Ciao from the European conference of the National Association of Broadcasters in Rome where I've come to see what we can learn for the Radio Festival 2007.
The opening session was like a Ryder Cup of radio with David Goldberg from Yahoo USA pitched against Phil Riley from Chrysalis. After a negative reading of radio's prospects across the pond from David, Phil gave us a spirited defence of the medium in the UK . He recognised the problems presented by rival attractions like the iPod and the internet and admitted that Galaxy's revenues were down 40% over two years because media buyers are following the fashion for You Tube and My Space without looking at the data (52 mins consumption per month for a teenager compared to 453 mins a month). But he argued that with 50% of young Birmingham tuned to Galaxy and 30% to Kerrang, commercial stations were still able to attract under 25s and that the US experience will not be replicated in the UK because we've already understood the advantages of interactivity via text and websites where the US stations are lagging behind. 1-0 to Europe in the first head-to-head.
Elsewhere James Cridland from Virgin announced that at several times of the listening day numbers on the station's 'alternative' platforms (DAB, DTV, internet etc) actually outnumber their nationwide AM listening.
Digital has been the theme of the day. Switzerland will switch off FM in 2010. Norway wants to do it in 2014. Digital is cheaper to run and allows more choice. So how are the big radio groups going to deal with migrating listeners to the new platform without losing them to rival brands? Can individual stations cope with trailing 'rival' services on DAB? Do the PDs want to turn high-cost FM listeners into low-cost DAB listeners? Watch this space, or rather don't.
Skip Pizzi (real name) from Microsoft explained that the issue for heritage broadcasters is to accept that 'radio' is now two businesses - content provision and service provision. And you can't be in both. He said it took the arrival of World War 2 to get World War 1 classified as such.
The moon is in the sky like a, .......... er, well a big pizza pie. Arrividerci.
