New push for DAB national UK stations to launch in 2009

We could see more national digital radio stations launched for the UK this year if an initiative by Digital One, the company licensed to broadcast DAB digital radio across Great Britain, is successful. The catalyst for this latest push is the publication of a report from the Digital Radio Working Group to the Government at the end of last year. The report highlighted how new national radio stations could help boost the take-up of DAB.

Digital One operates the national commercial network of over 100 transmitters, providing coverage to over 90% of the UK population, with clients that include Absolute Radio, Classic FM, Planet Rock and talkSPORT.

Despite the radios themselves coming down in price and now providing a far better choice, that's only been true for in the home and a few mobile devices intended for plugging into computers. DAB take-up in-car is still poor, with limited choice of equipment and issues remaining on the consistency of the signal quality in a moving vehicle. And with the market generally depressed, manufacturers will take a lot of convincing of the viability of launching new in-car DAB receivers... several are still licking their financial wounds after the first phase of models.

But Glyn Jones, Acting Chief Executive of Digital One, said: “We’re turning the ideas set out in the DRWG’s report into actions. That includes looking hard at how Digital One can offer lower carriage costs. In turn we’re expecting that stakeholders involved in the Working Group, and other companies with the ambition to launch new national radio stations in 2009, will step up and engage with a view to adding compelling new choice for consumers.”

Unfortunately this comes on the back of a couple of digital radio station closures during 2008, due to lack of advertising revenue. While this can be put down, in part, to general cutbacks in radio advertising, DAB has not been well placed to argue much of a case to potential advertisers, as its reach in practice is currently limited, even though coverage is now pretty good.

Digital One chose to launch the initiative via an advertisement in the national press, inviting successful, established brands, as well as innovative new stations, to broadcast across Britain. Using the national press seems a somewhat lavish expenditure and a rather scatter gun approach to us, but presumably Digital One has already tried to attract interest through trade press resources with little success.

Capacity on the digital network is available for mainstream stations as well as more specialist channels. Digital One seem especially keen to attract proposals based on Plays/Books/Comedy content , as well as other speech or music formats with consumer appeal. The company is also reviewing its charges, with Glyn Jones adding: “We’re expecting that prices will initially be set below Digital One’s 2008 rate card. One reason for that is to help provide an incentive for people to invest in high quality services. But, over time, companies providing new services will be expected to contribute to the costs of a transmitter roll-out plan which was something also identified by the DRWG as important.”

That last line will come as a bit of an 'ouch' to some. Launching a new radio station at a time when initial funding and ad revenue are probably harder to come by than at any time in the last few decades is bad enough, but then to be asked to contribute towards the network's infrastructure... well, you would have to be dedicated, very confident and, dare we say, somewhat foolhardy to take that on. But there's little doubt that, sooner or later, digital radio will become the norm, and those that invest early and manage to stay the course are likely to prosper when consumers eventually latch on to the technology in greater numbers. [Kevin O'Byrne]