Re: DAB Drops Out Again

"SpamTrapSeeSig" <no-one@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:sDQX1QGgA42KFwn8@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <7k0hngF37l0u1U2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, DAB sounds worse
than FM <dab.is@xxxxxxxxxx> writes

[I said:]
At those prices, with such a low actual listening percentage, only
a
fool of a station owner would continue to pay for DAB, if there's
a
choice over FM. They're getting a lot of audience on FM, and a
growing body of deskbound/home listeners from streaming over
TCP/IP
straight from their web sites, with the coming field of streaming
to
3G 'phones, etc.


Both the BBC and commercial radio are actually highly opposed to
Internet radio due to the amount of competition their stations face
on
the Internet, whereas DAB is basically just a digital equivalent of
FM
where their stations only face a small and inherently limited amount
of competition.

The issue is where these stations' revenue will come from.


Radio listening is declining, and I don't think DAB will reverse that
trend. So I don't think there will be any additional revenue, and
switching off FM is to allow the broadcasters to reduce their
transmission costs because at the moment they're transmitting both
analogue and digital, and more importantly IMO it's to push as many
people onto DAB ASAP before listening to radio via the Internet
becomes mainstream, because they think that will lead to them losing
listeners to Internet stations or services.

The original attraction of DAB for commercial radio was that because
commercial stations would account for a higher proportion of the
stations available in a given area commercial radio listening would
increase - also the BBC has 5 national analogue stations whereas
commercial radio only has 1 national FM and a couple of national AM
stations. I still think that will end up happening, but to a far
lesser degree than commercial radio originally expected.


If they are allowed to depart from the existing model, toward,
either the radio equivalent of product placement (auctioning
needletime, etc.), or direct ownership by sponsors ("Radio Tesco" or
whatever) they might survive. But, speaking as someone who was
investigating buying airtime only a few weeks ago, the present cost
model is tragically inappropriate for local businesses. And it's
local businesses they're supposed to be serving (alongside national
campaigns, obviously).


I agree, their business model is basically broken.


They have two options it seems: get back onto FM pronto and get
digital costs out of the equation, or go bust.


The thing is though they've already sunk a huge amount of investment
into DAB, so the way they see it is that it's better to follow this
through to switchover rather than to back out and let DAB collapse,
because eventually they'd just end up spending the money on switching
to digital anyway.


The quote in my sig was made by an ex-chief exec of the Guardian
Media
Group commercial radio group, which sums up how the radio industry
views the threat from Internet radio well:

"It is the sheer volume of online audio content available via
internet-connected devices which terrifies the UK radio industry. I
believe that broadband-delivered radio will explode in the years to
come, offering very local, unregulated content, as well as opening a
window to the radio stations of the world."

As a potential advertiser, I'd welcome the ability to know exactly
who the audience is (by IP, presumably), and to better segment and
tune to a specific demographic.


Yes, and I think Internet radio services will end up exploiting that
advantage.


One of the main reasons why an early date has been set for FM to be
switched off is that the broadcasters want to push as many people
onto
DAB ASAP because that way they'll limit the amount of listening
they'll lose to Internet stations or services like last.fm and
Spotify.

I think you're being generous here. What's the imperative to switch
to DAB for an Internet radio user? I can't think of one.


There's absolutely no point in switching to DAB for an Internet radio
user. The point is though that the BBC et al will only promote DAB in
their TV adverts for "digital radio", so the vast majority of the
masses will end up listening via DAB simply because that's the option
being drummed down their throats.


If I was one and FM was switched off, it would annoy me, but I
wouldn't use DAB just because of it.

My guess would be there are more than a few station managers out
there, furious at the BBC's intransigence over the whole thing. If
someone in the incoming government doesn't get a grip on it, we
will
probably lose the vast majority of our smaller commercial radio
stations, and commercial radio will be ITV-ized into a monolith.

Yeah, the commercial radio industry seems to be split over DAB -
Global Radio, which is by far the biggest commercial radio group,
supports DAB, whereas the groups that own small stations are opposed
to DAB because their transmissino costs go through the roof, and the
UTV radio group withdrew last week from the RadioCentre, which is
commercial radio's trade body, saying that the RadioCentre now
basically does whatever Global Radio wants, and they cited
differences
over teh approach to DAB - which must mean that UTV aren't keen on
DAB
whereas Global are.

At the point a monopoly is established in station ownership (and it
almost has been now, depending strictly how that's defined), the
balance of power shifts in the favour of the monopoly, both against
the TX service provider and against the smaller stations.


But the transmission service provider Arqiva is an actual monopoly, so
they have nothing to fear from Global. The groups that run smaller
stations do seem to be getting pushed around by Global though.


The service provider will be forced to deep discount to the
monopoly, and seek to recover its profits from the smaller players.


Global and Arqiva did a big deal earlier this year when Global "sold"
both its 66% stake in Digital One (Arqiva owned the rest of D1) and
its Now Digital multiplex operating company, which operated around 20
local DAB multiplexes, to Arqiva. The details of the deal weren't
published, but Global is apparently heavily burdened with debt, and
Arqiva will have known that, and DAB transmission costs were a heavy
cash drain at a time when Global is skint and there's a slump in
advertising, so I bet Global got a crap deal compared to if they'd
done it at a different time.


All of the above works against the interests of all concerned, which
is why I said someone needs to get a political grip, rapidly, or we
will effectively lose the value of our commercial stations.


The government setting an early switch off date for FM was them trying
to help commercial radio out.


I sincerely hope the next government cancels any thought of FM
switch-off,


The Tories support FM switch off - they are at least keen on DAB+
though.


and moves to break up Arquiva, for example so that local stations
can take responsibility for their own transmitters.


With regards to local stations being responsible for their own
transmitters, it would have been better to allow DRM+ to be used in
the FM band for those stations that don't want to transmit on DAB,
because DRM+ isn't a multiplex-based technology (they can multiplex
stations together, but I think it will be typically used to transmit
single stations). But IMO the reason DRM+ has been excluded is that
the DRM+ standard has only recently been ratified (I think it's just
been ratified anyway - some significant development happened recently
for it), so that would put the digital switchover process back, and
the government clearly doesn't want to delay things - in reality, the
big boys in the commercial radio industry whose stations are already
on DAB don't want more competition via DRM+.


I'm not holding my breath though.


You certainly shouldn't hold your breath for anything to happen that's
in the interests of radio listeners, because that's the last thing on
the minds of the BBC, commercial radio and the government.


--
Steve - www.savefm.org - stop the BBC bullies switching off FM

www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - digital radio news & info

"It is the sheer volume of online audio content available via
internet-connected devices which terrifies the UK radio industry. I
believe that broadband-delivered radio will explode in the years to
come, offering very local, unregulated content, as well as opening a
window to the radio stations of the world." - from the Myers Report


.

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