a robust signal – from London to Merseyside, Yorkshire to Swansea.
It’s great that DAB Digital Radio is now installed in more new cars than ever before. That’s a whole lot of additional choice for drivers who consume 20% of Britain’s radio while on the road. Michael McIntyre apparently bought a new car to listen to Absolute 80s: and although we’re not all as rich/stupid as Michael, there’s a real appetite for DAB in-car from listeners.
Car manufacturers should be congratulated for including DAB as standard in an ever-growing set of models. The latest CAP/SMMT data says that in Q4/2011, 20.1% of new cars came with DAB fitted as standard: up from 7.7% a year ago; and as that figure increases, so should the second-hand market, too. The new PURE Highway is a really good option to retro-fit DAB into second-hand cars, too: a lovely device with decent reception.
But if the user-interface of in-car DAB is anything like the DAB user interface that’s pre-installed in the new VW Golf, I worry. Notable when using it (try the video above): it’s the first car radio I’ve ever seen with scrollbars. A touch-screen interface for drivers is fraught with difficulty when used on the move. The decision to tune-in by multiplex (and even then to put stations in SID order) is disappointing and against the way ‘normal people’ work. And the delays between pressing a button and something happening is frustrating, too.
Surfing the web, downloading apps, and storing contact details was always possible on a Nokia smartphone. But the Apple iPhone was a large success not because of the technology it used, but the user experience.
Sky/DirecTV/FoxTel really cares about the user experience to their TV platform. Apple really cares about the user experience to phones and computers. The BBC spends oodles of money on their website’s user experience, tweaking and improving it. Walk into a PieFace in Australia, or a Pret A Manger in the UK, and it’s clear that retailers really care about the user experience in their stores.
Martin, who filmed the above, tells me that this car radio was set on FM when he got into the car. That’s probably not a surprise.
In the radio industry, we should care more about radio’s user experience too. How can we do better here?
The new RAJAR radio research figures are out – and you’ll read two sets of stories today regarding digital radio.
1. “Digital radio listening is up, and how! Over the last quarter, the total amount of people who use digital radio (DTV, DAB, Internet) each week is now almost half of the entire population – 49.4% – up from 43.9% just a quarter ago.”
2. “Digital radio listening is up: but painfully slowly. Over the last quarter, total radio listening on digital (DTV, DAB, Internet) has increased less than a percentage point – up from 28.2% to 29.1% – a less-than one percentage point increase.”
If the above looks a little confusing to you, welcome to the difference between reach and share. There’s no doubt that digital radio continues to increase its reach – the amount of people who tune in for at least five minutes in a week – but it’s not massively increasing its share of listening – the length of time people tune into radio on a digital platform in comparison to all radio. So why is this?
Around 20% of all radio listening is done in the car: and, chances are you can’t listen to digital there. Radio via DTV in a car is clearly a fanciful notion; radio over 3G is a costly and unpleasantly inconsistent experience; and most cars bought in the UK still don’t have DAB as standard. (It’s becoming more common for new cars – 17% had it in 2011 versus 4% in 2010 according to some unsourced stats I have; but most cars bought in the UK aren’t new). Until we have in-car DAB sets as standard in used cars as well as new cars, there’s no way to get that 20% as digital listening.
The average home, too, has – depending which research you read – around 6 radio sets. The majority of radio listening actually occurs on less: probably 2 – but it’s probably not the case that all have been switched to digital. I might have bought a new DAB set for the kitchen, but if my bedside radio remains analogue, then much of my radio listening is still analogue.
Looking closer at the different digital platforms is instructive. Listening via the internet a comparatively disappointing 10% year-on-year, and still remains the least popular way of listening to radio on new platforms. Listening via DTV – in a year where many people have been forced off analogue television to digital networks that all include radio – has only increased 5%; yet radio over the telly continues to be much more popular than internet radio.
But the interesting part is that listening via DAB has increased by 21% year-on-year. It remains the major contributor to the growth of digital radio. It’s also different from the rest, in that it requires people to go out and buy new equipment, rather than “get radio free” in a new laptop or telly. At a time of recession, monetary crisis in Europe and doom-mongering from economists, it’s surprising and heartening that DAB’s listening has increased in the way that it has: and, once more, outstripped the other new platforms.
And the best bit? These are Q4 2011 figures: they don’t go past Christmas; so don’t include the full effect of the advertising campaigns for digital radio on commercial radio and the BBC; don’t include the rejuvenated Digital Radio brand identity; and don’t include the knock-on increases in digital radio listening from digital radio sets given as Christmas presents.
So, even pre-Christmas, the amount of people listening to digital radio is dramatically up: by 10% year-on-year. And in spite of a recession and a consumer electronics downturn, people are buying DAB Digital Radio sets, and using them to listen to radio longer.
If that’s not a good news story for digital radio, what is?
A version of this article appears in MediaTel’s Newsline – now open to all users. Disclaimer: Relevant clients last quarter included RAJAR, the UK Radioplayer, the BBC, WorldDMB and RadioCentre.
Unlike John, I’ve never run a radio station. Unlike Richard, I’ve never worked in a radio newsroom – except for my first week of work experience. So I don’t know too much about radio news. Except I do listen to the radio. A lot.
And I think it’s interesting to look at the North American experience here.
On one side, most music channels carry no news bulletins, and nobody appears to care.
On another side, the most listened-to radio stations in many markets are rolling news like 1010WINS (in New York) or 980 News (in Toronto). In the US, while the seemingly unbiased NPR makes soporific news programmes at best, opinionated and politically partisan presenters like Rush Limbaugh are big names with big audiences. Programmes like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report turn news into entertainment. Even programmes like Dave Letterman lead with the news. Is it because they can be opinionated about the news in a way that’s illegal here? Does this make for better listening? Would Nick Ferrari be a more interesting listen were he able to be less balanced and more right-wing? (Is that even possible?)
Local news on the TV is a big ratings win. Having wandered around the CBS affiliate WUSA’s TV studios in Washington DC recently, it’s clear that they see news as being their ratings winner. Almost all the advertising you see for local TV is for their local newsteam. Local tv news starts at 5.00am, or even earlier, in the US, to catch the early viewers.
But if you want to regulate news, then why not try the Thai experience: one which insists that you broadcast state-run Radio Thailand programming between 7.00am and 8.00am, at the top of every hour, and a half-hour news programme. What’s wrong with that? Apart from, you know, everything.
It concerns me greatly that the only news I consume in any great quantity is from the BBC: whether on BBC television, on BBC radio, or online. Sky News creates almost every other output of news (through its collaboration with IRN and Channel 5 for now), and news plurality appears to have been ignored by regulators and operators alike. It can’t be good to be increasingly led by news agendas from just two organisations. And why? Because commercial operators can’t produce news in the same opinionated, partisan, and – yes – entertaining way that makes newstalk radio a market leader in the US, Canada and Australia.
If we are to have more sources of news in the future – and not simply treat Heart listeners to 90 seconds of showbiz at the top of the hour – then do we need more regulation, or less of it?
In a world of iPods and Pandora-like services, the news is one of the things that differentiates Radio 2 from my (infinitely better) last.fm channel. The benefits of news ought to be clear to a canny commercial radio operator, and to one that wishes to protect the future of the medium.
I spent some of last week in Leipzig: a very snowy change from sunny Australia.
I was taking part in a “Think Tank” about the radio feature in the digital age. Radio features are mostly confined to public service radio, and hence there were lots of suit jackets and worthy thinking in this conference, in the pleasant surroundings of the Leipziger-Medienstiftung.
Excepting some of the disappointingly sniffy comments about new entrants to this scene (delegates being impolite about the new Danish public radio station and breathtakingly rude about The Guardian’s excellent podcasts), the event was a small and interesting one. Very different to the type of event I normally go to.
The real highlight was the folks from Ireland’s public service broadcaster RTÉ – who do an incredibly job punching above their weight in terms of radio documentaries online.
Liam O’Brien and his colleague David Timpson did an excellent sharing job telling us how the RTÉ documentaries website operates. Full sharing of as much statistics as they could possibly share – which was excellent to see, and exactly what public service broadcasters, paid-for by the public, should be doing.
We learnt that their section of the RTÉ website (1.03m page impressions in 2011) performs much better than their Morning Ireland show’s website – (930,000 page impressions in 2011); to put that into context, Morning Ireland is the most popular radio station show in Ireland – and to put the comparatively low figures into context, Ireland is only 20m 6m people and internet connectivity is comparatively low.
We learnt about mobile usage, too: 23% of all activity on their website is from a mobile device. In terms of downloads, 81% are iOS downloads; 19% Android downloads. (iTunes is not, surprisingly, a big draw for them).
On-line compares excellently with on-air. Their documentary programme accounts for 1.1% of all RTÉ Radio 1 listening hours. Online, documentaries account for 14% of all their podcast downloads. On-air the programme’s on over the weekend. But RTÉ publishes their new documentaries on Fridays. That makes it one of their two peaks. The other peak is on Monday. (Not sure why, but my guess is it’s a mix of “I heard the trails over the weekend” and “I want to use the office internet”.) They’re good at pointing out that their inconsistent FM scheduling (they appear to move quite regularly) is mitigated by online).
Their podcast feed is interesting: because it contains one new documentary a day, and therefore most of the documentaries are from the archives. As a result, 75% of their downloads are not the last month’s downloads – but from the archives. Each programme has great accompanying metadata, too – something that’s missing from many broadcaster podcast feeds.
And a salutary tale for all of us who design websites – the most popular function on their website is the internal search; then next is A-Z. This was a surprise to many programme-makers; I thought it’s interesting that the traffic appears to split between people who know what they want to listen to (search) and people who just want to browse (A-Z).
What’s very clear is that RTÉ’s small team is making the most of a large archive and of a real understanding that appointment-to-listen radio, rather than background-noise, is excellent content on whatever platform: and it could be that the internet breathes new life into this medium. Using the excellent PocketCasts Android app, I’ve downloaded a few to listen to when I’ve time. I suggest you do the same.
I was in Australia recently, and I found it quite interesting that two people I met spoke about their DAB radio to me.
They’ve very different reasons why they like their DAB radio (unprompted, too) – I’ve written them up in the Real people and their DAB radio topic on Media UK’s new discussion area. It would be interesting to get your comments there.
A short set of questions arrived last week through email, as a result of my running Media UK, a media information website. Just in case it’s useful to anyone else, here were the answers I gave…
We are a group of year 11s from [a] Community College and we are completing a piece of coursework in which we have chosen to research the media. I am writing to enquire about your company and your opinion on controlling the media.
1. How do you feel about working with the media?
I’ve worked within the media for all my adult life, so I’m pretty comfortable with it.
“The media” is a big thing, including all kinds of things like radio and TV, respectable magazines like The Economist, tedious showbiz magazines like Heat or OK, and campaigning titles like Private Eye or, occasionally, The Guardian. Some of what the media does is pretty worthless; some of what it does is vital to a healthy democracy and its people.
2. Do you think the media is biased?
Broadcast media isn’t allowed follow a political line by law; but print media can be unashamedly biased.
I am not too concerned about media bias. I am concerned about media plurality: there are many people who mostly listen to Radio 4, watch BBC television and use the BBC News website instead of buying a newspaper: these people therefore get almost all their news from just one dominant source – the BBC. I don’t believe the BBC is biased, but it does have its own priority on what news it covers. I hope that people understand that it’s important to get news from multiple sources: that way, bias naturally disappears.
(Incidentally, if you watch Channel 5 and Sky, and listen to commercial radio, you’re similarly getting all your news from one source – that of Sky News.)
3. Do you think it’s right for the media to invade peoples personal privacy?
In certain circumstances, yes: where it’s in direct conflict with a job they’re doing, for example. If a politician is keen to promote state schools but secretly sends his own daughter to a private school, that’s a good example of hypocrisy in his private life that needs to be highlighted.
4. What did you think of the phone hacking scandal?
In most cases, it’s not the right way to get a story, and I was dismayed to read the apparent details.
However, if a story is in the public interest, journalists should get the evidence they need before publishing. Sometimes this may be via underhand methods. Some of the best and most important stories have been broken in this way.
5. Because of the phone hacking scandal do you think the newspapers will have tighter controls in the future?
Phone hacking is illegal. People who do it are breaking the law. There are already adequate controls in law against what happened. What went wrong in this case is that the police and the newspapers were apparently working together.
I hope that the press stays free; but that its behaviour is curbed by the public who should refuse to purchase newspapers who behave badly. The public has shown, repeatedly, that it continues to buy papers like the News of the World, even though it has the capacity to destroy peoples’ lives. In some sense, the NoW was simply doing its commercial duty to give the public what it wanted; and, in some ways, the public is not, entirely, blameless.
6. Do you think freedom of the press is more important than the right to privacy?
I don’t believe that anyone who has fought hard to elect themselves on their beliefs should be hidden from scrutiny; so, yes, the freedom of the press should be retained. However, I also don’t believe that it’s anyone’s business whether a showbiz star takes illegal substances or has a healthy attitude to his or her private relationships. So it’s probably more complicated than that.
I hope that helps. Let me know if we can make Media UK more helpful to your coursework, too.
When I started in radio, the only way to record audio was a large bulky reel-to-reel tape recorder, which I lugged from the studios to interviews in factories, pubs and hotels. The only way to edit audio was to deftly use a razor-blade, a chinagraph pencil and some splicing tape in large, purpose-built studios. The only way for listeners to hear to that audio was through a carefully-edited AM or FM broadcast; and the only way to listen was live. And for a listener who wished to take part, they could do so by writing a postcard, or calling from their home telephone.
In 2012, I can record audio, edit it and make it available directly from my mobile phone. On their computer or phone, listeners can listen whenever they like, wherever they are; and share audio every bit as technically good as our own.
Radio – and the media – has changed. Are we changing with it?
