Fasten your seatbelts! A new breed of media – whether you realise it or not – is coming. Not so much ‘new’ as ‘modified’, and with simplicity and variety being the major drivers, this highly portable and flexible medium is set to provide an easier listening experience for the masses. The medium I’m referring to is Digital Radio (or DAB+: an upgraded version of Digital Audio Broadcasting). DAB+ is set to be launched throughout Australia on the 1st of July this year. With more choice, easier tuning, clearer sound reception, rewind and pause options, it has a number of improved benefits over the lower capacity DAB – which has been prevalent in the UK for the last few years.


So what does this mean for consumers? Apart from more choice, not a great deal. What does this mean for radio stations and brands? Quite a lot actually.

Digital Radio Sets - here to stay

The basic premise of Australia’s Digital Radio venture is that all existing radio stations will receive a free license for digital broadcasting. With this license the stations have a choice as to how many stations they will then create (anywhere between 1 -10 but for bitrate reasons ideally between 1 – 3). Each individual station will then be responsible for investing in digital infrastructure as well as planning, developing and managing all of the additional content that will be needed to fill the additional channels. The commercial stations will be looking for a number of ways to make these digital channels profitable. Take the Melbourne talkback radio station 3AW as an example, where it comprises mostly ‘talkback’ punctuated by brief advertising segments. Their first digital channel could be a copy of their existing analogue station – which will automatically be populated by the listeners with digital radio. Their second and third channels could then be variations of this – yet still appealing to 3AW’s vastly mature aged audience. Music driven content springs to mind as they play a list of older, more soothing melodies in an attempt to discourage their listeners from switching over to Gold FM or something similar.

Upon DAB+’s release, brands will be able to temporarily ‘takeover’ segments with their own programming. Think Bunnings with a DIY segment or Wizard with a program giving budgeting and financial advice (well at least it’s not Kochie anyway – is it just me or should this guy not be allowed near any broadcasted medium?). The ‘takeover’ idea is not original, but the digital interface is likely to provide a closer interaction with consumers as they can register interest in specific campaigns by pressing a button on their remote during airing. For this to work radio stations will need to come to the party too – as they will be the ones that need to invest in the tracking and recognition infrastructure. The other opportunities for advertisers include the insertion of scrolling text (like the type you commonly see when you tune into the weather report on breakfast shows), as well as showing both still and animated images to accompany the audio component.

Ultimately, a large part of Digital Radio success from a brands perspective will come down to the level of investment into infrastructure by the radio stations. Like all new technologies, I see there being huge rewards (from an engagement, positioning and profitability perspective) and a steep learning curve during its infancy as brands work out how best to engage their audience and monetize each campaign. Hopefully it doesn’t just become an excuse for each station to play homogenous content over a number of channels whilst maximising advertising revenue. If in fact it does get to a point of non-stop best bits of Derryn Hinch remixed, you may find lots of discarded digital radios by the side of the road.

Tags: DAB+, digital broadcasting, Digital radio, new channels

This entry was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 3:38 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.