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The future of radio is now much less obvious and clear than it appeared ten years ago. Instead of a transition from analog to digital audio broadcasting (DAB), there is a selection alternative technological options for digital audio delivery.This article studies how 43 people in key positions related to the radio industry in four European countries and Canada view the future of radio and which delivery technologies they consider will be most successful. In addition, it analyses the motives and reasons for why certain technologies are seen as more promising. Finally, it presents different future scenarios for radio media. The Future of Radio is Still Digital 1The development of digital audio broadcasting (DAB) began during the late 1980s in an EU-supported Eureka 147 project, originally intended to give the European electronics industry a competitive advantage through the digitalization of radio (Rudin 2006;Lax 2003).When DAB was first introduced in 1995, there was an optimistic and perhaps even deterministic expectation that the superior new digital radio system would replace analog FM radio in a relatively short and smooth transition from analog to digital audio broadcasting (O'Leary 1993;Kozamernik 1995;Mykkänen 1995). The first set-back came in the 1990s, when the USA and Japan decided to develop separate digital radio systems to protect their own national industries (Ala-Fossi & Stavitsky 2003) and DAB lost the chance of becoming a truly worldwide system for digital radio. However, with the support of the World DAB organization and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), it was widely adopted in Europe and altogether in 28 countries around the world within 10 years of its introduction (World DAB 2005). But even in those countries where DAB was implemented, the adoption rate of the new radio system was low:consumers were not interested in buying new, rather expensive digital receivers as eagerly as expected and the early phase of the classic S-shaped diffusion curve (Rogers 2003) was much less steep than anticipated. Despite the promises of new features, more choice and better (CDquality) sound, the benefits of DAB radio over FM radio were not obvious to everybody (Lax 2003).The basic design of DAB fits better together with large, nationwide broadcasting systems and it has been more successful in countries with strong public service radio organizations (Rudin 1999;Hendy 2000). However, this has not always been the case. According to our studies of the development of digital radio in Europe and Canada, the varied success of DAB has been highly dependent on different policy decisions made by national governments and broadcasters. It seems that where the government and the public service broadcaster have both The Future of Radio is Still Digital 2 been committed to DAB, as in the UK and Denmark, it has been possible also to pull the commercial radio sector in with economic incentives or regulation -or both. Only in these conditions has the consumer interest in DAB radio developed favourably. This is why ...

His research interests include community media, public service media, radio history, and the new digital platforms for radio and audio production, distribution and reception.

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His research interests include communication policy and emerging media technologies, and recent work has been on radio, in particular digital radio. As part of the Digital Radio Cultures in Europe group he co-authored Digital radio in Europe (Intellect, 2010). He sits on the Executive Committee of MeCCSA, the UK's Media, Communications and Cultural Studies Association and has served as chair of that organisation's Radio Studies network.