With Australian public service broadcasters ABC and SBS signing onto the DAB platform this week it’s a good opportunity to review the scene Down Under.

The move to digital has very much been driven by Commercial Radio Australia, the umbrella body which represents commercial broadcasters. Their CEO Joan Warner saw the potential in DAB early on and has rallied the entire industry to adopt the platform.

Some of their reasons for going DAB include:

• Modernise the industry

• Anti-satellite radio move

• Data transmission offers new revenue opportunities

• If they don’t someone else will

The last point is key as Australian broadcasters are taking control of their own destiny. Working on a wholly united front they are very much doing it on their own terms.

The DAB Multiplex’s are operated as a joint venture which keeps costs down and control of transmission firmly with the existing broadcasters. That way no third-party Mux operator can dictate who gets on-air. Interestingly any potential new players have to wait out a six year exclusion period before being allowed on DAB. I feel this policy might not be a good one as one of the key drivers for DAB is new services. However its understandable that the industry needs to protect itself.

This united front also extends to the use of the multi-media/data side of DAB. Of the 40+ stations on air so far, over 80% are also broadcasting images and text to accompany the audio programme. It won’t be long before we see on-screen advertising.

There is lots of freedom too. Each participating broadcaster is given 1/9th of the Mux on a “use it or lose it basis”. What they actually do with it is up to them. Some have chosen to operate at high quality bit-rates, others at good quality bit-rates allowing them to run a second DAB only station.
Already we’ve seen “Pink Radio” - a station specifically centred around the rock stars upcoming concert tour and the ABC have launched three DAB specific stations.

All this makes DAB a great proposition for Australian listeners. They get their favourite stations, new stations and “cool” stuff displaying on the radios screen.

But what of the future? While the government sees DAB as a supplementary technology the broadcasters themselves see it as replacement. It may take 10 or more years to achieve a complete switchover but, considering that is the timeframe it has taken television to achieve digital switchover, it’s not a bad goal.

Even though it’s early days, I really admire the industry for coming together and taking the bull by the horns. I feel a lot of credit for that is down to Joan Warner. I can’t help myself saying this, so I apologise in advance … but “good on ‘ya”!

Following Norway’s commitment to convert to DAB by 2012, and the UK’s decision to name 2015 as the switch-over date to DAB, Denmark are also following a DAB only future.

This came about because the Danes needed to decide on what to do with their existing FM network. Do they re-work and upgrade FM or go for a digital future?

As it turns out DAB has enjoyed a very successful start-up in Denmark. It offers listeners 13 extra stations they can’t get on FM. Not surprisingly take up has been very strong with 30% of the population owning a receiver and monthly reach is 40%. Three of the top 5 stations are DAB only services and as popular as any of their FM rivals.

So the Danes have decided to drop the re-planning of the FM network to work out a long term digitization plan for radio which will extend the transmission network and upgrade to the more efficient DAB+ codec.

The Danish government haven’t gone as far as announcing the switch-off date, despite pressure from the radio industry to do so, but it’s coming.

Recently he attended the Radio 3.0 Conference in London and posted the Q&A Session with Ofcom Chief Ed Richards as follows:

Q: Isn’ t the big issue with DAB ‘[FM] switchoff’?….

ER: It is one big question but it definitely isn’t the only big question. And the difference with TV is very instructive. One of the profound differences with TV, of course, is that in the case of TV you couldn’t extend Freeview digital television without turning off the analogue spectrum, and that’s a profound difference. One of the other differences, of course, is that the value of the spectrum released by analogue switchoff in television is extremely high. Indeed, people are fighting each other metaphorically to get hold of it and have been ever since we mooted the idea some years ago. So there are some very big differences. The other obvious differences are that people have more radios than they do have TV’s, and so on and so forth. It is a very big question but I don’t think it’s the only one. That is why we put as much emphasis on the inherent sustainability and viability of digital [radio] services. It is always going to be asking people a lot to simply look forward, especially in the context of no switchoff date - and even if there was a switchoff date, it would be some years away - it’s always going to be asking them a lot to take losses for a long period. If only we can get to a point where DAB services are essentially at least breakeven, the better because that gives you a base from which to plan the other more challenging things, which include switchoff, and we want to work quite hard at that alongside the debate about Digital Britain.

Q: Without a date, it feels like it’s almost over the horizon. People I talk to in radio nearly all say ‘what we need is a date’. Is Digital Britain going to give us a date, do you think?

ER: That is a common theme that you hear, it is true. Before answering the thrust of that, I reiterate that I think you need to address the date and the migration issue, but you need to address the underlying economics first and immediately at the same time. And that means a frequency plan, savings in transmission, and so on and so forth, and it means continuing growth and more listeners on DAB. I hear everybody, a lot of people, say that we have to have a date. Will Digital Britain give us a date? I don’t know. There are a number of things we don’t know about Digital Britain yet.

Q: Would it be helpful if it did give us a date?

ER: It depends what the date was. It wouldn’t be helpful if the date was next year. I think the most important thing is … Let me rephrase the question slightly. You can only have a date if you have got a credible plan that delivers that date. So I could give you a date now but it would be meaningless. It would be rather like the television switchover date in one or two countries around the world - which I won’t name because it would get me into trouble - but they name dates, the governments stand up and puff up their chests and name dates but they are meaningless and, as soon as they have left the room, everybody laughs. So a date is meaningless without a credible plan to get there, so I recognise ….

Q: It’s a bit chicken and egg, isn’t it?

ER: Well, you have to have one in order to have the other. I think where people really are on this is, when they say we must have a date, that is another way of saying we must have a credible plan which gives us a date, and I would agree with that ….

Q: But how close are we to a credible plan?

ER: We are getting closer. We are doing a lot of work, as I said in my contribution, around the re-planning and I think the re-planning is very important to it. We need to have a clear set of proposals about quality of service and coverage and all those sorts of things, and those things need to be in place before you can have a credible plan. But there is work actively taking place on that and being driven forward. But better to get that right and to have a sense of urgency and determination, than just to pluck a meaningless date out of the air.

…..

Q: I’m still struggling slightly with [FM] switchoff only because it strikes me that almost everything hinges upon this and what you say is perfectly sensible - you can’t really have switchoff until you have a credible plan - but we know that, in the real world, unless we are forced by one thing or another, we don’t actually face this and businesses are very similar to life and everybody is still hedging their bets on FM. I speak to mobile phone manufacturers who say ‘well, look, we only have room in our phones for so many transmitters and receivers. We have got Bluetooth, we have got infra-red, we have da-da-da-da-da and all our users tell us they really value FM’. So they are not going to switch it until they have to. People with DAB radios in their cars are still a rarity and the manufacturers are not going to start installing them as standard until someone says ‘OK, 2013, 2012, 2011, whatever it is - that’s it’.

ER: Well, that’s the attraction of setting a date and driving everyone to it. But I’m trying to think of something different to say than what I said earlier.

Q: Would you favour it as an option?

ER: If there is a credible plan, yes. You’ve got to have a credible plan. And what you can’t do is just pluck a date out of the air and say ‘we’re all going to get there’ because I know what will happen under those circumstances. What will happen is that it will be fine for about a month and then, going for coffee outside the conference room, everyone will say ‘well, that is not going to happen, is it?’

Q: Except in TV, it has and it is.

ER: In TV, we wrote the original document which said ‘we will push on to digital switchover in this timeframe and here is how you can do it’. We wrote that document and said ‘these are the six of seven things you have to do to deliver it’ and we knew what you had to do to re-plan, we knew what you had to do to lead people across, we knew about the re-tuning, we knew the vast majority of things and there was a plan. That plan was then picked up by the creation of Digital UK, and so on. We’ve got to get to that next step, so I think it’s an exciting prospect but we’ve got to believe that it’s credible and deliverable. So I know that I’m repeating myself and not being particularly helpful but I do genuinely believe that and we need to - senior people in the industry need to sit round, look at this, stare at the steps and say ‘will that deliver it, is it consistent with what is in the audience’s interest?’ There’s no point in doing something which audiences then regard as a disaster. We have to do something that audiences, as it took place, will regard as a good thing. That’s an acid test and I think that’s possible, but there’s a lot of work to do and we’ve got to see if we can get there.

The above was taken from Grant Goddards blog at grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/

Boxer’s withdrawal from DTT in Ireland hasn’t exactly been met with tears.The current and anticipated economic climate were reasons cited for Boxer pulling out of DTT but the real killer was a request from RTÉ for a €20m bond to operate the digital transmission network.

Within the industry the general feeling here is that neither the economic climate nor transmission fees are the problem but a realisation that a terrestrial pay TV option just will not work. I tend to agree for three strong reasons;

Firstly Ireland already enjoys over 75% digital television penetration with UPC and Sky. Why would these subscribers switch to an equivalent DTT service with fewer channels at a similar price? Of the remaining 25% without digital TV, it appears they have decided not to subscribe to any service and are happy with the terrestrial transmission offering of RTE, TV3 and TG4.

The second reason is the free availability of all the most popular channels anyway. With RTÉ’s free-to-air public service DTT network you can receive RTE, TV3 and TG4. Bolt on Freeview satellite and you’ve got BBC, ITV, E4 etc etc

The third and final reason is that pay DTT was tried in the UK and spectacularly unsuccessful. I feel a repeat of the model in Ireland is doomed to repeat the UK experience.

So what next?

Ireland’s commitment to the EU deadline of 2012 for digital switch over is still a very reachable goal. With UPC and Sky we’re three-quarters of the way there already. For the remaining 25% RTÉ continue to roll-out public service free-to-air DTT across the country. They may or may not reach full coverage by 2012 as planned but they will get a fair way toward it.

Boxer’s withdrawal from DTT is not the end of the world. If the under bidder One Vision, the Eircom / TV3 / Sentanta consortium, decline the BCI offer to pick up where Boxer left off it won’t be the end of the world either.

More on Boxers withdrawl can be seen in the Sunday Business Post.

OFCOM, the UK broadcasting regulator, have made several interesting proposals in their response to the UK governments Digital Britain report. Some are very good and some are very very bad.

On the good side, OFCOM have backed DAB as the main digital platform for the future. They agree with the long term view being taken in the UK that national and regional stations eventually migrate to DAB-only.

Their intention is to allow regional stations to merge and provide a quasi-national service on DAB. With many of these services being niche formats it gives them a big enough market to survive while bringing more choice to listeners. All round this is sound logical thinking.

On the bad side, OFCOM has sounded the death-knell of local radio. Their view is that local services need a much larger potential audience to make a station viable. Instead of the current population base of 300,000 needed to sustain a local service, OFCOM feel a larger population of 1m is now required. Accordingly they will allow smaller local stations to merge and share programming.

This is very very bad news. The number one strength of radio, the magic, is its ability to connect with it’s audience. That connection is strongest and most relevant at local level. By increasing a service area to 1m a lot of that localness will be gone and the connection people make with their local station lost with it.

Ireland has an incredibly strong local radio network. Many stations serve a population base of just 100,000. Key to the connection with their audience is the requirement for 20% of a stations output to be news and current affairs related. This has led to a lot of local content and huge listening figures from the local communities. Perhaps OFCOM should look at the Irish market and re-think their strategy.

Our company view is that the future for Ireland is a mix of FM and DAB services. FM for our current strong local radio market augmented by as many as 20 niche national services on DAB.

The ultimate winner is the listener, particularly those outside the major cities, who will enjoy a content led relevant local service with more music focused national stations to choose from.

DAB continues to become a standard across the world with Toyota announcing it’s new Prius will include a DAB/FM radio in the standard spec.

This follows Ford’s announcement last year that DAB will be a standard in their Kuga Titanium range. DAB is already a popular option with most other UK car manafacturers.

For domestic radios it is getting harder and harder to buy a radio that does not have DAB as standard. As well as UK highstreet brands based here like Currys, Dixons etc Irish owned electronics stores such as Power City have begun stocking radios with DAB.

It reminds me of when I was a kid in the late 70s when most radios had a thing called an “FM” button which never got used because there was nothing on it.  Along came Radio Nova 88FM and everything changed overnight. Within ten years FM was the predominant band, so much so, that the IRTC (BCI of the day) decided to use FM exclusively for Irelands new independent commerical radio network.

History has a habit of repeating itself.

For a digital radio company we did something interesting today … we put one of our stations on FM.

Raidió Rí-Rá, our Top 40 format Irish language station, has been quietly ticking away for the past year. With the lack of DAB activity at the moment we decided to run the station under a temporary FM licence in the run up to St Patricks Day. It’s broadcasting to the four main cities of Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway and was formally launched on-air today by Minister for the Gaeltacht Mr Eamon O’Cuív.

The reaction has been phenomenal. The Irish language community are delighted to at last have a contemporary station that breaks the notion that Irish is old-fashioned or “un-cool”.  It also adds proof to our theory that niche formats attract small but highly active and loyal listeners.

Rí-Rá will finish on FM on March 22nd after which we’ll continue online at raidiorira.ie along with plans for digital cable and DAB when it returns in the summer.

Of the three main digital platforms, DAB and Digital TV and the Internet, DAB is the only platform showing an increase in usage. Up 15% on last year in fact.

The best comparision to look at is “Share of Listening”. This measures all listening to all radio on all platforms FM/AM/DAB/Internet etc.  DAB now accounts for 11.4% of all radio listening in the UK. Great to see something growing in these recessionary times!

Interestingly the other two digital platforms are not quite so rosy. Listening to radio via a digital tv set has remained pretty stagnant while listening to radio on the “almighty all-powerful” internet … has dropped.

We see this as an indication that DAB will be the predominant digital platform of the future. As a one-to-many transmission DAB is the most cost-effective solution for broadcasters and absolutely the easiest proposition for consumers.

For more see the RAJAR Market Trends website.

There are two ways of looking at this crisis. Go with the media’s never ending stream of bad news, baton down the hatches and hope for the best.  The other is to realise that while most people are pulling back they are leaving opportunity for others to pull ahead. Recession is often a time of innovation and the innovators reap the rewards.

Needless to say we are definately going for the latter. In 2009 we intend to innovate, find new ways of doing old things better and try some completely brand new things! Expect a new DAB multiplex on-air later this year with some features that will raise eyebrows. Before we get to that though, we have a month-long multi-city licence to operate on good old fashioned FM.

2009? Bring it on!