Fru Hazlitt: Radio should embrace online

Fru Hazlitt, the Saviour of Digital Radio, and chief exec of GCap, told the Radio Reborn conference (page might require registration) at the CBI conference centre in London this week that the industry should embrace online and the interaction it brings and not to be scared of it. She went on to say that “The scope of opportunity broadband gives all our brands to brand extend is huge, “ adding that: “It is so exciting so why would we ignore it?" And according to another source, the figures back up her point, because listening to GCap's online streams are up 71% year-on-year, and revenues from the Internet streams are up by a similar amount.

And on the subject of her DAB bombshell, she referred to GCap's tie-in with the iPod Touch (some of GCap's stations are available on the iPhone as well), and she said: "iPod Touch versus DAB, which one are you going to choose as a young kid?” I'd say that that doesn't only apply to young kids, either, I think it applies to young adults across the board, and I think that DAB is exacerbating the problem of young people deserting radio.

If the radio industry could bring itself to widen its horizons to include the Internet, rather than shunning it at seemingly each and every opportunity like they have done for the last several years -- with the only exception being GCap over the last year -- then they might be able to stop young people deserting radio in their droves, because listening to commercial radio by 25-34 years olds has dropped 34% since 1999, amongst 15-24 year olds it's dropped by about 20% since 2003, and even amongst 35-44 year olds it's dropped by about 14% since 2001. DAB was re-launched in 2002, so the large majority of these falls in radio listening have coincided with the time since DAB was re-launched, which is another indication that DAB is the wrong platform to use if they want to keep radio relevant to young people, whose lives are increasingly spent on the Internet.

Fru Hazlitt also said that the radio industry should look at how social networking websites such as Bebo have developed communities.

Jenny Abramsky, the BBC's Director of Radio, and the main person responsible for the UK incompetently adopting DAB, unsurprisingly said that the BBC remains committed to DAB, which shows that the BBC is unable to face up to the truth, and that they seemingly want to speed up the mass desertion of young people from radio rather than arrest its decline.

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