[cma-l] UTV Radio chief exec warns of 'two-tier' future

[Salvatore Scifo]

Source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/feb/03/utv-radio-two-tier-future


UTV Radio chief exec warns of 'two-tier' future

Local radio stations left behind on analogue would cease to exist after 
digital switchover, says Scott Taunton

* John Plunkett
* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 3 February 2010 16.59 GMT


The UTV Radio chief executive, Scott Taunton, today warned that digital 
switchover risked creating a "two-tier" environment in which small local 
radio stations left behind on analogue would cease to exist.

Taunton, whose company owns TalkSport and 14 local stations, attacked 
plans to shift national and large regional services to digital audio 
broadcasting (DAB) while leaving smaller local stations and community 
broadcasters on FM.

The UTV Radio chief executive said not enough investigation had been 
done of a rival technology, DAB+, which would have the capacity to 
transfer all stations to digital, including smaller local commercial 
broadcasters.

"It will create a two-tier system," Taunton told the House of Lords 
communications committee's inquiry into digital TV and radio switchover.

"It's like keeping analogue television services while moving the vast 
bulk of services on to digital television, and expecting consumers to 
come out of Sky or their digital service and back to analogue to listen 
to them."

Taunton said his group, which left the commercial radio trade body, the 
Radio Centre, in protest at its policy towards the government's digital 
economy bill, had "significant concerns" about the proposed 2015 
switchover to DAB.

"There are a number of avenues that we don't believe have been fully 
investigated at this stage. We don't believe there is a significant 
benefit in rushing through the legislation and tying ourselves to a DAB 
platform that gives a digital future to some stations but leaves 100 or 
120 commercial stations on AM and FM," he added.

"We operate FM radio services – Tower FM in Bolton and Radio Wave in 
Blackpool. They serve their communities very well but there is not the 
capacity for them on the [DAB] multiplex. Under the current proposals 
they would be left behind on FM, and in all likelihood these audiences 
would be eroded to the point where they would not be viable in the future."

William Rogers, the chief executive of local radio group UKRD, which 
also quit the Radio Centre over its approach to the digital economy 
bill, said the bill was "ill-considered" and "poorly executed".

But John Myers, the former chief executive of GMG Radio who wrote a 
government-commissioned report into commercial radio ahead of Lord 
Carter's Digital Britain report, said any delay of the bill would be a 
disaster for local radio and called on media regulator Ofcom to support 
smaller stations by giving them local licences. GMG Radio is part of the 
group that publishes MediaGuardian.co.uk.

"The whole world is going digital. For radio to remain analogue in a 
digital world is not viable," Myers told the committee.

But radio analyst Grant Goddard painted a bleak history of digital radio 
in the UK, listing some of the 14 digital-only stations that have closed 
in the UK since DAB radio launched in 1999, including ITN News, 
Primetime Radio and Capital Disney.

"They failed to attract a sufficiently large audience. Not one single 
digital station [in the UK] has managed an operating profit," said Goddard.

"The commercial radio industry mantra was 'build it, they will come'. 
There was no massive marketing, no huge expenditure. Throughout the 
early years of DAB the commercial radio industry wanted to believe it 
was just around the corner, that you just had to hang on and wait. But 
they never actually did come."

Goddard said DAB might become a home for niche services, such as traffic 
and travel information, Premier Christian Radio and the BFBS armed 
forces channel, rather than mainstream broadcasters.