The Future Of Radio

As MediaTel Group gears up for its Future Of Radio Seminar, Paul Fairburn, managing director of digital platforms at Chrysalis Radio, discusses why the radio industry has a bright future, with listener numbers bolstered by the emergence of new platforms and technologies…

With new technology breaking down barriers to entry and the consequent proliferation of new media platforms, there’s a common trend for journalists to proclaim the imminent demise of radio.

Taken at face value, the massive growth in broadband penetration, rising MP3 ownership and the expansion of digital TV appear ample reason to herald in the beginning of the end for radio, but the facts simply do not bear out such doom-laden stories.

Of all traditional media, radio seems to be suffering only slightly in terms of total consumption. No traditional medium will avoid having to adapt in this fragmenting market and we haven’t escaped unscathed, but the small decline we have experienced is in listening time, not overall numbers of listeners (figures for Q3 2006 show total listening at less than 5% below its all-time peak in Q1 2003). This decline is disappointing but hardly the end of radio as we know it. Ofcom were right to point out the threat to the smallest local stations, but I’ll direct my comments to radio as a whole.

UK radio has also suffered commercially, particularly from the rise in online advertising. MySpace use is tiny compared to listening to Galaxy, but MySpace clearly has the attention of the marketing community. We do have a challenge in helping marketers remember that radio listening is still a major element in overall media consumption, and that it has a continuing role to play in brand-building.

UK radio overall is in particularly good health with almost 90% of the population tuning in for an average 24 hours a week (per person), whilst UK commercial radio continues to dominate listening, boasting a 55% market share of 15-54 year olds.

So why are we doing so well when radio should apparently be on its last legs? The answer is surprisingly simple – media pundits have posited this as a winner-takes-all scenario, assuming that consumers are shifting their media allegiances wholesale.

But this mass migration has not happened and is not going to. Consumers simply absorb new media into their existing mix and increasingly enjoy them simultaneously. In particular, there’s a synergy between online browsing and radio consumption, with over half of online users concurrently listening to radio on a regular weekly basis and almost a quarter listening every time they access the web. Furthermore, radio and online work well together for music discovery and recovery – with radio the perfect music discovery channel and the internet currently the easiest way to recover it.

Far from being a threat, new technology seems to be strengthening radio’s position. After all, radio is radio whether you listen on-air, online, on mobile or as a podcast. Consequently, Chrysalis has embraced new technology and platforms as opportunities to extend our brands and to build deeper relationships with our advertisers.

Our LBC brand is a podcasting pioneer having launched the first UK radio subscription service – where users pay for material that has mostly already been on the air. They’re paying because they like what we do, and we’re delivering convenience. The chance to hear things that they would have missed without our help.

Multi-platform campaigns are an everyday part of our work with major advertisers; the annual flagship event ‘Galaxy in Ibiza’ is just one example of how we’ve taken radio content and major sponsors on-air, online and on to mobile for the past three years. We’re also continuously trialing new services such as a pilot scheme to enable DAB listeners to download a song they have heard on air to their mobile phones with the press of a button, over the DAB broadcasting spectrum (with an MP3 delivered to their PC shortly thereafter).

What’s more we have audiences that are loyal to our brands, to whom we can offer new services and features. The exciting new technologies and business ideas that pop up every day in mobile and the web are available to us, but unlike a start-up we have an audience, CRM systems and brand loyalty.

So what will the future look like for radio? The first obvious point is that if you mean by “radio” a box in the kitchen with a dial, presets and a speaker, then listening via “radio” will continue but slowly decline. But we don’t mean only that – why should we? Radio will be consumed on many more devices than it was in the past.

When consumers get a phone that can receive TV and radio, the radio listening takes a significant share of their consumption, and in places where they wouldn’t have consumed radio before. Radio listening goes up when people get mobile TV!

The final trend we see is the importance of personalities and talk. If all our music stations did was play music, substitution by an iPod would be a threat. But an engaging personality, relevant non-music content and humour make radio different. In fact at Chrysalis, on our LBC stations, we’re skilled in entertaining without music at all. And with listeners paying to enjoy it, we believe we’re on the right track.