HD Radio’s UK parallels
Posted on Friday, July 13th, 2007 at 9:27pm. #
An HD Radio.
CC licenced by Charlie @ Flickr
The globally-challenged Mark Ramsey has just posted another predictable attack on HD Radio, the US’s near-equivalent of DAB Digital Radio. It must be a Friday.
But in it is an interesting quote:
Oliver Media principal Denise Oliver says she’s yet to hear a consumer say they need to buy a HD Radio to listen to a specific station.
Now, clearly Mark is of the opinion that if a country doesn’t sell Twinkies it’s not worth writing about, so he’s not bothered to look at radio markets outside of the good old USA. But it’s interesting that there are considerable parallels between this statement from Denise Oliver, and what’s going on in the UK right now.
At its launch (which coincided with the launch of the sub-£100 DAB set) many people bought DAB Digital Radio receivers in the UK to get BBC 7, the BBC’s speech archive station. Similarly, research I saw from the DRDB many years ago showed that other BBC digital-only channels have also resulted in receiver sales. They’ve been promoted highly on BBC television and radio - nary a day goes past without hearing BBC Radio Five Live promoting their sister station Five Live Sports Extra.
But it’s interesting to look at the difference with commercial radio.
The Arrow is quite a decent digital rock radio station, run by Chrysalis Radio. I listen a fair bit to LBC 97.3, a quite decent speech station run by Chrysalis Radio. So, I’d expect to hear decent cross-promotion on the two, right? Er - no. I’ve never heard The Arrow mentioned on LBC.
Perhaps it’s an LBC thing? So, let’s nip over to Capital. They’ve two Capital spinoffs: Capital Disn– one Capital spinoff, Capital Life, which is on the national multiplex, so you’d have thought that it was ripe for cross promotion. But, and albeit I don’t listen to much Capital, I’ve never heard any.
So, lets scoot over to my old stomping ground, Virgin Radio. They run three other stations - Virgin Radio Xtreme (new rock); Virgin Radio Groove (disco/soul/Motown); Virgin Radio Classic Rock (class-oh, you guessed). Now I have heard Virgin Radio Classic Rock mentioned on Virgin Radio - when Tommy Vance passed away. And otherwise… not.
Without a few good exceptions, commercial radio doesn’t cross-promote. It doesn’t point from FM to AM; and certainly doesn’t point from FM to DAB.
There is a good reason for all of this, of course. Probably a few. Ad agencies are still interested in bulk, not niche - so one station with one million listeners is far more interesting to them than five stations with two hundred thousand each. Programme directors, and presenters, are incentivised on their own station’s results, not on the group. Flagship stations are seen as more important to shareholders than group results (witness the devastating effect of Capital’s woes on GCap). A listener to a flagship station is more valuable in terms of money than one on a niche station. Even the press focus on stations, not groups.
Now, from memory the DRDB’s research did show that people have bought DAB receivers for Planet Rock, too. But by and large, I would suggest that the quote Mark uses could well be used here, too, suitably amended. “Beer-loving radio bloke says he’s yet to hear a consumer say they need to buy a DAB Radio to listen to a specific commercial radio station.” - that type of thing.
Changing commercial radio’s unwillingness to cross-promote would be great news for DAB. However, it needs fundemental business change: both within and outside the industry. And I’m guessing exactly the same issues are responsible for HD Radio’s slow takeup in the US, a place where commercial radio, including NPR, is all there is.
Thomas said at July 14th, 2007 at 3:13am 
steve martin said at July 14th, 2007 at 12:47pm 
RF Engineer said at July 14th, 2007 at 6:39pm 
