Channel 4 and DAB Digital Radio

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Posted on Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 at 3:02pm. #

To a press conference this morning for the full launch of Channel 4’s bid for the second national DAB Digital Radio multiplex (the first one’s held by Digital One; the BBC also have one).

How exciting.

Natalie Schwartz argued (successfully) that it’s time to energise radio - talking about injecting ‘new energy and excitement’. She promised newer receivers as well as programming: genuinely engaging next-generation digital radio sets.

The consortium she’s set up (including my employer) are, she says, “united by a strong confident vision for radio”.

The new multiplex will not just offer ten new radio services, but also engage nine providers of podcasts to add further content to the service - as well as focusing on interactivity, EPG, colour screens, music downloads, mobile TV, and travel info.

Podcast providers are people like the NME, Penguin, Gaydar, FT, Princes Trust, Media Trust, ClubAsia, Colourful, and IMG.

Cleverly, they have a whole set of other strategic partners: Universal (music), The Cloud (wifi), iRiver (manufacturer, though they’re working with others), BBC (for joint DAB marketing), iTis (for travel news) and BT Movio.

Their radio stations will be…
- E4Radio: music, comedy, entertainment
- 4Radio: speech radio aimed at 30-54 audience. Including news from Channel 4 news
- Pure4: my notes causticly say “kind of 6music with ads, art and entertainment”.
- TalkRadio: from UTV. How marvellous, seeing this again
- Closer: from Emap. For women in their 30s, with talk and features.
- Sky News Radio: from Chrysalis. Brilliant, clever idea. Rolling news service.
- Sunrise Radio
- Virgin Radio Viva: “the perfect girls’ night out” (from my employer)
- Original: a national version of Original stations, I guess.
- Radio Disney: interesting national kids station, marking the withdrawl of Capital’s partnership, I wonder?

They also claim they’ll launch with better transmission coverage than all other national muxes.

Speaking personally, as I do in this blog, I’m really quite excited. A lot of speech, and a lot of technical innovation. Most impressed. Do you feel the same way?

Press release in full (PDF)

—LATER—

As balance, here’s the NGW bid (containing two radio stations run by Channel 4 that apparently came as rather a surprise to them).

The two (to this observer) neat ideas in this bid:

- BBC Asian Network appears on it (thus freeing up 128k on the BBC multiplex). From a lovers-of-bitrate point of view, this is an interesting development. (I’ve often argued for BBC World Service to be carried on Digital One for this very reason, incidentally).

- RTL Radio Luxembourg (currently broadcasting in DRM) gets national coverage for the first time.

Interesting that the BBC is involved with both bids; and that the NGW bid appears, at first glance, to be devoid of programme partners (who runs half those stations isn’t clear); and also lacking in any new technology ideas (no podcasts, no visuals). Disregarding my employers’ involvement and just viewing this as a listener, the C4 bid looks far more attractive. Or is it just me? Your comments welcome.

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11 comments

Steve Robertson said at March 28th, 2007 at 5:30pm

I think it’s great that Channel 4 are looking for all this content. This could rival the BBC for content. With the live services, such as the Core, being changed on Digital 1 this should fill the gaps that were left by the likes of ITN.

E4Radio, 4Radio and Pure4 seem to have names that are a little too similar for Joe Public - or is it just me that thinks that? Looks good to me, though. Bring it on, Channel 4.

Frankie Roberto said at March 28th, 2007 at 5:54pm

Wonder what the ads will be like, hehe.

Frankie Roberto said at March 29th, 2007 at 8:27am

NGW bid includes ‘Radio Play’, with competitions and games. Hmm, sounds like a dodgy premium-rate phoneline channel to me, can’t see that going down well…

Michael Cook said at March 29th, 2007 at 9:05am

Doesn’t Asian Network only run at about 80kbps on the BBC multiplex?? So, they wouldn’t liberate much capacity in order to placate the audio quality brigade, whilst no doubt pissing off some Asian Network listeners who will lose their station. (There are bound to be patches where the BBC multiplex covers better than the putative NGW one, surely??)

Nom ther C4 does sound better, mostly because it consists of brands which we can reklate to , rather than demographics, which we can’t. I would rather listen to Sky News Radio than “Rolling” and Original rather than “younger BBC radio 2 competitor”. Wouldn’t everybody?

Adam Bowie said at March 29th, 2007 at 9:18am

Of course, as Ofcom has reiterated this morning, it’s not actually a requirement that bidders for the multiplex name their service providers up front.

“There is no requirement upon applicants for a national radio multiplex licence to identify providers of proposed services within their applications. All radio multiplex licensees are bound by the formats, which set out the type of programming services will provide, which they propose in their applications.”

I’m pretty sure that this has been the case for all other multiplexes offered previously.

Whether or not you have named services from specified providers in place for your bid will make it more likely to win, I don’t know.

Aaron said at March 29th, 2007 at 10:24am

of course, moving any bbc service to a different multiplex would mean that it wouldn’t be broadcast in NI, as neither the current or future national multiplexes will broadcast there.

it might not really matter with the asian network - not a huge audience for the service there - but it’s more of a problem with the world service

Aaron said at March 29th, 2007 at 10:26am

actually, after checking ofcom’s website - http://www.ofcom.org.uk/media/news/2007/03/nr_20070329a - it seems that the second national multiplex will cover NI. which you would think makes it a better proposition than the first national multiplex…

Alan said at March 31st, 2007 at 11:22pm

Bit late to this discussion, but my DAB radio tells me Asian Network runs at 64kbs. And surely the Beeb would use that to improve data services rather than just to increase quality on a couple of channels?

Cosmic_chas said at July 2nd, 2007 at 9:24pm

Seems to me that OFCOM get the best of both worlds with the NGW bid.

A ‘freeview’ model and drive froma a company experienced in such enterprise, and Chanel 4 radio as well!

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Channel 4 and DAB Digital Radio

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