The Australian radio industry is set to have another explosion of the size of AM Stereo.
One of the panels at the Big Sound music conference in Brisbane this week was about `Digital Radio: Transforming The Industry`. The consensus was that the terrestrial radio networks are clutching at straws if they expect to have an impact when digital broadcasting is introduced next year.The Australian commercial radio industry is preparing for the Introduction of digital broadcasting 20 years as it was first touted as “coming soon”.
Radio’s last major turkey was AM Stereo in the 80s. Digital Radio has all of the ingredients to also be a main course at a Thanksgiving dinner.
That made way for a very entertaining panel at Big Sound.
Joan Warner from Commercial Radio Australia was singing the praises of the new technology when Mike Walsh, head of programming for the XFM network in the UK had to point out to her that it had been a failure in all other territories it had been rolled out.
That was just the window of opportunity Jarrod Graetz, head of programming for the Stripe Network needed to jump in and introduce a new, smarter model.
Stripe will launch in Australia on October 1. Unlike expecting listeners to purchase the expensive new device needed to listen to commercial digital broadcasts, Stripe uses the mobile phone networks and online technology to broadcast its programming.
?Everyone has a mobile phone and computer. Everyone carries a mobile phone with them, so Stripe is portable. Everyone works off a computer so the technology will travel with the Stripe audience everywhere.
Commercial digital broadcasts will be limited to locations where only the listeners who have already purchased their new receivers have them setup and then only to the territorial regions of the broadcast.
Stripe will be national on phones and international on computers.
Commercial music radio stations have been in a downward spiral ever since technology has made music available anywhere. Cumulative audience and time spent listening to commercial music stations has dropped substantially in the last 10 years.
Commercial music stations have failed to capture and dominate the youth market like they once did.
Will digital broadcasting stop the decline of the radio industry? There isn’t a chance in hell. However, that may have as much to do with formats than it does with technology. The younger marker no longer discovers new music on commercial radio. It happens now on the net and is listened to on their computer or iPod.
The 40+ audience is equally shattered by Australian commercial radio’s failure to recognize new music from the old artists. Who played the last Tom Petty, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Neil Young or Joe Cocker albums in Australia? Who recognizes that artists such as John Schumann, Russell Morris, Ross Wilson or Paul Kelly still release new music?
Commercial radio in Australia is dreaming if it thinks digital radio will save it. Look at your formats guys.
Let’s be honest. Nothing will change. Big Sound was the biggest music conference this country had ever seen. Not one person was Austereo, DMG or ARN attended.
I’ll leave you with a quote circa 1996 from the then head of Programming for Austereo. “We are not the music industry, we are the radio industry. We are not here to sell music, we are here to sell advertising”.
