[updated with final notes]

A good conference today at the bottom of CentrePoint - the CBI Conference Centre. Here are my notes of the day. They might be a bit random, and may contain views that are not those of my employer.

Jenny Abramsky from the BBC talked about DAB, ensuring that people are clear of the pro-DAB position of the BBC. Then really stressed that the only thing people really want on radio… is content. Ignore the techie stuff. Get the content right. Hurray for her. And finally had a good long dig at “her good friend” Peter Bazalgette for suggesting that Radio 1 and Radio 2 should be privatised.

Fru Hazlitt: GCap are larger than last.fm (in terms of uniques) and shortly to overtake Yahoo. 2.1 million users online compared to 15 million listeners onair. And monetised far higher in terms of CPT. Audience online growing 71% year on year, and money doing that too. She believes that internet isn’t necessarily the right thing for listening to radio, but it’s certainly a way to extend the brand. Talks about her recent acquisition of welovelocal.com as a way of getting much closer to the audience; and that radio should have tons of local content. “If you’re a kid, what are you going to want? iPod touch? Or a DAB receiver?” Good point. Also claims that GCap are iTunes’s second biggest affiliate partner in Europe. And she said bollocks. Twice. Yay.

Philippe Generali (CEO, RCS Worldwide) does an overview of radio revenue. US revenue: everything down except non-spot revenue, and all is down. UK too, and France (-5.8%). So, what to do?
Starts talking about websites. Apparently content should be relevant. And fresh. And apparently you can slap ads on it. Fuck me. I’d never have thought of that. Websites, eh?
Talks about Skyrock, the third most-visited website in France (because it has created its own, French-language, social networking site, in a world where French-language is ignored by people like Facebook and Bebo). Says we should all have a social network as a result. My jury’s out.
Starts doing a sales pitch for Nokia Visual Radio (which it is now the software provider for). Does so with really, really, faked screenshots. Been there, done that, got the postcard: I wonder if it’s really popular for anyone? (Virgin Radio switched it off the minute I left, quite rightly).
Starts doing a sales pitch for iSelector, which I’ve never quite understood as a concept, given that it is a competitor for your on-air station without the bits that makes the station unique, but what do I know. Gives Nick Piggott a mention for MiXFM and My Classic FM who use this in the UK.
Does a big sales pitch for Media Monitors, an RCS company. Quite nice - it uses Arbitron PPM data to show people tuning in and out of a station, minute by minute. Plays dreadful clip of a public radio station which singlehandedly loses the station over 70% of all their audience. I’ve blogged about the use of PPMs before, but good to see it on the screen. Philippe earns a small reprieve in my otherwise most scornful scorn for showing us this.
Shows a graph showing that Abba’s Dancing Queen is the most hated song on the radio. Much amusement, given that Fru had just announced that her favourite song was, indeed, Abba’s Dancing Queen. I suspect RCS has just lost a contract!

Coffee

After the coffee break, the room is significantly less full. It’s quite cold here in the presentation hall. And the free wifi that was here last time when I was here (at a ‘widgets’ conference), there was copious free wifi, so clearly they’ve switched it off deliberately for us. Nice. Well done, CBI Conference Centre. (Later I discover it needs a key, and it’s so weak it doesn’t work in the auditorium).

Peter Davies from Ofcom did a presentation which didn’t say too much that was new. Talked about Smooth FM in London not being allowed to get rid of their jazz programming. Squirmed delightfully when Paul Robinson pointed out that they’ve shunted their jazz to overnights, so what does it matter?

Rights and radio in the digital age, the first panel session, has Andrew Harrison from the RadioCentre, Martin Stiksel from last.fm, Fran Nevrkla from PPL, and Cliff Fluet from Lewis Silkin.

Martin points out that licensing is v difficult, since he needs to get licenses in 240 countries. Paul points out they haven’t yet, so surely they’re infringing copyright? Martin points out that it’s not quite as easy as that, since they can’t even get some licenses.

Andrew says that commercial radio wants to act responsibly instead. He says that the deal with music rights-holders needs to be “reborn” - to take account of all platforms and on-demand content. Good call.

Fran loves broadcasters, and thinks that “ISPs” are being very bad, not allowing PPL to earn money from them, while still being sold for very high figures. (He has confused last.fm with an ISP - he’s just called them an ISP again.) 90% of the 47,000 performers he represents, he says, exist on less than £18,000 a year from music. Apparently we’re supposed to feel bad for them. He then moves into a polemic about “we should not give music away for free”, which I agree with. He gives a sideswipe to last.fm, saying that PPL should get money from the start, not just when your business gets sold for £300m. He wants to get to know each other better. Aw. However, he’s just said that there’s not goodwill in this industry. (Not sure what industry he’s talking about).

Cliff says that the record industry has to move away from sales to money on a per-play basis, or a licensing basis. Fran nods head. Cliff wants radio to add a ‘buy this song’ link everywhere.

Digital Radio - on the money? was quite a good session:

Matt Wells, The Guardian: he’s been in the sun, he’s bright red, with panda eyes from his sunglasses That’ll peel later this week. He says he doesn’t believe the second DAB mux will be launched. Points out that commercial radio appears to push for FM being killed in order for DAB to succeed. Interesting viewpoint. Thinks that DAB only really offers “5live in better quality” which “isn’t very impressive”. Claims 4digital will require 1200 new transmitters (ah, Guardian accuracy, it’s actually around 170). Says they’ll not earn money out of it, and/or Channel4 is only there to earn money out of it. Points out that PlanetRock and OneWord were not loved by their owners (and I suspect he’s right), but claims PlanetRock will survive. Claim that The Guardian are getting 1.5m podcast downloads a month.

Nathalie Schwarz, 4 Digital Group: talks about tv going digital and how it’s working. Wants a similarly clear roadmap for radio. However, says the second mux will launch. However, doesn’t rule out launching on Digital One. Oooh. Talks about what would be their first station, E4 Radio. (E4 produced a 65% uplift in Freeview boxes, apparently). Brilliantly shuts Matt up by asking whether MediaGuardian is in profit yet - or, indeed, The Guardian itself. (It’s not). Talks about commercial radio bulking and discounting AMers, let alone DAB stations.

Paul Brown, DRDB: is fed up of the radio industry ’staring up our own fundements’. I do like Paul. Points out listener figures, and set sales, are high. Says commercial radio isn’t very good at selling ads on digital radio, interestingly. Very bullish about radio in the future. Says that radio has been hampered by ‘indecisiveness’ because of being owned by shareholders. Says that commercial radio doesn’t crosspromote enough. Mentions that PlanetRock had more Sony Radio Academy Award nominations than any other national station (not entirely sure that’s right, but it did get quite a few).

Mark Friend, BBC: talks about hybrid sets: DAB+IP. Wants to think more carefully about the content and the interface to make it more relevant. He’s a bright, clever, handsome, intelligent man. And my boss, by the way. Cough. Says future required cooperation around technology and marketing.

Ventura Barba, Yahoo Music: wooooah, great radio name! Starts talking about the internet. Probably a little confused about what everyone else has been talking about. Starts talking about copyright and illegal sites. Hey, wrong panel, you’re 45 minutes too late. Can’t help but think he’s been badly booked, he’s had nothing else to really contribute. At the end he mentions that Yahoo earns money. Good for you.

A break for lunch - yum, salmon pasta, then breakout sessions. I went to the one about technology.

Nick Piggott (GCap) talked about the NanoDAB - a magic Bluetooth DAB receiver which talks to your mobile phone. Then showed quite an insipring video of what it might be capable of, full of an iPhone-like device which adds a whole heap of information to radio listening. It’s a brilliant video, so I hope he posts it somewhere. His summary: create “new radio”, get it on the right platforms and devices, and only DAB can economically reach the mass market. Later, Nick talked about tagging: being a way of timeshifting interactivity. He says (and I’m working on this too) that it’s a simple but crucial part of enabling a richer radio; and says it’s far more than buying music. He says that personalisable radio will hopefully result in better revenues for commercial radio.

David Muniz (Gaydar) explained his brand’s evolution - a radio station launched off the back of a website in Feb 2002 on Sky, then May 2003 on DAB in London, and 2004 on DAB in the South Coast (read Brighton, I think). Says that he’d love to be national on DAB, but it’s impossible because of bandwidth costs. Has a lot of slides, rather more than he was seemingly expecting. In terms of how people tune into the station - 60% via internet, 30% DAB, and 10% Sky.

Colin Crawford (Pure) shows an interesting “first connected DAB radio” which isn’t publicly announced yet. This is probably it then. It’s a nice black device, looking not unlike a Pure One, with software buttons on a big screen, and also runs on Linux. LINUX! Wow, that’s quite cool. He says this will enable quick upgrades for new features. He’s running a dedicated portal for this (ah, so he runs our listeners, then). Next, he shows a full-screen, full-colour touchscreen display, coming to market in 2009. Really nice looking. Slideshow support, by the looks of things. Has internet radio on it, as well as DAB. And it does media streaming from your own PC server or your “NAS box”, whatever the hell one of those is. Full colour album covers, etc. This is really nice. Wow, I’m quite flabbergasted about this; I never thought Pure was so forward-looking.

John Ousby (BBC) shows some visualisation we’re working on for IPTV. It’s very good. I won’t spoil it. Also says that 3G coverage is pretty awful and is very difficult to stream reliably with - or, for that matter, DAB Digital Radio coverage, or wifi coverage.

Analysis

Claire Enders came on with some great and interesting figures, culled from a ton of different sources, but first was very excited that she’s just gained British citizenship. Aw. Bless.

She poured some scorn on some of the figures we’ve heard so far; notably some of Fru’s claims about how music is sold as a result of listening to it on the radio (apparently she’s quoting US figures not UK ones).

iPod ownership in the UK is the second largest in the world per capita. That’s interesting.

She predicts a fairly subdued neartime commercial future for radio. Explains her figures don’t include any allowance for hypercyclicality. I had hypercyclicality once, but I got some pills for it and it cleared up within a few days.

Shows percentage share of UK advertising by medium - substantial jump for the internet, but goodness, national newspapers, and business magazines, are in shit: huge great falls. Recently, in the last three years, huge falls in direct mail and regional newspapers too (and similar, though less pronounced, in the radio).

Almost £1billion has been spent on commercial radio acquisitions in the last year, did you know that? Gosh, that’s a lot.

The last session
Well, I’m suffering a little from conference fatigue; as you might guess from the above writeup. The last session is around commercial opportunities which (for now, at least) I can ignore. So, this is my last update. It’s been a mix of positive and sobering discussion, this conference. Quite well done, with lots of arguments, which is nice. It’s almost like a “Radio at the Edge” conference which is rather more biz friendly.

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