The Future Is Digital
I could be about to describe a horrible anxiety dream, but I'm not. The truth is I gave a presentation to some of the top bods in the radio industry during which I actually offered to strip naked and run around the room.
I'll get to the reason for that in a moment, but let me tell you a little bit more about the actual event. It was organised by Ofcom Scotland whose Director Vicki Nash greeted us all as we arrived at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Glasgow. By 'us' I mean a real variety of radio people drawn from the commercial and community sector and one or two folk from the ´óÏó´«Ã½. We were there to talk about the future of radio in the digital world.
The most controversial speaker was Quentin Howard, President of the World DAB Forum. It's his job, he said, to tell people that DAB is the future for radio broadcasters, not just in the U.K. but in Europe and across the world. He listed country after country where DAB was taking off and where listeners would get added value from visual content on their sets and so on. He reminded me of one of those RAF officers you used to see in war movies. The ones who would stand in front of a map briefing the fighter pilots on their next mission.
"Of course, "he said, acknowledging there have been outspoken critics of the platform, "there are a few DAB terrorists out there who like to throw bombs at us and walk away. These people should be shot."
This extreme description of a DAB-doubter prompted quite a reaction from my colleagues in the commercial radio sector who say that have "sunk" £200 million into DAB in the past ten years but have seen no return on their money. There were stories of people who could only get a signal if they took their DAB sets to an upstairs bedroom. Others talked about the lack of actual sets that were available. In-car DAB was still a rare thing.
Quentin allowed that DAB had got off to a poor start in this country unlike Australia which, he said, had had a textbook launch. That didn't seem to make anyone feel better.
In the afternoon we heard from Lisa Kerr, the External Affairs Director at the Commercial Radio Companies Association. She talked about the challenges facing the industry - mainly economic - but also threw in a video of a radio stunt in which a man stripped naked in the studio and was then led out into the street. There was more to it than that, I'm sure, but by that time I had taken my seat at the front table and I couldn't quite follow what was happening on the screen behind me.
When it came my turn to speak about our online Zones experiment I admitted to the audience that I had no similar video with which to keep their attention.
"But if there's a lull, " I said, "I could strip off myself and run around the room."
Laughter, of course, but no real encouragement to actually do it.
Luckily.
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