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Media Top Stories
Smaller stations express anger over radio amnesty
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 1 June 2010
Last week a number of smaller radio stations issued statements dissing the previously reported radio amnesty, the promotion set up by Digital Radio UK which aims to encourage radio listeners to dump their old FM radios and upgrade to Digital Audio Broadcasting.
Under the radio amnesty, which is being supported by the BBC, the bigger commercial radio groups and some retailers, people who trade in their old FM radios when buying a new DAB radio get a discount. With government and some in the industry hoping to take most mainstream radio services off FM in 2015, the amnesty is part of a bid to re-kickstart the sale of DAB radios, the uptake of which has been somewhat lacklustre in recent years.
But some smaller radio groups, who oppose the 2015 deadline for the big move to DAB, have hit out at the amnesty programme, arguing customers are being encouraged to dispense with their FM radios even though not all FM radio services are currently available on DAB, and some won’t even be come 2015.
As bigger stations started airing ads promoting the amnesty last week, the boss of independent radio network UKRD, William Rogers, told reporters: “I am not about to have UKRD’s name tarnished by this shabby little campaign. Misleading people is not appropriate and we will have no part in it. We are not prepared to encourage any of our listeners to go and replace their perfectly satisfactory analogue radio set with a DAB one which may not be able to pick up a DAB signal at all and, if it can, it may be a signal which may be wholly inadequate. Even worse, the very station that the listener may have heard the advertisement on may not be on DAB or even have a DAB future. This is absolutely appalling and one has to question both the moral and ethical basis for running such a campaign”.
Meanwhile the MD of Niocom, which owns Lancashire stations Central Radio and Dune 107.9, David Duffy told Radio Today: “It is ludicrous to think that we would encourage any of our listeners to go and replace their perfectly satisfactory analogue radio set with a DAB one on which they may not be able to pick up a DAB signal or any of our stations which will not be on DAB”.
Even Steve Penk, in his guise as owner of Manchester’s Revolution Radio, has stepped in to the debate. In an open letter to David Cameron, he writes: “An ‘amnesty’ is generally understood to be when something dangerous, illegal or harmful can be handed in with no risk of penalty. The inference of the ‘radio amnesty’ campaign – now being advertised heavily on BBC radio – is that conventional FM radio sets are about to become ‘white elephants’ and that the only way to listen in the future will be via DAB. What utter nonsense!”
Some hope that, while it’s true some stations won’t be available on DAB by 2015, combined FM/DAB radio sets, with an electronic programme guide system which puts stations from the two networks (and possibly online radio stations) next to each other, might overcome concerns from smaller and community radio organisations about the big radio networks going DAB-only. But with such combined radio sets still really in development, now does seem like an odd time to be encouraging FM listeners to dump their old radios in favour of DAB-only units.
