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Speech given to the Voice Of The Listener & Viewer's Spring Conference

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Good morning everyone, and thank you very much for inviting me to talk to the VLV once again.

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This year will be the 40th anniversary of modern ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio. In 1967 the ´óÏó´«Ã½ reorganised its radio services in response to what it called "a year of challenge and opportunity". A Government White paper on Broadcasting in December 1966 had authorized the ´óÏó´«Ã½ to extend the scope of its radio services in two significant directions – first to deliver a new service devoted to, and I quote, "the provision of a continuously popular music programme" – and the second development concerned Local Radio.

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The result was the end of the old ´óÏó´«Ã½ services – the Light Programme, The Home Service, The Music Programme, Study Session, the Sports service and the Third Programme.

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The ´óÏó´«Ã½ had decided, with judicious reallocation of spectrum, to create four new services...

• Radio 1 for popular Music;
  
  
• much of the Light Programme became Radio 2, (although it was home to Woman's Hour and Any Questions in those days);
  
  
• The Music Programme, Third Programme, Study Session and Sports Service became Radio 3 (with Sport dominating Saturday afternoons);
  
  
• and much of the Home Service became Radio 4 ( whilst still broadcasting orchestral and chamber music concerts).

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... and it decided to launch a chain of Local Radio Services starting with Leicester on 8 November 1967.

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The 1968 ´óÏó´«Ã½ Handbook was anxious to assure listeners that "the numbers do not, of course, imply any degree of priority at all".

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I am not going to spend all my time talking about history. This conference is about the future and I intend to concentrate on that, but organisations should never forget where they came from. Their histories shape the present and will help shape the future. And, as we celebrate Radios 1, 2, 3, and 4 and the start of ´óÏó´«Ã½ Local Radio in the next few months, understanding why they were created will help us as we make difficult decisions about the future direction and shape of the ´óÏó´«Ã½.

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The ´óÏó´«Ã½ has just gone through the longest debate about its future that I can remember. For over three years we have been scrutinised and challenged, as we negotiated the new Charter with government – what is our cultural role? What is our educational role? Do we have a civic role? Is entertainment a central part of our public remit? Are we too dominant in the market? Are we simply too big?

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The outcome of the debate, as you know well, is a new Royal Charter, the eighth, lasting for another ten years. And we also have a new system of regulation. After 80 years the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Governors have been replaced by the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Trust. At Easter we heard who our new Chairman was to be.

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In January, Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, announced the Licence Fee settlement for the next six years. It's public knowledge that we were disappointed about the level of the Licence Fee settlement – it's tough. But we also know that the licence–fee gives the ´óÏó´«Ã½ certainty of funding which no commercial rival enjoys. And although we believe it offers good value in terms of the services it pays for, we know it is also a significant burden for many households in this country.

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So it sounds as if everything is sorted and all we have to do is go on as before ... well no. I know that, despite our being granted the new Charter, the debate about the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s role has not stopped, but will carry on throughout the next ten years and I think it is vital that the ´óÏó´«Ã½ continues to win the argument for a central role in UK broadcasting after digital switchover, and that must include a role for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio.

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The privilege of receiving the licence–fee brings many responsibilities – the most important is to deliver the best possible services to our licence–fee payers. And a tight settlement means we are going to have to make some very difficult choices to ensure we do just that.

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With RPI at 4.8%, and a proportion of the licence fee ring–fenced for digital switchover, the money for our core services amounts to roughly an RPI minus 3% settlement.

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Last time I addressed this spring conference, in 2001, I warned that: We're all facing a very uncertain, challenging future in broadcasting. And I went on to say that – Radio is going through as revolutionary a change as TV. New technologies offering new opportunities and new threats...

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I told you that: There are now over 5,000 radio stations streamed on the Net. Our audiences, whether we like it or not, have access to a whole new world of radio stations – they can listen to jazz stations from New Orleans, rock stations from New York, or even to stations which exist only virtually. And people are listening.

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I said that: Radio and Online are converging ... Radio …gained 20 million page impressions in March!

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What has changed over these 6 years?

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Well, our page impressions in March 2007 were not 20 million – they were 139 million! We had 15 million live listening hours on the internet, 13 million on-demand requests and 9 million podcasts that same month.

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The broadcasting landscape is still changing rapidly, faster than anyone can remember – High Definition TV, DAB digital radio, broadband, the World Wide Web, interactivity, MP3 players and podcasting – and these new digital technologies are changing the way our audiences consume our output. It is really revolutionary – and frightening. None of us knows for certain how the landscape will look in ten years time.

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From radio to audio

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Students of ´óÏó´«Ã½ job titles, and I am sure there are many in this room, may have noticed that last summer the ´óÏó´«Ã½ had a Director of Television and a Director of Radio ... but no longer. There is now a Director of ´óÏó´«Ã½ Vision and my title is now Director of Audio & Music.

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Why the change? Not because we think radio doesn't still exist, but because there's a whole world of audio out there now, not just radio.

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The fact is that all newspapers are going into audio online with their own podcasts and audio programmes. The Sunday Times offers a Music Show. The Guardian – a round up of European football action. The Observer – a weekly Film Review. Gillian's own newspaper, the Telegraph, regards itself as multimedia, not simply print.

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Individual artists like Ricky Gervais are going direct to audiences with their own podcast content. This is a world of audio where radio is just a part. There's a new video world – of Google News and Microsoft – where television is just a part.

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If the ´óÏó´«Ã½ is going to thrive in this 21st century global media market, it has to recognise the broadcasting world has changed and make the investment that's needed in new ways of reaching audiences and delivering high quality content, even when it has a tight licence fee settlement.

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It also has to make the case for its continued existence in a world that's increasingly dominated by huge global players like Google and Apple.

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Bringing the best of everything

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Radio 4 are broadcasting the 59th Reith Lectures this month with Jeffrey Sachs – "Bursting at the Seams" – calling on the world to co–operate to tackle the twin challenges of poverty and disease. Not everyone agrees with his thesis. You would not expect that. The role of a Reith Lecturer, since the very first lecture was delivered by Bertrand Russell, is to provoke, to be polemical, to make listeners think.

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Back in the 1920s, when Lord Reith was creating the ´óÏó´«Ã½, he defined its role as "to bring the best of everything to the greatest number of homes." And that's what the fledgling ´óÏó´«Ã½ immediately did. Wireless listeners were offered a choice of plays, concerts of popular and classical music and all kinds of talks and variety programmes.

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There was news too but you couldn't hear a ´óÏó´«Ã½ News bulletin until after seven in the evening. The powerful newspaper proprietors of the day had argued that to do broadcast news earlier would undermine their business. Market impact! Where have we heard that before?

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To a modern ear, Reith's approach sounds paternalistic and out of date. But his principles – inform, educate and entertain – have provided the philosophical underpinning for public service broadcasting for 80 years. Since the day I joined the ´óÏó´«Ã½ – a long time ago – they have influenced my approach to programming. Can they sustain us in the future?

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Does the impact of new technology undermine the philosophy? I have said the pace of digital take–up has already been faster in the UK than anyone expected.

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If you take radio listening in this country, more than 26 million people now say they either own a DAB digital radio or have listened via digital TV or the internet. More than 11 million of them are internet listeners, a 90% increase in the last four years.

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The Archers "on-demand"

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Earlier this year, the papers were full of stories claiming that The Archers on Radio 4 had lost over 100,000 listeners in the last quarter of 2006, and speculated that the loss had been as a result of storylines – Ruth's possible affair with Sam, and Ian and Adam's marriage.

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Well, I hate to undermine a good story but if my newspaper colleagues had delved a little deeper they would have found a far more interesting story.

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Listenership to The Archers' first broadcast at 7 o'clock in the evening on Radio 4, had in fact gone up. Listenership to the repeat broadcasts at lunchtime the following day and to the omnibus had gone down.

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Yes, The Archers had lost listeners on traditional broadcasting, as measured by Rajar ... but in the broadband, internet space there had been a remarkably different story.

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In the same quarter of 2006, requests to hear The Archers on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Player jumped from 650,000 a month to 1.1 million a month – a staggering 60% increase. Audiences, eager to follow the story lines, had moved from the traditional linear listening into "on-demand."

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Radio audiences are changing. They still want great programmes and quality content but they want it when they want to listen, not when we tell them to listen. The ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Player, which allows you to hear programmes for up to seven days after they have been broadcast, was developed in–house. We have provided a testing ground for the whole radio industry – the first regular on-demand service, the first opportunity to download programmes, the first regular podcasting – and showed the way forward. That is an important public service contribution. We have to go on experimenting so that radio remains essential in the lives of our listeners.

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Of course the ´óÏó´«Ã½ has its faults. It has many. But it is wrestling with many of the same issues as the rest of the public sector. How do we modernise? What do we need to reform? How do we use the market? How do we drive efficiencies and improve quality of service at the same time. How do we ensure we put the priorities of our users – our audiences – first?

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This is a challenging licence fee settlement. Over the next few months, the ´óÏó´«Ã½ – both the Trust and the Executive – will have to make decisions on how the money is spent, and radio will not be ring fenced from those difficult decisions. But even with a tight licence fee settlement, we know that audiences want us to invest in technology so that they can interact with programme–makers, share their own content and take an active part in the whole process.

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Journalism

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They also want us to invest in quality programming, and though the three year Charter Review debate was frequently heated, the one thing no one ever disputed was that the first principle of public service broadcasting was the idea of impartial, dispassionate, fair and accurate journalism. Journalism free from governmental influence.

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The past few years have seen, across the world, intimidation and violence against journalists rise – not just in war zones but in places like Turkey and Russia. The ´óÏó´«Ã½ has found it difficult to get its broadcasting into Russia since the Litvinenko murder.

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The terrible kidnapping of Alan Johnston underlines the dangers our journalists face. Mark Thompson, our Director-General, put it succinctly when he said: "It's the impartiality, the objectivity that free journalistic inquiry aims at, which brings the offence."

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It's at the heart of our public purpose to provide the public with the facts and as much objective analysis as we can, so that they can make up their own minds about what is happening here and elsewhere in the world. Of course we make mistakes, but it's what we strive to do and when we succeed we, I would contend, have delivered real public value.

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But good journalism, serious journalism requires serious public investment, and as we make our tough choices, the continued funding of our journalism remains at the core of our contract with our licence payers.

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Today programme

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It is our job to provide a reference point to guide people through the maze of news sources that are now available via the internet. It's an extraordinary maze.

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All our radio news programmes are now more accessible to digital audiences. This year the Today programme will celebrate its 50th birthday. It has changed beyond recognition since its creation. If you go online, you can listen again to the whole of the latest Today programme as well as to individual items from the programme; you can subscribe to podcasts, and access any edition in the archive.

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We must never lose sight of the fact that it's the content that matters most of all. For me, one of the unforgettable moments from last year was when John Humphrys presented the Today programme from inside Iraq.

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His reports gave a fresh insight into issues such as reconstruction and corruption in the country, the daily routines of the British forces – as when in his account of the trip into Basra, he described the heat in the back of a Warrior which rises to 140 degrees.

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For me, that piece of on–the–spot reporting from John, brought the story to life in a way that no third–hand news report could possibly do. ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio must retain the ability, commitment and investment to produce content of that ambition and quality.

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We know we have to be ambitious in more than journalism and use our skills in video, audio and online to make a greater impact.

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The Tchaikovsky Experience

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Some of you may have enjoyed the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s Tchaikovsky Experience earlier in the year. It was not just a radio season. It was not just a television season. It was not simply online. It was all three at once.

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We cleared the Radio 3 schedules for a week to broadcast both Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky's complete works. We created 11 original TV programmes broadcast on three channels. Everything from a version of Swan Lake especially for ´óÏó´«Ã½ One to a two–part drama documentary, shot on location in Russia, for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Two. We devised a dedicated website offering a wealth of articles, videos and listening experiences. There were 188 thousand listening requests for Radio 3 programmes.

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This is one way that the ´óÏó´«Ã½ in the 21st century is radically different from anything that's gone before. In the past, radio and television went their separate ways. Now we believe that one way to make an impact is for the three mediums – radio, television and online – to work together to create an experience that is truly more than the sum of its parts. It offers something of value to everyone. You can go as far as you want to with it, as deeply into the music and the story behind it as your interest takes you.

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How do you categorise the whole experience? Is it information? Is it education? Or is it entertainment? I would say it's all three. But the ´óÏó´«Ã½ must do more.

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The ´óÏó´«Ã½ plays a crucial role in the cultural life of this country. You only have to consider the incredible range of music that it supports and nurtures. From experimental to folk and country, from classical to urban, and just about everything in between.

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This year is a year of anniversaries in radio. It is also the 80th anniversary of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ saving the Henry Wood Proms. In 1927 the Proms were heading for bankruptcy and the ´óÏó´«Ã½ took them over, invested in them and ensured a great music event grew to become one of the world's leading festivals, enabling audiencies to experience unique musical moments.

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Next week Nicholas Kenyon will announce his last season as Director of the Proms. He has been a wonderful creative leader – willing to take risks, to experiment and champion the new.

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Championing the new is what I believe the ´óÏó´«Ã½ must continue to do. Radio 3 is commissioning more new musical compositions than any other institution in the UK – more than 40 in this current year. That is a cultural underpinning that is vital for the health of the UK musical industries.

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Promoting new music and artists

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All the Proms concerts are streamed on our website and available on-demand for seven days after broadcast, like all our programming. They have stepped out of the traditional radio space into the audio world.

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My new role gives me responsibility for music across the whole of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ – radio, TV and online. The ´óÏó´«Ã½'s cultural role is not confined to classical music. It supports, and must continue to support, contemporary popular music.

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Like Radio 1's One Music online site – which is providing a new space for unsigned bands and artists. You can listen to the latest demo tracks, post your reviews and sign up to podcasts of music selected by the DJs. There's expert help on things every new band needs to know, including financial, legal and promotional aspects of the business.

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Over the next ten years of its Charter, the ´óÏó´«Ã½ must be able to demonstrate that it has supported and nurtured British talent as it has done in the past five years with some of the biggest artists and bands on the UK music scene today. They had demo tracks played by Radio 1 before they were signed up. It's quite a list – among the top names are Arctic Monkeys, Coldplay, Razorlight, the Killers and the Kaiser Chiefs.

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The challenge of reaching young people

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Some people will not agree that this is a public service role. Indeed there are those who have argued that the ´óÏó´«Ã½ should limit itself to a narrow band of serious programming – "Himalayan peaks" it was once called – and go to argue that public service music programming should exclude popular music.

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Over these past three years, I have been challenged as to the need for a public Service Broadcaster to use licence payers' money for Radios 1 and 2. It would be very convenient for some of our commercial competitors to limit the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s horizons thus.

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But the very nature of our public funding places an obligation on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ to reflect the wide range of enthusiasms of our owners, our licence–fee payers, and provide quality programmes and the best possible services that reflect those enthusiasms and music provides a soundtrack to our lives, celebrates it, grieves with it, satirises it and empathises with it.

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I have said on many occasions that I could not justify Radios 1 and 2 if they simply played chart music. A public service broadcaster must do much more. It must support the new, support UK talent, offer unique performance – and demonstrate that it does.

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Fifty nine per cent of the music played on Radio 1 in peak time is new music and 52% by UK artists.

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Radio 2 is the most popular radio station in the UK and it is because it invests in documentaries, like last Saturday's Soulsville, a Trevor Nelson documentary on Stax Records and their impact on music; because it finances one of our orchestras, the Concert Orchestra; because it commissions religious output; because it is prepared to spend over 20% of its budget on live music; because its schedules carry a wide range of programming from Folk, Jazz, Brass Band, Organ Music and Soul as well as R'n'B. Because it still has regular Arts programming. Because it commissions readings and comedy.

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We regularly monitor its performance against the commercial sector and most of the music played on Radio 2 is not played on any other mainstream radio station. It is daily introducing its audiences to music it did not know. I think that's exactly what the ´óÏó´«Ã½ should be doing.

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Radio needs to reinvent itself

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Over 90% of the UK population listens to radio each week. The 1990s were a radio success story. Predictions, (by others, not the VLV), that radio would be a dead medium by the millennium have proved false and audiences care more passionately about their radio services than TV channels. That will not surprise most of you.

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But, that 90% is remarkable when you consider how many more demands there are on people's leisure time as consumers spend more time on the internet and using mobile devices.

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But do not be complacent. That 90% hides a worrying trend. What if younger audiences slip away from mainstream media – never getting the radio habit?

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More than 13 million people in the UK now own portable MP3 players, and the vast majority don't include a radio. That's a real challenge for the radio industry, especially when it comes to attracting young listeners.

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In the 15–24 age group, 70% listen to their MP3 players on most days. In my childhood, they would have found themselves listening with their parents to the radio in the living room. In more recent years they might have bought a Walkman, a mini stack or a boom box and it just happened to have a radio in it. Now they buy an iPod and the radio is missing.

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Radio must find new ways to make itself relevant and appealing for young people. If we don't, there is a danger of a generation growing up without any experience of radio.

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The need to make radio ubiquitous

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On Tuesday Ofcom published their Review of Radio which says in 2009 they will discuss switching off MW and in 2012 they will look at FM , if digital radio is in 50% of homes. But we must include the young in their vision of the future.

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So one of the key challenges for the radio industry is how to ensure that radio is included, not just in iPods, MP3 players and mobiles, but in future devices that haven't even hit the streets yet. That's a challenge that the whole of the industry, commercial and publicly funded, is going to have to work on together.

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And we must ensure that we provide content that young audiences actually want to listen to, is relevant for them. In the age of MySpace and YouTube we have to keep adapting and evolving.

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Visualisation of radio

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Our system of funding places an obligation on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ to take risks and to innovate and help radio reinvent itself. Because of our security of funding, it is the ´óÏó´«Ã½ that can regularly experiment, can be prepared to fail so we can chart a way forward for the benefit of the whole industry, commercial as well as public service.

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We led the way into on-demand and our television colleagues are now striving to catch us up. Over the past year we have experimented with the "visualisation of radio" – not turning radio into TV – but ensuring that when audiences access radio via their TV, or mobile phone, or on the internet they can get photos, track listings, information of programmes, and even videos of a live music session. If young people are going to YouTube, MySpace and Second Life, then let's make sure radio is there too.

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Supporting the creative industries

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Public service broadcasters have always supported the creative industries in the UK – not just the ´óÏó´«Ã½, but Channel 4 and ITV. And radio plays a special role.

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´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio supports writers for the benefit of the wider creative community. It commissions more new dramas every year than any other institution in the world.

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The ´óÏó´«Ã½ has always invested in comedy, stimulating the market, nurturing talent, giving us an opportunity to laugh at ourselves and helping us to build our national identity and consciousness – from ITMA and The Goon Show to Dead Ringers and Little Britain. When you commission comedy you take great risks. Most will fail, but if you don't take the risk you end up with safe, boring programming and the audience is the poorer ... and more importantly, the comedy talent pool shrinks. Last year Radio 4 commissioned Down The Line, its spoof phone-in programme by Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson. I think it's brilliant, but it could have fallen flat.

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The role of the public service broadcaster is to invest in British talent in every genre and help talent grow. Drama and Comedy are two of the most expensive genres on radio. But when they work, they are real value for money.

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The public service role – charting a way forward

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The ´óÏó´«Ã½ cannot exist without public support, enthusiastic public support. I think excellent, quality public service broadcasting delivers real democratic and cultural value and will continue to do so. It requires serious investment and, in exchange, must be prepared to demonstrate how it delivers public value.

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We are no longer living in an age when broadcasters can just tell people what's happening and serve up programmes for them. People expect to be able to tell us what they think. And to choose the content that interests them, to create the kind of services they want for themselves.

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The new ´óÏó´«Ã½ Trust will require us to show how we are distinctive in the market, how our audiences value, or do not value, our services. What educational outcomes we achieve from our programmes and activities. If we can demonstrate civic, social and cultural benefits, and I believe we can, then we will have a continuing role in reflecting and shaping our society.

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Radio, I believe, is the most personal medium of all. The voice in your ear that travels with you wherever you are, whatever you may be doing, whether you are alone or in company. On radio, stories and drama can be more vivid than any film because you draw your own pictures in your head. Radio presenters become best friends because their voices speak directly to you in a very personal way.

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I lost track of the numbers of people who were moved by the audio diaries of Nick Clarke, who died last year. The story of his last illness was deeply affecting by any standards, but there was more to it than that, and it had to do with the relationship that he established with his audience through the medium of radio and the integrity that shone through. They felt Nick was a personal friend although they had never met him.

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During the duration of the new Charter, our audiences will make new friends if we continue to invest in quality programmes and talent. So the choices we will have to make over the next few months, as we work out how to live within the constraints of this licence fee settlement, must be based on that understanding.

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Summing up

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To sum up, I'd say this: Do not take public service broadcasting for granted. Media fragmentation could dominate the future and see investment in quality content collapse.

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Over the next ten years and beyond there'll still be linear radio and TV, broadcasting programmes at scheduled times for those who want them. But the days when we, the broadcasters, chose the best of everything in classic Reithian style and everyone had to accept it are long gone.

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In the 21st century, people will be able to choose for themselves what's best for them, create their own stations. A Radio 2 that's all specialist music. A Radio 3 that's all classical music and no jazz? It's theirs. A ´óÏó´«Ã½ TV that's only comedy.

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The ´óÏó´«Ã½ across all its platforms can ensure that talent – writers, musicians, performers and journalists – flourish. That radio survives and thrives so that in 2017 you will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of modern radio and its astonishing health and impact.

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