No Digital Consensus

Michael Hedges March 4, 2011 Follow on Twitter

People, we must admit, are analogue. They eat in analogue, sleep in analogue, work in analogue and play in analogue. People even think in analogue. If going digital is the answer to everything, what is the question?

“What I see in the current environment is a lack of consensus about the future of radio,” observed European Commission (EC) Vice President for Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes to the Association of European Radio (AER) annual meeting (March 3). Radio broadcasting has been off the EC’s radar since governments and broadcasters agreed it was but a local, therefore less consequential, medium. Technology and, certainly, the technology industry is not just on the radar, it is the radar.

Commissioner Kroes talked about digital radio as a lost opportunity. As most every other medium has made a transition to the digital realm, stuck in analogue are radio listeners. In the 25 years since the Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) standard was invented many of those who should have easily recognized the benefits simply yawned. Why fix something, they asked, not broken?

“My job is to help content providers scale up their offer at least to the single market size and that cannot be done with FM analogue radio alone,” said Commissioner Kroes. “We cannot forget the European aspects of this issue.” Internet radio (Web Radio) has leapt over DAB in several countries, the content “offer” being wide, varied and robust, certainly more in line with the single market ethos. Digital radio broadcasting, DAB and otherwise, has been mired with local issues, economics, rivalries and, then, inertia.

“We must get to the bottom of the problems holding back the roll-out of digital radio,” the Commissioner demanded. “We must understand exactly why the legal frameworks for digital and online deployment are so disparate across Europe. We need to understand why the EU-wide consensus in 1986 that led to the technically impressive DAB standard has drifted to today’s inertia. Is it because digital radio is the new ‘betamax’? Or are the differences in success between GSM for mobile and DAB and DAB+ for radio due to a more complex set of issues? I think that there is great potential for digital radio, as the UK and Danish experiences demonstrate.” (See AER statement here)

Radio has long been a vastly misunderstood medium, particularly by policy makers. It’s a companion as much as a deliverer of services. Television is much more literal. Mobile phones even more so. Upwards of 80% of all Europeans spend time each day with one or more radio channels, a percentage largely unchanged for decades. While radio listeners seek novelty – the new and different – from this companion they expect the familiar, the brand name, the DJ, the dial position. Real people are less enamored by change for its own sake than the restless technophiles.

And radio broadcasters, in the private sector at least, have greeted digital radio with considerable skepticism. DAB was developed by public broadcasters, raising questions about competitive intentions. Those broadcasters entirely supported by commercial activity and watching carefully trends, action and the bottom-line, saw little potential and considerable expense if unique channels were to develop. Who would gleefully invest in cannibalizing a business?  Commissioner Kroes noted digital radio’s success in Denmark, where commercial radio broadcasting is threatened with extinction by the market dominance of the public broadcaster.

Commissioner Kroes, as is her job, pitched the benefits of the single market in spectrum policy, intellectual property rights and advertising rules. Radio broadcasting, however, is ruled locally by each Member State. Sixteen European countries, as she mentioned, have no policies on digital radio. Those countries most supportive of digital radio, all with dominent public broadcasters, continue to find resistance from the private sector and, notably, consumers.

“The over-40’s will be listening to radio on FM for the next 40 years,” said the astute observer of European media Klaus Goldhammer last year. The Norwegian government recently set a hard date – 2017 – for most, not all, analogue radio switch-off, a step never taken when medium wave radio broadcasting migrated to the FM band. Legislating consumer behavior doesn’t work and only creates frustration.

“I need your support to develop the right answers to those questions,” said Commissioner Kroes toward the end of her remarks. Perhaps the right questions would be in order.

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