News

In many of my speaking engagements, I talk about the opportunities that digital offers radio stations - particularly in terms of brand extensions. One of the examples I give is the Radio Academy Award-winning Absolute Radio, which, apart from the main Absolute Radio service, has a selection of additional stations based on decades: Absolute Radio 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s; and Classic Rock.

Frontier Silicon, the world leader in technology solutions for digital radio receivers, is the first technology provider to receive formal confirmation that its solutions are Digital Tick Mark compliant. The Digital Tick Mark is being introduced in the UK this year to give consumers confidence that digital radios purchased are “future ready”.

We are now finalizing FM switch-off plans and looking to provide listeners with digital-only sources of radio. Listeners may choose to tune in to radio via their smartphones and online, but the majority of digital radio listening remains via DAB/DAB+, which is and will remain, the backbone of radio broadcasting.

Monitoring report from the Czech Telecommunications Office informs that the CTO has withdrawn 12 frequency assignments in the band 1452-1492 MHz bands ("L") for distribution of terrestrial digital radio broadcasting T-DAB. Download press article (pdf)

The German/Swiss automotive workshop sponsored by Digital Radio Germany Initiative, the ARD Project Office for Digital Radio, and Swiss marketing company MCDT was held in Zurich yesterday with attendees from the Broadcast, Automotive, and Appliance industries. One of the many purposes of the workshop was the desire to establish common strategies to develop and promote DAB+ in the car.

The conference "DAB - Innovation Day - Radio in the 21st Century" took place in Prague today. One of the main issues summed up by Czech Radiokomunikace was that there is no plan for a transition from analog to digital.

Digging deeper into the numbers, one of the main catalysts for this growth has been digital radio – both in terms of listening via a digital platform and listener growth for digital only radio stations.

Dee Ford, Group Managing Director Radio, Bauer Media, said: “… To deliver almost half of listening through digital sources is a tremendous achievement, demonstrates our continued commitment to digital and it sets up our business extremely well with a strong and healthy digital future as DAB grows and we move towards switchover.”

Listening to radio on AM/FM in London has fallen below 50% for the first time (48.6%, down 10% year on year). 55% of Londoners listen to radio on a digital platform each week, and digital listening in London is now 44.1% of all radio listening hours, up 9% from 40.3% in Q1 2013.

27.1 million people now tune in to radio via a digitally enabled receiver - DAB radio, digital TV and online. In total, 25 million adults have access to a DAB receiver, up 10% year on year.