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ftm Radio Page - May 6, 2016

If you are considering the digital future, you've probably lost it
Something about too many cooks... or engineers

Among radio broadcasters - and the consultants who love them – the debate continues about what, exactly, is the digital future. In Norway it’s a matter of some urgency as in a few months national radio channels will migrate to the DAB platform, leaving the FM platform to local stations. There are, still, many opinions.

“The road to digital radio is the internet,” said communications consultant Hans-Petter Nygård-Hansen in a debate about DAB with MTG P4 director Trygve Rønningen on TV2 (May 1). “We’re taking a very expensive detour through DAB, based on old technology and old decision that were taken before the internet came along. Young people today are not going to want a DAB radio. They’re going to want their smartphones… and consume everything digital.” (See more about digital radio here)

Mr. Rønningen’s counter-argument was equally robust. “If you sit in a car with internet radio you discover how bad the web is. Radio must be free and the internet is not free.”

Indeed, the DAB family of platforms has been around a good long time, long enough for academics to explore where, if anywhere, it sits in the greater digital realm. “We are facing a digital ruin,” offered Leuphana University professor of digital cultures Hermann Rotermund, quoted by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (May 1). DAB was “the engineering fantasy of public broadcasters in the 1980’s.” He noted that there are six and a half million DAB devices in Germany after several years of promotion compared with 300 million FM radio receivers.

“Marketable services” promised by DAB proponents, from navigation to podcasts, “emerged on the internet,” he said. “In financially and institutionally protected public broadcasting, utopian cloud kingdoms were built, never grounded by consumer needs (or) market analysis.”

Private-sector resistance to digital radio platforms is “less inspired,” he observed. “Business models of internet applications require… a different mindset than broadcasting. Successful online offerings require concepts other than cost per thousand.”

“Spotify is to radio what Uber is to taxi services,” mused media academic Regula Stämpfli to kleinreport.ch (May 3). “New media does not exist, it connects.”

Younger audience farther away than ever
The game can’t be won with yesterday’s rules

The wants and needs of a youthful audience provide continual challenge for radio broadcasters. The entire media realm jitters uncontrollably in the quest to understand young people. Fancy data crunching doesn’t help much.

Public broadcaster Radio France has its radio channel for young people, ratings-challenged Mouv’. A year ago director general Mathieu Gallet strongly suggested the channels’ survival on the FM band depended on a better showing in the Mediamétrie audience estimates because “FM broadcasting costs money.” Just under half the Mouv’ budget goes to transmission costs.

Changes at Mouv’ over the last year or so have focused on social media, considered all-important for reaching young people, and, of course, more music. The national ratings have budged a bit. “The average age of our listeners is now 30 years old against 34 years in 2014,” said Mouv’ director Bruno Laforestie, quoted by Les Echos (April 29). Listeners to Skyrock, the national commercial hip-hop music channel, average 29 years. (See more about media in France here)

It’s not good enough, apparently. Mouv’ will now “refocus” on 15 to 24 year olds with an end of year deadline for achieving a 1% reach share, double the recently released Mediamétrie national audience estimate. Don’t, for a minute, believe that public broadcasters ignore the ratings. If moving Mouv’ musically more toward hip-hop and away from indie rock doesn’t work in the next few months, it’s off to the internet.

UK public broadcaster BBC started refocusing Radio 1 toward younger listeners a couple of years ago, mostly under pressure from commercial broadcasters. Chasing away older, established listerner worked: ratings, quite expectedly, crashed. Young people in the UK, teens mostly, have deserted traditional radio for digital platforms.

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