Radio in the UK: Technology and Policy for an Industry in Transition

Abstract

Radio listening in the United Kingdom (U.K.) is dominated by two sectors: a small number of nationally-broadcast public service stations provided by the BBC, and a large number of regional or local commercial stations, mostly owned by three or four large radio companies.There are some nuances to this bald statement: the BBC also runs 46 local and regional radio stations, which account for one-tenth of all listening, while there are three national commercial stations accounting for a further tenth. In addition there is a small amount of listening to stations available only on digital radio platforms (around 6%) and a smaller percentage still (as yet unmeasured) of listening to newly emerging community radio stations. Yet the overall picture remains that around three-quarters of listening is to one or other of the two dominant forms, and in this respect, radio has changed little over recent decades from its traditional mode of reception.Yet radio, perhaps more than other media, has also embraced new digital technologies.Digital terrestrial radio broadcasts began some three years before television. Radio can now be listened to on a range of digital platforms -digital television, the Internet, mobile phones -and it has also been quicker than television to adopt new modes of delivery, based on the Internet. For example, programs have long been available for streaming over the Internet (live or later, 'on demand'), for downloading as, usually, mp3 files, or as archive material. In addition, nonbroadcast 'radio' programs, podcasts, abound on the Internet, and all of these can be carried 2 around on an mp3 player for mobile listening. Radio is thus also an innovative medium: in television, the equivalents of these audio options emerged much later.For some, then, radio is poised at a decisive moment in its history, the beginnings of its digital age, when conventional listening to linear programming made and scheduled by others may no longer be its only or foremost form. This chapter explores how U.K. radio has evolved to reach this point, an evolution of technology, institutions and regulatory approach, and considers the alternative directions radio might take in the future. To begin with, however, the resilience of radio should be recorded. Concerns within the industry about radio's future are not unprecedented: in the 1930s, and again in the 1950s, television was expected to replace radio entirely. Yet radio listening figures in the U.K. have been remarkably steady at about 22 hours per week over the past decade, comparing closely with the 25 hours of television watched each week over the same period; and radio continues to be listened to by nine out of ten of the population each and every week, as it has for many years (Ofcom, 2004, p. 35; Ofcom, 2010, pp. 214-6). So radio remains a vital medium, an important part of daily life for the vast majority of the population, more than eight decades after first becoming celebrated as a mass medium InstitutionalizationThe establishment of radio broadcasting in the U.K. was b...