DAB has not attracted a lot off new buyers...
In July 09 it was reported, switching off analogue radio would make up to 150milion radios obsolete, 20% of the country will never be able to receive DAB unless another £100millionn is spent on improving the network coverage for DAB.
In 2013 DAB is expected to account for more than 50% of the listening figures.
Now this may sound a lot, but when you break it down into figures there is still a lot of people who will not be able to listen, for example 5 billion people may listen to radio, that is 2.5bilion people who will not be able to get it. It isn't until you start looking at the figures, you understand how big of an audience could be lost.
Now if we think about it, in 2007 London had an estimated population of just under 8 million people. Now divide 2.5billion by 8 million, I will let you work out the answer to that but the only thing I’m going to say is that’s a lot of London’s.
Now what station owner (either commercial or BBC) is going to be prepared to switch off their analogue signal and lose 50% of their listening figures.
Now from my experience in working in radio stations I’m sure most of the station owners would not do that.
For example at Somer Valley FM, The Community Radio Station in Midsomer Norton, if I told Dom Chambers the manager, I was going to make us loose 50% of our listening figures, I think he may have one word to say..... That word would be a simple NO!
Also there is another angle to look at this from, a commercial station, where advertising is a big part of the success of the station. Losing 50% of listening figures would mean losing 50% of revenues, now looking at this with my business head on (I don’t have my business head on most of the time), who is going to do that. I know I wouldn’t.
Now one thing which is happening at the moment is radio stations are paying to broadcast on FM and DAB, now this is a good idea as it means they are covering both angles. The only problem with this is it will cost the station more money to do, but I do think this is what’s going to happen for well who can say I would guess the next 3-4 or even 10 years.
Now I’m not sure how many people will remember the term ‘Long Wave’
Well in 1992 there was word on the street that ‘long Wave’ would be slowly closed down and sadly forgotten about. Now I was born in 1992 and all my time in radio I have never heard the term ‘long Wave’ until researching this project I’m talking about now.
Well this caused some heartache with some people. So they set up a protest to save it, well they were successful in one way.
‘Long Wave’ is now only officially being used by one radio station which is radio 4.
The point I’m trying to show here is this so called closure of long wave was meant to happen in 1992, and 17 years later radio 4 are still using it.
This just shows when the British people want something to happen it happens.
And I think we will find this with DAB, the British do not like change and I think it will be 3 or even 10 years before all the radio stations think about turning of FM.
Also another good point the FM Wave is it is cheap, it has been tried and tested and works perfect. It’s close to 'universal' coverage as we will ever get.
I think we also need to think about it from another angle. If we change over to DAB, pirate radio stations will start using FM like they use AM. So in my mind we would be doing our selfs more harm than needed.
So my conclusion about this is that yes we will turn over to DAB and turn of FM but not yet.
(A audio version will be uploaded in the next week or two.)
Posted via web from petehelmore's posterous
In 2013 DAB is expected to account for more than 50% of the listening figures.
Now this may sound a lot, but when you break it down into figures there is still a lot of people who will not be able to listen, for example 5 billion people may listen to radio, that is 2.5bilion people who will not be able to get it. It isn't until you start looking at the figures, you understand how big of an audience could be lost.
Now if we think about it, in 2007 London had an estimated population of just under 8 million people. Now divide 2.5billion by 8 million, I will let you work out the answer to that but the only thing I’m going to say is that’s a lot of London’s.
Now what station owner (either commercial or BBC) is going to be prepared to switch off their analogue signal and lose 50% of their listening figures.
Now from my experience in working in radio stations I’m sure most of the station owners would not do that.
For example at Somer Valley FM, The Community Radio Station in Midsomer Norton, if I told Dom Chambers the manager, I was going to make us loose 50% of our listening figures, I think he may have one word to say..... That word would be a simple NO!
Also there is another angle to look at this from, a commercial station, where advertising is a big part of the success of the station. Losing 50% of listening figures would mean losing 50% of revenues, now looking at this with my business head on (I don’t have my business head on most of the time), who is going to do that. I know I wouldn’t.
Now one thing which is happening at the moment is radio stations are paying to broadcast on FM and DAB, now this is a good idea as it means they are covering both angles. The only problem with this is it will cost the station more money to do, but I do think this is what’s going to happen for well who can say I would guess the next 3-4 or even 10 years.
Now I’m not sure how many people will remember the term ‘Long Wave’
Well in 1992 there was word on the street that ‘long Wave’ would be slowly closed down and sadly forgotten about. Now I was born in 1992 and all my time in radio I have never heard the term ‘long Wave’ until researching this project I’m talking about now.
Well this caused some heartache with some people. So they set up a protest to save it, well they were successful in one way.
‘Long Wave’ is now only officially being used by one radio station which is radio 4.
The point I’m trying to show here is this so called closure of long wave was meant to happen in 1992, and 17 years later radio 4 are still using it.
This just shows when the British people want something to happen it happens.
And I think we will find this with DAB, the British do not like change and I think it will be 3 or even 10 years before all the radio stations think about turning of FM.
Also another good point the FM Wave is it is cheap, it has been tried and tested and works perfect. It’s close to 'universal' coverage as we will ever get.
I think we also need to think about it from another angle. If we change over to DAB, pirate radio stations will start using FM like they use AM. So in my mind we would be doing our selfs more harm than needed.
So my conclusion about this is that yes we will turn over to DAB and turn of FM but not yet.
(A audio version will be uploaded in the next week or two.)
Posted via web from petehelmore's posterous
No comments:
Post a Comment