News

Commercial Radio Australia have released listening statistics for 2013, and it's good news for the radio industry. The cumulative audience has grown by 2.4% since 2012, with more than 9.7 million people listening to metro commercial radio each week.

Listening to live and local commercial radio, particularly while in the car, continues to be the activity of choice for Australians, with the summary of commercial radio listening for 2013, showing commercial radio grew its weekly cumulative audience by 2.4%.

The outlook for the Australian radio advertising industry continued to improve in 2013 as official industry statistics showed commercial radio advertising revenue increased in all five metropolitan markets in December.

Fresh from the successful licence auction for commercial digital TV channels last month, the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission is looking to auction about 4,000 similar licences for digital radio early next year.

SwissMediaCast AG introduced two new regional digital radio networks on Jan. 1, 2014. The networks cover the Berne/Freiburg region and eastern Switzerland.

With digital radio gaining momentum in key markets around the world, a growing number of car OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers are offering in-car digital radio systems. The new chip from NXP, the SAF360x offers the best-in-class reception, series significantly enhances digital audio quality via advanced features such as Maximum Ratio Combining for DAB and HD Radio, and scalability for single, dual and triple tuner use cases.

As Malaysia awaits a decision about the future of digital radio, a DAB Workshop in collaboration with Radio Televisyen Malaysia (RTM), is set to be organised in Kuala Lumpur from February 28 to March 4.

Andy Street, managing director of John Lewis, said that this year the must-have products included tablets, indoor and outdoor Christmas lights, crackers, coffee machines, gift food, Lego, hair straighteners, DAB radios, cashmere, audio streaming systems and beauty and fragrance products from brands including Liz Earle, Clarins and Chanel.

Digital radio listening saw strong growth towards the end of the year with over 40% of all radio listening in Norway done via digital.

All five metro radio markets in Australia ended the year on a high as December advertising revenue increased across the board, including Adelaide.