Digital radio for toi et moi

Michael Hedges May 29, 2009 (Follow on Twitter)

Dismal economics notwithstanding, digital radio broadcasting keeps edging forward. Listeners are firmly attached to their iPhones and broadcasters need to keep them happy. How to get from here to there is a weighty question. But, no fear, there’s always a step backward.

The French media regulator Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel (CSA) moved digital radio forward (May 26) approving applications for 160 channels for listeners in Paris, Marseille and Nice. Most, the vast majority, will be channels already existing on the FM band. Broadcasters have until December to work out all the details and put the channels on the air.

One of the details is television channel Canal+ giving up its analogue frequencies, where the T-DMB standard digital radio will live. Of course, multiplexes will need to be built. A few, very few, will build studios, hire staff and start shaking sponsors for money. Of the 55 channels approved for Paris 7 will be new. Marseille will have 41 digital radio channels, 12 new, and Nice gets 40, 13 being new.

The new allocations create, essentially, four new national radio channels. The CSA gave preference to information and sports, granting RTL L’Equipe and Europe 1 Sport, owned by RTL and Lagardère, respectively. Lagardère recently bought Paris station Sport O’FM, now rebranded Europe 1 Sport. Also new will be LCI Radio, a rolling news channel from television broadcaster TF1, to compete with public radio France Info.   

R20  - Air 2 Eau is the fourth new national – category D – radio channel. Masterminded by two sturdy hands of French radio, Patrick Fillioud (Europe 2 and BFM) and Jöel Pons (Superloustic), the channel will target 9 to 13 year olds. Financing comes from Bayard Presse.

Among the new local digital channels will be Crooner fréquence numerique, obviously a specialized music format, as well as channels for the Berber community in Paris and Marseilles and a Chinese channel in Paris. Keeping with tradition, no English language channels were approved.

The new channels and greater coverage of the oldies pleases CSA President Michel Boyon because “one in three French people can’t today receive ten stations.”  The CSA is beginning a new public consultation to help pirouette through the next phase of digital radio introduction ending, perhaps, in 2014.

Being France, not everybody is thoroughly pleased."The CSA has given the technical details,” said Skyrock CEO Pierre Bellanger to Les Echos (May 27), “but there is a problem with the economic model. We must have government support.”

The French government established a fund - Fonds de soutien à l'expression radiophonique (FSER) – to aid community (radios associatives – category A) broadcasters about 20 years ago. Its budget is about €26 million this year, funded by a tax on commercial broadcasters’ revenue, supplemented with State budget money. Other broadcasters are hopeful Culture Minister Christine Albanel will fund a similar package to defray costs of digital conversion and broadcasting both on FM and digital frequencies. Neither the CSA nor the Culture Ministry has hinted at shutting off analogue broadcasting.

“It is an incomprehensible decision and discriminatory,” said NextRadioTV CEO Allain Weill to Le Monde (May 27). His company owns RMC Sport and BFM Bourse, which failed to win the coveted national channel licenses. He said he’d appeal the decision.

Digital radio’s main promoter in France, DR France, “welcomed” the CSA’s announcement but blasted the entire process, which has gone on since 2004. They and their constituents are still scratching their heads at multiple standards squarely at odds with neighboring countries.

“Despite its many attempts, DR France regrets that the results of experiments conducted and reported, solicitations of certain professional organizations, government authorities and particularly the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Culture have not amended the erroneous decision of choosing a single standard in France for the Band III,” said association President Jamil Shalak in a release. Obviously, this standard not only reduces the number of broadcasters currently existing but isolates France while closest neighbors have made different choices.”

France adopted in 2007 the T-DMB standard for digital radio. DR France has asked for a multi-standard approach friendlier to receiver manufacturers. Neighboring Switzerland adopted DAB for digital radio, though receiver uptake has been slow. German broadcasters have offered DAB channels for a couple of years and plan to relaunch digital radio with the DAB+ standard sometime this year. DAB and DAB+ are not downwardly compatible. Some German States have authorized the DVB-H standard generally planned for mobile TV. Spain is not that far along.

A future for digital radio as a broadcast medium remains hard to pin down. Early adopters in the UK, Denmark and Norway were wedded to a single standard receiver approach with more consumer choice and better quality the main selling points. Later adopters – like Germany – benefit from technical advances on the receiver side offering multiple standards somewhat seamlessly.

Broadcasters, generally, remain hesitant – now more than ever – because of the costs and government funding is expected. Those without public funding see an incremental increase in competition as a nightmare, at least in the short term, ad revenue dry as a bone. Looming large for the long term creeping up on all is radio via internet protocol, which may be closer to consumers, making all the structural investment hard to sell to the accountants.

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