I wrote a little post a while ago about the brilliant Improv Everywhere and how some of there ideas should inspire radio stations to do something different. Improv, by the way have just done a great Star Wars skit on the US equivalent on the Tube.

Anyway, today I saw a great clip on Funny or Die. They took the popstar Jewel to a karaoke bar to sing her songs and see if people recognised her. The clever thing, if you watch the clip below, is the planning/storylining of what would happen so as to make a great 'bit'.

If you're a radio station that has music and artists at its centre – are you doing things like this? Music is radio's bread and butter and we have great access to artists – but do we do enough that's not just an interview? I think a video like this would do a much better job of helping you to own core artists than some music demonstrators ever will.

So, a couple of posts this week talking about the digital upgrade.

There's still a significant chunk of radio people who are either 'on the fence' about 'DAB/digital' or are firmly in the 'no' camp.

If that's you, the one question I ask you to think about is "What will happen to radio industry if digital radio doesn't happen?"

In the UK, in the analogue world, the news is about consolidation and networking. Less stations, less choice and less jobs. However, crucially, at the same time, no room for new analogue competitors.

I often hear that the internet and mobile is radio's saviour. Yep – it might well be. It is however a completely unproven hypothesis. Internet listening accounts for just 2.9%. In other words it's a platform that can reach the most people in the UK, offers unlimited choice, is supported by every radio station and broadcasts at excellent audio quality (all the things that people say DAB needs) but still provides little UK radio listening (DAB provides 15.1%).

Is IP the platform, that on it's own, is going to be radio's real saviour? Do you think that by the time that figure gets anyway to be able to support a radio station with actual programming we'll have any new radio companies left to really take advantage of it?

It does of course make sense that at some point in the future ubiquitous broadband will allow radio to be consumed in volume that way, I just think the slow-take up we've seen (and is likely to continue) and the explosion in online choice of things that replace readio consumption means that it will be incredibly difficult for anything other than established players to make the transition from analogue to IP.

Indeed, whilst we're waiting for this IP-only future the existing analogue broadcasters will continue to dominate the airwaves whilst reducing their local commitments. The BBC will continue to be the excellent broadcaster it is (though always under threat from a licence fee settlement).

Now, in the short-term I don't imagine this scenario would drastically affect listeners. I imagine what would happen though is what we see in other countries without non-analogue platforms – a slow decline in total listening and a higher decline in the younger demographics (as they look to a variety of sources for music and entertainment – split over many different sources).

Analogue commercial groups will continue to prosper through cutting costs and taking their share of the shrinking radio advertising market. IP and mobile platforms will of course generate new types of services, but the radio listening  hours available means that companies providing radio programming are unlikely to be able to formulate a business plan that can cope with the smaller hours that IP (at least over at least the next five years) will deliver. I'm not aware of any Internet-only stations currently generating signficiant broadcast station-style hours – please leave a comment if you do.

I think UK Radio Player will start to make a difference to internet radio listening. Particularly it will improve the user experience of accessing online audio content – and that's definitely good news for operators.

I often look at my own radio station, Fun Kids. There's been periods where we've been on DTV, DAB and Online. DTV's good for reach, DAB provides all the hours (how we make any money) and whilst of course I have an IP stream (with mobile on the way) as a niche service without much format competition we're still very hard to just come across online. IP is good for people who know us and are out of area etc, but it's such a small number of people. We really wouldn't bother running Fun if it was IP only. I might well invest the money instead in an online product but it certainly wouldn't be a radio-based one.

The reason new entrants like Planet Rock, Absolute 80s, Jazz FM etc are around are because of the combination of DAB, DTV, Online and Mobile – this is 'digital' taking the benefits of each of the elements and working together.

I'm always amazed at radio people who are negative about DAB – as at the moment its the one thing that's giving the hours base for these new entrants to survive and turn themselves into real radio stations and businesses.

All technology is transitory. In telly – Black and White to Colour to Nicam to Widescreen to Freeview to Freeview HD. All requiring replacements. However each one took the platform to the next stage, new benefits, new entrants.

Take a moment to think that 694,000 people listen to Planet Rock every week. That's amazing. A big push of publicity took 6Music to over 1m listeners. Wow! If you work in radio – the success of these stations means your skills will continue to be in demand. As a radio person i'd rather not have to rely on the analogue operators thank you very much.

People in other countries can't believe we're not only growing radio listening, but that a quarter of it isn't even on AM or FM. They are all truly shocked. Their radio industries are fixed with their analogue platforms and a slow increases in internet listening. They see us as having freed ourselves from the analogue shackles.

A healthy radio industry needs plurality. An analogue and internet only future now will stifle innovation in radio programming and leave us at the mercy of existing operators with the hope that the BBC will be able to continue.

Reading around today the main arguments about the 'upgrade' are really about coverage and cars. Thank god. At least that's something that's easily fixable. There was the BBC announcement yesterday about 60-odd new transmitters to improve their national coverage and there's more announcements like that on the way. The people who have a proper in-car receiver rarely moan about coverage (it's a great user experience). If you've got a crap radio or it's not installed properly then i'm not surprised if it's not very good.

In-car roll-out though, is of course, a bit more of an issue (though it does only represent 20% of UK listening). I'm less concerned about line-fitting than I once was. Listening to recent announcements from Mini and the like, i'm confident that as we ramp up to 2013 every range will line-fit. The after-market needs more and better products, but with necessity the mother of invention i'm sure we'll see some developments.

Do we need to wait or reset to use a different digital radio broadcast platform? No. It's been a hard old slog to get where we are now, I don't think a change would be good for listeners or any of the people creating a business. Listeners will judge the digital platforms on what they deliver now, not what they could, potentially, deliver in the future. This will be the true test, not just for DAB, but for radio if we want to make a leap forward, or stay where we are today forever.

Collectively, us in radio, should support all the digital platforms. DAB, DTV, IP and Mobile all work together to provide a future for the industry – lets not try and sabotage our future by in fighting over platforms, lets celebrate the best of each of them. If one particularly suits you – that's great, but don't assume that everyone feels the same way. Every digital listener is a radio listener after all.

I expect over the years that the relative importance of each of the different platforms will change and ebb and flow – what's important is that by building  a strong future together now – that a broad selection of radio stations will still be around to survive and evolve!

So next time someone slags off something that allows our listeners to hear us, that's meant a new entrant can justify investing in their business, or has allowed someone to be employed who's been laid off from a co-located analogue station, remember to have a word and say digital radio means (through a number of methods) means we're able to build the future of our industry.

So yesterday we looked at how we're doing on the journey towards a digital radio future. Today we're going to look at how different sectors of the radio industry are tackling the challenges of digital…

As mentioned, there's four seperate groupings in radio. Below looks at the digital hours by each group:

• National Commercial's hours are already around half digital
• National BBC's a bit over a quarter
• Local Commercial and Local BBC is around 15%

Now, it's important to remember that all of these groups don't provide an equal share of radio – the BBC nationals make up nearly half of UK hours, so if they increase their share of digital agressively above 50% they'll drag everyone else up and over the line.

I think, though, that it shows that to hit digital upgrade there are a number of different things that need to happen to the different sectors. And it's the speed or success of this that will really show how fast we can hit the total 50% figure, but also give the momentum to ensure that by the upgrade date, two years later, so that very few people will 'mind' that the bigger stations will no longer be on analogue. TV's already managed that (there were no analogue TVs sold last month).

National commercial
National commercial is doing alright. This is primarily being driven by new stations (compared to the three that exist on analogue) and also the higher digital share the AM stations have as people move to get a better experience of Absolute/talkSPORT etc.

National BBC
Also doing okay, slightly ahead of the digital 'average'. Again driven by good new content in 6Music, 1xtra etc, the AM upgrade of 5Live and the extra coverage that channel can provide on digital. Part of the reason it lags behind National commercial is how universally receiveable Radios 1-4 are. These are big radio stations on loads of FM frequencies. If you really like these stations and don't listen to much else outside of them, then there isn't an instant desire to upgrade for the practical reasons that affect other listeners – ie that you live in an area that has poor analogue reception, your fave station is on AM, your analogue radio choice is poor etc.

The BBC's annoucement that they're partnering up stations more in the future – Radio 1 and 1Xtra, Five Live and Five Live Sports Extra, the revamped BBC7 as 4Xtra (and maybe the saved 6Music as 2Xtra?) – are to try and give some good reasons to the 'happily analogue' brigade to make the switch.

Local commercial
Local commercial is at 15% for a number of reasons. Firstly not all local areas have digital multiplexes (yes, I know, this is partly my fault) this means the bigger stations that exist in these 'whitespace' areas don't have much of an opportunity to move more of their hours from analogue to digital. If these all appeared tomorrow and reflected the existing stations' digital position, the figure would probably increase to around 20% straight away – just from people in those areas who already get national DAB but not their local stations.

We also haven't yet seen the benefit of more local digital stations (in the same way we've seen nationally). This is beginning to change though. Fire across Dorset and South Hampshire, The Coast on South Hampshire, Nation on South Wales have started to replace their smaller analogue TSAs with larger digital TSAs. This is going to generate more digital hours and, from what I hear, a trend that quite a few other local stations will be adopting.

I think existing ILRs could also take a leaf out of the National BBC's book of using Xtra stations. Replicating an ILR on digital (unless it fixes historical coverage issues) doesn't really do much for an operator. It's good for listeners who've got a digital radio as it means their full compliment of stations are on one band, and indeed stops hours reduction by those digital listeners listening less to analogue-only stations, but it's not life-changing and probably doesn't quite balance out the signficant additional cost in being digital.

To truly benefit these stations need to grow their hours at the expense of their competitors. It's something that Absolute are doing by adding to their main station Absolute 80s, Absolute Radio 90s and Absolute Classic Rock.

How does this work? Well, lets take a listener with 20 hours of listening a week which they split equally – ten to Absolute and ten to Radio 2. They also however like 80s music and they hear on Absolute Radio that there's a new station – Absolute 80s. They like it and decide to move 20% of their listening hours to it – which equally come off Absolute Radio and Radio 2.

The new scores are therefore Absolute Radio – 8 hours, Radio 2 – 8 hours and Absolute 80s – 4 hours. Absolute as a group now has 12 hours of listening vs Radio 2′s 8 hours.

Now they need to sell advertising at the same rate etc (or as a network) but generally Absolute should be better off. It's also probably a sensible thing to do for heritage radio stations who are going to find it difficult to grow their hours naturally

I really think local commercial radio should do the same. Listeners are going to get used to 4Xtra and 1Xtra, so maybe now's the time to plan Wyvern90s or Radio Aire Rock.

James writes more about this here.

Local BBC
A similarly low number. Again suffering from not all their stations being on DAB and also suffering from only having one station in each market.

Other Issues
The other thing that the digital numbers don't take into account are the stations that aren't surveyed by RAJAR. There's also a signficant number of digital onlys both nationally (BFBS, UCB, Premier etc) and locally (Masti, Passion, Pubjabi) that aren't RAJAR'd at all at the moment. If all these were added in, i'm sure we'd see that the digital percentage is already higher than the headline figure.

Whilst RAJAR splits have served us well so far, with so much resting on the numbers it's perhaps time to have a seperate survey that's measuring the entire UK radio universe. I believe this is something that's been happening with digital television as they approach switchover and perhaps something we should adopt for radio.

One other thing – small local stations.

Should small stations have a route to digital – absolutely. However, for the purpose of these calculations, the total hours that these local stations generate mean that even if they all stayed analogue (which they won't) it wouldn't drastically hold back hitting the digital targets. Sorry little fellas!

So in conclusion, there are four different games that we're playing with for digital switchover. Each subtly different.

For me it's interesting to look back at National Commercial. That, in some way, has just about hit the target already. It's done this through solid coverage, signifcant advantages for existing analogue broadcasters and lots more stations. It's what the other segments will have to do too.

The BBC are on their way to replicating this success, by providing good digital radio stations and upgrading Five Live -  they're over half way there. The new plans for better intergrated partner stations will give it even more momentum over the coming 12 months. However, it has the resources, both cash and promotional to really drive this forward at speed. It should this as an opportunity to fortify its own services and use the spectrum cleverly to provide pop-up stations for things like Glasto and Wimbledon – giving licence fee payers extra value and making the platform look even more attractive.

For the local commercials – actually, the local coverage is realtively easy to fix (more multipelxes and transmitters). This will make a startling difference on its own and there's been lots of work happening behind the scenes to get this going quite soon. They key question for local commercial is whether existing operators can adjust their offer to do better out of listeners making the switch and how quickly new local stations will appear on digital radio – and lso have their hours measured!

That's a natural finish to the blog post, but as I endorse launching an 'Extra' station, i'll provide an 'extra' post. Tomorrow, i'll ask a question to the people who are on the fence about DAB or firmly in the 'no' camp

The new Government will be making an announcement tomorrow on the digital radio upgrade. There's an assumption that they'll bascially endorse the work that went into the Digital Economy Bill (no great surprise as all political parties supported the radio clauses).

So, a quick recap, the DE Act legislation allows the Goverenment to give two years notice to FM (well, BBC/Commercial FM operators who have TSAs over 200k or so) at the point where 50% of UK radio's hours are 'digital' (that's DAB, Digital Television and Internet combined).

The 2015 date that people talk about is basically an assumption that we can hit this 50% by 2013 which will then kick off the two-year count down process.

Whenever anybody asks about whether this date is achievable, the person puts on a very serious face and says "it's a challenging deadline, but something we're very much striving towards".

It is a tough deadline but I think it's something worth shooting for. My thought is that if we don't hit it, we're likely to be only a year behind or so.

When people say that this is clearly unachievable the number they usually quote is the one RAJAR publishes that shows how we're doing digitally. At the moment 24% is 'digital' compared to 20.1% at the same point in 2009. In other words, whilst it's increasing, is it fast enough?

Having popped open Excel and added 19% growth to the number each year, we'd get to 48.8% in 2014 and break through the 50% point in 2015. Happily just after an election, so the 'new' Government can (probably a little more easily than pre-election) hit the two-year countdown button should they wish.

However, it's far more complicated than that and there's some spanners that could potentially reduce the time till the button's pushed, or indeed extend it.

You can split radio listening into lots of different groupings – i'm going to look at the four key ones:

* National Commercial
* National BBC
* Local Commercial
* Local BBC

Tomorrow we're going to see how these groups are doing on their journey to the digital upgrade….

Just noticed a tweet appear from Wired's UK editor:

So, in other words, the June edition of US Wired, that's only been on sale for about a week and has generated $311,000.

Naturally there are some caveats – this a product for technically savvy users who are likely to be iPad early adopters, this is digital issue one – so people are experimenting by downloading it and Apple will be taking 30% of that revenue for themselves.

US Wired seems to 'sell' around 700,000 printed issues. From a low base of installed iPad's they've instantly generated 10% of that digitally (without having to worry about printing and distributon costs) and that's still by selling their iPad edition for the same price as their printed edition (I wonder what the cost per issue is digitally is vs a printed one).

Some may argue that the app is a mere glorified CD-Rom, but this is the first time that publishing seems to have a chance of making money on a digital edition. This is also a publisher that makes most of the same content available for free online, so this isn't a discounted version or some sort of exclusive iPad only content.

The big change is form factor. It's on a device that is great for reading this type of content and it's very easy to purchase as there's virtually no friction if your credit card details reside in the iTunes Store.

So, in summary, quality content, high quality brand, easy to find, easy to pay for and – probably most importantly – on a device that the content suits. Perhaps there is some money in this digital revolution after all!

We've just been working with a non-radio client who have recently launched a new online business and we're helping them with some online marketing and web analytics bits and pieces. They are a very small team but they are rolling out products and partnerships at pace – it's impressive stuff and made me think a lot about our own business but also radio in general.

Indeed, their team is smaller than that of many post-consolidation radio stations and I'd imagine unlike those stations, they're building their revenues for scratch. What impresses me most is their ambition. They're relentless about doing 'big things'.

I think in radio stations we often forget about what's possible if we really go for it. Our reach, awareness and sexiness (to others anyway!) means we're in the perfect position to push the boundaries and go for it!

I'm a big fan of Improv Everywhere. They're a group of people who do outrageous stunts… for fun! And, to be honest, it makes the traditional radio crank calls look somewhat disappointing in comparison.

The video below shows a stunt they did where they picked a random person in a bar and pretended it was the man's birthday (he didn't know them – or the 20 people who turned up!) Take a look…

If this was done for a radio station, you'd have great time talking it up, gathering listeners to help you out, then you'd have audio for the show the next day, a load of video for the web, an interview on air with your target and probably loads of local press coverage too.

I think there's really something in doing more 'real world' things that take you into the community. A disproportionate number of your hours come from a small percentage of your audience – your P1s. They're also the people who will talk up what you do to your friends. Creating new P1s will probably do you more good than any other activity.

My friend Nick's a (relatively) new Breakfast presenter for BBC Surrey. Now, there are lots of different tips for building a new Breakfast show, but reading Nick's blog, it looks like he's come up with a very different one. He's bought an allotment. For the show.

But more than that, what's he's actually done is bought a narrative.

Looking at the subsequent posts he's attracting listeners to 'Green Squadron' to help develop it – a shared activity that he can talk about on the radio. It already looks like it's touching lots of people and they'll go on to speak to others and tell them what they're doing, about Nick, and the show. I'm sure they'll tune in to hear if they're mentioned – something they'll encourage their friends to do as well.

It's also got 'passive entertainment value' – you don't need to be involved to follow the progress, hear the stories and what they're up to. Of course, Nick's got to keep it interesting and not make it exclude anyone, but I think it's an interesting way to provide an anchor point to the show. Whilst many of the elements of radio shows can be 'cloned' by the station over the road, an allotment and all the people involved is a little harder to do.

What have you done recently to think differently? And would you like to supersize it?

The good thing about RAJAR is that there’s at least four times every year where my medium, radio, gets a go at getting some media coverage. This quarter there’s been a change to the reporting rules which focuses that even more. For the first time results are coming out just after midnight (stations get them at 1.30pm the day before) which means the results can all be in today’s morning papers.

The stories that I think are interesting:
1. Chris Evans has 9.5million listeners (up from 8.4m)
2. 6Music has jumped from having 695k to 1,023k listeners
3. Absolute 80s crashes onto the scene with a very respectable 264k listeners and 1.4m hours
4. Big jump for digital – 38.5% of the UK now listens to digital radio (that’s DAB, DTV and online) each week, this collectively accounts for 24% of all UK radio listening. I’ll take that as half way to switchover!
5. Capital back to London’s Number 1.
6. All Radio reach is up – 91% of the population now listen to the radio each week – that’s over a billion hours of listening.

I think many of these stories are a good reminder of the importance of awareness and i’m going to use the first three as examples.

Everyone is busy. Everyone is assaulted by hundreds of messages everyday. Everyone is consuming information on multiple platforms. Everyone has very fixed firm favourites.

It is difficult to tell people that you exist, a reason they should consume you, how to encourage that first trial and then persuade them to come back and spend even more time with you.

In the old days, to make someone aware of your new radio station was quite easy. Just existing on a frequency generated trial and some promo on launch day in the local paper and on the local telly would get you to most of your county. Provided, of course, you had a cheesy DJ wearing headphones and holding a balloon!

Nowadays, people aren’t so starved of media that they scan for new stations on FM, they probably don’t read the local paper (if it hasn’t closed) and likewise for local TV too (do you know who presents your local TV bulletin?). The choice explosion has also now been with us a number of years. Many consumers are used to navigating Sky+, iTunes or the broader internet to seek out media to consume. In radio there’s probably less people who stay tuned to the ‘least worst option’ than there used to be.

Short version – just being ‘new’ is no longer the best route to growing an audience.

So… back to our top stories.

Chris Evans taking over the breakfast show on Radio 2 has been a big, sustained story for months and months. It kicked off from the rumours of him getting it, to the announcement, to the end of Wogan, to the talk-ups on Drive, to the announcement of Moira, to a TV advert on BBC channels, to the launch of the show, to the backlash. Oh, and it also being on-air and being quite good as well! This is sustained coverage from all media – reminding a big chunk of people that Chris Evans (remember, that bloke you quite liked) is on Radio 2 and is going to be doing a new Breakfast Show. There was also big coverage on Radio 2, from Wogan calming his fans to Chris talking it up – it’s the biggest station in the country – a great captive audience to remind people about the change and also a great platform to explain the benefits of tuning in too.

It’s interesting to compare Chris’s additional audience with that of the station as a whole. In total Radio 2 has added 1.096m listeners and the show has added 1.101m new ones. I’d wager this means Chris has managed the double whammy of bringing a load of new people to the radio station AND retaining the same number of old Radio 2 listeners as well. Now, i’m sure these weren’t all TOGs, but it looks like he’s added more existing Radio 2 listeners to his show than he’s lost from it. That’s quite a feat – not just for Chris, but also for Radio 2, who’s seemingly managed to replace a breakfast show at the right time, with the right DJ.

Another massive radio story has been 6Music. The BBC Trust report that predated by a few days the announcement from the management that they would like to shut it, showed that only 20% of the UK were aware it existed. Now, you need to be aware of something to trial it so it’s no surprise that their audience was small.

Well, one thing that certainly spiked people’s awareness of 6Music, was the threat to close it down! The result has increased its audience by 50%! What’s also interesting about the change is that normally when a station increases its reach, its average hours drop, as the newer people are lighter listeners compared to the older ones. 6Music’s managed to do the opposite, increasing its average hours from 5.5 to 7.7. It could be interesting to look at whether the threat of losing something has brought people closer to it and encouraged them to consume more (or, of course, whether there’s some over claiming of listening).

Finally, it’s great to see Absolute 80s do so well both in reach and hours. Not only because it’s been around for just a few months but also because it’s only on DAB in London (though nationwide on DTV and online).
I think the success is down to three main things – format, brand and distribution alongside using different channels to drive awareness.

Anyone who’s carried out radio research in the last ten years knows that 80s has been a format that ‘scores well’. Why has no one done it? God knows. The format is easy to understand, there’s loads of great tunes and it manages to be ‘gold’ without being ‘old’.

Secondly, by christening it Absolute 80s, TIML have done two things. They’ve aligned it to something people already know – Absolute Radio – which has been slowly growing its own brand values about ‘real music’, allowing it to be an 80s station without being too cheesy. They’ve also got the word 80s in its name. If you haven’t got serious money to spend on marketing, you need to have a Ronseal name – one that instantly explains what it does.

Finally – distribution. Digital TV and the internet can only get you so far – especially with listening hours. A good base in London on DAB means it can be a true radio choice for many listeners and launching an iPhone app means that it can be mobile for many more as well.

Using iPhone apps has also been a great way of driving awareness. As well as there being a stand-alone iPhone app, the station’s also appeared on the other Absolute iPhone apps too. This means that a large number of people are going to be made aware of the new station. Additionally as a stand-alone app they will have driven awareness as it’s climbed the iTunes Store charts.

The other thing that they did was actively promote on Absolute Radio and Absolute Classic Rock the fact that the station exists! They did a big on-air push towards the launch with tags on 80s tracks as well as simulcasting the launch show on Absolute Radio too.

It’s amazing how radio groups rarely use their own radio stations to promote their other radio stations. They’re all scared. There’s too many unknowns. I spent a long time hearing something along the lines of “But why should we move a listener from a stations that generates £8 per listener to one that generates 50p?” The answer, should anyone ever ask you, is “they don’t just listen to your station, you dummy”.

You also have to begin by admitting, even with the best will in the world, that it’s going to get harder and harder to maintain your audience. Your best option is to keep existing listeners happy and bring new listeners to your family of radio stations. You want to be fighting for your group’s share of a listener’s hours – you already know they spend time with other people – use a portfolio approach to make sure they listens less to the other people and keeps/grows their hours with you. Also, use the fact that they listen to two of your stations to give them lots of reasons to flick between them and not over to the competition.

Is that the time? Well, in summary, being successful is all about awareness. This can be generated lots of different ways, but it does need to be generated. If your product is right (and the three examples above all start from the point of being a good product) you need to use your entire armoury of weapons to ensure you get your message out there because just existing is definitely not enough. Even if you have a DJ with headphones and balloons.

Digital radio is at an odd cross-roads. It has sold bucket loads of digital radios, a third of the country are listening, people who've got it like it, manufacturers are making good money from the market and even radio stations are starting to write revenue on their digital stations.

I have no doubt that it will soon be difficult to buy a radio device or ipod dock without a digital radio. It even looks like in-car is going the right way with it gradually appearing, as standard, in more and more makes and models. Indeed, the only form factor that's doing poorly is mobile.

But, it's still happening too slowly. Being part of consumer's replacement cycle is fine, but it will drag on the amount of money the industry is spending on dual transmission even longer.

Not that the industry has particularly helped itself. In the past two years the major UK radio groups (and to a certain extent the BBC) have been stuck in discussions with each other, Ofcom and the government to get some basics sorted and haven't spent any time and effort promoting their new stations and the platform.

What is positive is that we're now at a place where all the major radio operators agree that DAB is a vital part of their future. Even UTV and UKRD don't disagree with that (their arguments have always been about structure, not direction).

With the Digital Economy Act nearly law, it's now about getting it done. Collectively the radio industry is funding Digital Radio UK to do just that.

Now, over the years, i've been invovled with enough industry bodies and radio groups both in DAB and out of it, to, I think, give a Baz Luhrman-style list of advice to the Digital Radio UK team – whether it's wanted or not! So, here goes [cue instrumental music].

1. Don't Listen to your Board.

Their job is to keep the money coming and give their aitime to support the campaign.

They do not have experise in launching and marketing consumer electronics. They are all desperately motivated by their own self-interest and are predominantly analogue businesses. They've barely marketed their own digital radio stations, you shouldn't listen to them about how to do your job.

Why should they shut up and keep the money coming? The commercial radio side has been given further licence rollovers and the opportunites to sacrifice many (expensive) local committments. The BBC get a big tick in readiness for the next charter period. The transmitter operators, when digital radio's successful, get an (even more) profitable revenue stream from new transmitters and service providers.

2. Create an alliance with digital radio listeners.

With over 10million radios sold and a third of the UK using DAB, these are your biggest marketing assets. All the research points to them being very happy digital radio listeners -so co-opt them. Use existing data, station research and relationships to create a CRM plan that lets you reach these people on a regular basis. Incentivise them to evangelise for the platform.

3. Prioritise content.

There's some great content on digital radio, with good brands – from 1xtra to Jazz FM and NME. Help these stations become successful. The local, regional and national split of stations is a little confusing. Do deals with Digital One to help support these stations to become true nationwide entitites. Promote their existence heavily and highlight what consumers are missing. You do not need to treat everyone 'fairly'. If you're successful everyone will benefit.

Stations that exisit on local and regional multiplexes are fine and will grow audience once people have a digital radio, but to get listeners through the door highlight the stations that are good, and that everyone can get.

This will also complement the BBC's strategy of promoting Station-You-Know and Station-you-Know Extra.

4. Give every UK Breakfast presenter a (properly installed) in-car digital radio.

If you've got a properly installed digital radio (and not just a Highway with an aerial blu-tacked to the window) it's an AMAZING listener experience. In-car coverage is great.

Sky gave aways Sky Plus to hundreds of celebs and they got brilliant free talk-up. In-car DAB will get breakfast shows on side and better endorsement will follow.

5. Do proper research into digital use.

I think RAJAR is generally a good methodology, when i've carried out research projects our data has generally matched RAJARs. It's good at measuring listeners and listening. However, the 'how did you listen' question is complex to fill in and the high levels of 'don't knows' shows there's something amiss. Like Digital TV, commission a specific tracker that looks at radio's consumption over multiple platforms.

6. Remember to get some money from the board.

Radio, like most media companies, is quite pikey about spending money on advertising (hello, contra!). The board will talk about spending money at the right time, but that time will never come. Extract a large amount of cash now and refuse to do anything until it clears the DRUK bank account. Make sure the cheque doesn't bounce.

7. The radio airtime bank works!

Radio advertising works! Develop high quality campaigns and get guaranteed airtime from radio stations. However, mandate some sponsorships as well. If you just run ads you'll find a disproportionate amount of them get stuck off-peak. Organise some winning weekends that run on all stations simultaneously, sponsor everyone's weather – be bold with radio ideas.

8. Blackmail people.

The airtime bank is a great opportunity to encourage partners to do the things that you need.

For manufacturers – free airtime for radios that have EPG, colour screen, are good value and don't look rubbish.

For car companies – airtime for manufacturers that include DAB as standard. Also fleet requirements for radio stations should mandate vehicles with digital radios as standard.

9. Get coverage sorted.

Coverage will always be a stick that digital gets struck with. Remember though, coverage is much better than the people who moan, say. More people can listen to Classic FM on DAB than will ever get it on FM.

There are good plans that exist to 'fix' coverage for the majority of people with problems. It's time to push forward the discussions with Arqiva and the BBC to get this sorted out. Also, it's time for commercial radio to play its part in that too.

10. Rapid rebuttal.

There's lots of lazy reporting about successes and failures about digital radio, it's mainly down to lack of information and understanding. Ensure that there's a permanent presence on the team that seeks out this reporting and then provides the right information to journalists/commentators. It's not about invoking an Alistair Campbell style rant at people who disagree, it's about ensuring there's understanding.

In most things perception equals reality. I've had converstaions with journalists who think DAB has failed mainly because they personally can't pick it up in their basement flat. These are the ones that need to be educated.

[DRUK, I am just having a bit of fun so don't take too much offence...!]

I like the BBC. I like BBC Radio. I can sort of get over the fact that the national BBC networks spend more than the entire earnings of commercial radio, just on content. I can just about cope with the fact that they have all the best spectrum. I've also begrudgingly accepted the cross-media deals BBC Radio offers commercial radio talent. And, you know what, I even feel sorry for the BBC that it faces brickbats from all sides, when generally they do an extremely good job.

However, what I really don't understand is when it's in the position it know's it's in, it chooses to just take the piss. No, that's unfair. It has absolutely no concept of its position in the wider radio ecology, instead it just marches forward ignoring whatever it crushes below its elephantine feet.

A small example. There's a new TV advert for Radio 1 that promotes the Official Chart show. Now, out of all the programmes that Radio 1 can choose to promote on TV, they've chosen the only one that commercial radio competes with the BBC on directly, and the only programme that commercial radio actually beats Radio 1 at.

Instead, they could have promoted the excellent specialist takeover on Bank Holiday Monday or suggested that people should try 1Xtra. They could have talked about the new Matt Edmondson Sunday show, Zane Lowe's excellent, accessible specialist show or the new way to start the weekend with Annie Mac. They could have even talked about new time for the brilliant and public-service Sunday Surgery or the new progamme for teenagers, the 5:19 show, that follows the chart. Instead they talked about a programme that i'd guess the majority of the country already knows about. It's proably the only programme on the network that's been in the same slot for over 20 years. Indeed, if you asked someone what channel, what day and what time the official chart is on, i'd assume that a pretty signficant number of people would say Radio 1 and Sunday's from 4pm.

Now, I of course don't really know why they have chosen to promote the chart. I'm actually not even convinced that they're doing it to compete with commercial radio. The sad thing is that they're probably completely oblivious to it. They've looked at their own RAJAR for that timeslot and thought "Hmmm, we really should do something about that, let's put some more effort into the show, let's give it some telly, the research shows that listeners don't think it's very current, so lets give a mid-week update to make it seem more up to date – lets see what that does".

They've ignored the fact that, even though commercial radio has led the BBC for a few years now, 12 months ago it chose to change it's formula and make it more up to the minute – it's now based on downloads and the chart can change during the show. It chose to innovate and push the programming on (all the stuff that commercial radio gets accused of never bothering to try). The BBC have also ignored that it's the only truly national pop programme that commercial radio does. And they've chosen to ignore that commercial radio does it much better with less resources and without even the 'official' chart data (which the BBC chooses to purchase exclusively).

Like I say, I like the BBC. I would defend to my last that it should exist and be able to broadcast both mainstream and specialist programmes. However, for the love of God, can they just employ one person in the organisation who can understand the broader radio market and can just whisper to a Controller "you know what, maybe we don't have to completely take the piss?"

I'm not Murdochian in wanting the BBC to be smaller or just do worthy things and news. I just want them to take their £3bn of public income and, every single day, think:
1. We're in a really lucky and priviliged position
2. How do we make this [programme] even more distinctive?
3. How can we use our scale and resources to help commercial and non-commercial operators give more value to our licence fee payers?
4. How do we enhance the [radio/tv/online] ecology and add to the whole rather than just think about our own share?

Is that really too much to ask? And can they please choose one other programme to advertise on the telly.

Apparently there’s a new breakfast show later this morning.

Chris Evans taking over the Radio 2 Breakfast show is the big headline, but what’s fascinating is the knock on it’s going to have to other radio stations and to Radio 2.

Firstly it means a change to a third of daytime on Radio 2. The introduction of Evans means a new Drivetime show – Simon Mayo. This means Breakfast, Afternoons, Drivetime and the Late Show now sits with ex-Radio 1 presenters – Evans (1995 to 1997), Wright (1980 to 1995) and Mayo (1986 to 2001), Mark Radcliffe (1991 to 2004) and Stuart Maconie (1995 to 1997). These were some of Radio 1’s star performers and they were on-air not very long ago.

A significant chunk of this old Radio 1’s audience (today’s 35 pluses) have already moved across to Radio 2, but there’s a significant number that remain with Radio 1.

Radio 1’s line-up change last year was a recognition that the station was starting to trend older and they took the easy decisions to alter the mid-morning/afternoon line-up. What it didn’t do was tackle the main problem – Breakfast. Moyles continues to produce an excellent morning show, the problem is that the show’s seeing declining in listeners under 34 and growth with over 35s.

The arrival of Evans will make many of these listeners, a good deal of which listened to him the first time around, reconsider their morning preset. This bodes well for Evans and will help Radio 1 trend younger, but will likely leave Moyles in a precarious position come July.

Radio 2 have already played a good game to indicate to existing listeners that this won’t be much of a change. It’s important to remember that Evans has spent more time on Radio 2 Drivetime than any other job he’s ever done and he leaves the show with 6million listeners (compared to Wogan’s 8 million at Breakfast). On top of that I don’t expect the new show to change the music at all, it’s also got continuity with Lynn Bowles and a clever hire, in the seemingly universally liked Moira Stewart. Of course it’s also got Chris Evans too.

The show’s also been quite clever in its marketing. Firstly it’s had a very long handover. With an older audience it’s important that people get used to the idea of what’s coming. This has given time for lots of trust earning statements from Wogan, other presenters and from Chris himself. The existing Drivetime show’s also had months of talking about the new Breakfast show. Many of the Drivetime listeners may have other Breakfast choices at the moment, this work will ensure they’ll now have a new one with Chris. Commercial radio always seems to eschew this tactic and surprise listeners (and normally the old presenters) with a brand new line-up one morning – and then wonder why it takes 18 months for them to settle in.

As well as this activity, it also gets a BBC TV ad campaign, kicking off after an episode of Eastenders. We’ll skip over whether it’s appropriate that the BBC runs TV spots for the UK’s most popular breakfast show on the UK’s most popular radio station about the most well known change of presenter ever.

There’s a view that Evans at Breakfast will mean Radio 2’s listeners become even younger. I’m not sure the station’s going to massively drift – it did its main move in the 90s. The interesting threat for commercial radio is that Evans may extend the average listening of 35 to 44s to Radio 2 as they start to consume a breakfast show that they didn’t used to choose.

It also cements an on-going process that’s been happening since the early 90s, when Radio 1 had its ‘big shift’ and in the late 90s when Radio 2 had something similar. Now, for really the first time you have the two BBC mainstream commercial networks side by side – one for under 35s, one for over 35s. Great for the BBC, not so good for commercial operators. The last part of that puzzle will be who Radio 1 picks as the next Breakfast show host or hosts.

What is good about Evans at Breakfast is that it continues to mean that UK radio has some of the best talent on the air and keeps everyone on their toes.