| DAB has "55 million consumers yawning"6th February 2009 I haven't finished the articles I'm writing in response to the Digital Britain report backing the BBC and commercial radio's recommendation that DAB should become "the" main digital radio platform (however, the Digital Britain report actually backed DAB to become "a primary distribution network for radio" -- note "a primary network" not "the primary network") and that Internet radio shouldn't figure in the long-term plans for digital radio. But the following recording of ex-BBC man Azeem Azhar speaking on this week's Guardian's Tech Weekly podcast pretty much sums up my views on the subject anyway: Recording of Azeem Azhar criticising Digital Britain backing DAB on Guardian Tech Weekly podcast Azeem Azhar's overall conclusion is that DAB has "55 million consumers yawning". Couldn't put it better myself.
Vested interests I would disagree about what's behind the decision to back DAB, though. In my opinion it isn't primarily because some of the powers that be were around at the time when DAB was first conceived, although that will be part of the reason -- see the comment below on Stephen Carter's vested interest in not wanting to see DAB fail, for example. I think by far the main reason behind the decision to back DAB is simply because the BBC and commercial radio are trying to protect their audiences by pushing everyone onto DAB so that people don't end up listening via the Internet, because their stations face so much competition on the Internet as there are 10,000+ stations, and the broadcasters think that they'd lose listeners if Internet radio became popular.
And Stephen Carter, the Communications minister
behind the Digital Britain report, also has a major vested interest
in DAB becoming "successful" (that's an impossibility, because DAB
is being propped up by the BBC lavishing so many TV advertising
campaigns on it -- without those TV ad campaigns it would
undoubtedly have failed by now, so it could never be described as
being successful), because Stephen Carter invested NTL's money when
he bought 33% of the Digital One national DAB multiplex when he was
chief exec at NTL in the 1990s. Stephen Carter obviously doesn't
want to be seen to have backed a lemon. Stephen Carter was always a
big fan of DAB when he was the chief exec of Ofcom as well. It
always pays to have friends in high places, eh. | |||||||||||||||
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