Analysis of a UK government stakeholder consultation meeting on DAB digital radio switchover, written by Grant Goddard in February 2011 for Grant Goddard: Radio Blog.

1. DAB DIGITAL RADIO
SWITCHOVER: THE VIEW FROM
THE UK GOVERNMENT BUNKER
by
GRANT GODDARD
www.grantgoddard.co.uk
February 2011

2. The government’s second stakeholder consultation on DAB radio switchover happened this
afternoon. It was held in what felt like an underground government bunker in Victoria. No
windows, long corridors, and lots of seemingly identical numbered rooms hidden by massive
doors that had no viewing windows. When I tried to go up a staircase to ground level, a man
appeared from nowhere and told me not to.
Even if the bomb had dropped, down there, you might not have known it. The cityscape
outside could have transformed into a wasteland but, down there, you can be certain that our
civil servants would continue planning digital radio switchover regardless, even if the precise
date had to be postponed until the contamination had receded. I imagine that the government
staff working there hardly need to go out, even at lunchtime, because a little lady with a trolley
probably comes around with salmon sandwiches.
In this cosseted environment, it is easier to understand how you might spend your days (or
months or years) of servitude, devising schemes that have so little relevance to the real world
above your bunker office. Perhaps this is why the afternoon was filled with PowerPoint
presentations that all looked great, slides that had lots of action words, and monologues from
grey men that were filled with the current jargon. It was a perfectly unreal world.
What the afternoon lacked was realism. Occasionally I had to pinch myself to make sure that
this was not a Lemsip-induced slumber. It wasn’t. However, I did witness the Civil Service
suggest that asking consumers their opinion about DAB radio switchover would be a good
idea, as if it was a novel thought that had just come to them. Not withstanding that the
government has been pursuing the notion of the DAB platform since the 1980s but, in all those
decades, somehow omitted the ‘consumer’ (or ‘listener’) from its plans.
The following quotes came from our civil servants this very afternoon. I wrote them down.
Reading them now, these lines could have been extracted from the script of a lost episode of
‘Yes Minister’ in which the cast cleverly parody government plans for digital radio switchover.
Sadly, they did not. This is what stakeholders were told today (amongst many other things):
“We genuinely have seen more progress [on digital radio switchover] in the last
eighteen months than we have in the last six or seven years I’ve worked on this issue.
But, as far as the consumer is concerned, we’ve never certainly in any way advocated
or used 2015 [switchover date] as a ‘stick.’ It’s always been the industry target. And,
certainly, when this government came in, it was adamant and clear that the consumer
would make the case for switchover by purchasing habits, by the percentage of
listening [on digital platforms], the way it absorbs and consumes radio. Now, will I, at
this point, say that there has been a cross-pollination of those two things? Has the
2015 [date], which was an industry date, started to creep into the public consensus
and been used by the media as a scare tactic? Yes, of course it has. And do we, as an
industry, need to look at that? Yes, I think we do. I would say that I don’t think anyone
– I think very few people – in this room would welcome the government standing up
tomorrow and saying that the [switchover] date is the 31st December 2015. And I don’t
think we have any answers to the questions that we need to have the answers to
before any such decision can be made, and whether the consumer genuinely believes
that this is something they want to do.”
“I don’t think we know what listeners want. I think part of this [Digital Radio] Action
Plan process is absolutely understanding the value people put on various parameters
of radio – what they want, how they want to consume it. I think that part of
understanding this decision is understanding the listener better. And I think, whilst we
all have our own views on that, I don’t think there’s enough evidence based [data] for
us to make those assumptions about what listeners want.”
“I don’t think the government has never ever said ‘digital radio switchover will happen
in 2015’ but we think we need to go away and look at the messaging around the cross-
pollination. The one thing I would say is: 2013 and 2015 is used by both sides of
people in the debate, those who like to frighten people into the fear of losing their
analogue services, and those who like to sell digital radios. For all of us who believe
DAB Digital Radio Switchover: The View From The UK Government Bunker page 2
©2011 Grant Goddard

3. DAB Digital Radio Switchover: The View From The UK Government Bunker page 3
©2011 Grant Goddard
that certainty and clarity and the consumer is important, I think we all need to look at
how we use the threat of 2013 and 2015 and have some consistency ourselves about
how we talk to the consumer about it.”
Threat? Are radio listeners so malleable that they must be viewed by government like cattle to
be herded to slaughter? Maybe I imagined mistakenly that government was FOR the people.
Anyway, I suppose we should be grateful at all that the ‘consumer’ has suddenly been pushed
centre stage in the long running DAB drama, even it is so late in the show [see my 2009 blog
and 2010 blog where I predict it would be ideal for bureaucrats to eventually blame DAB’s
failure on the consumer rather than themselves].
Is there any difference between the government forcing the population to buy a DAB radio to
listen to 'The Archers', and Sky TV persuading them to buy 'Sky Atlantic' to watch their
favourite HBO shows that used to be free? Is the government’s DAB switchover drive really a
policy for public regulation, or simply capitalist radio (© LBC poster campaign 1989)?
This afternoon, while DAB was being discussed in the government bunker, could anyone have
actually achieved satisfactory DAB radio reception down there? I think not. Are those
government people listening to DAB in their cubicles? They can design as many PowerPoint
presentations as they want but, at the end of the day, if DAB radio don’t work properly now,
then it don’t work for the consumer.
[First published by Grant Goddard: Radio Blog as 'DAB Radio Switchover: The View From The Government Bunker',
3 February 2011.]
Grant Goddard is a media analyst / radio specialist / radio consultant with thirty years of
experience in the broadcasting industry, having held senior management and consultancy
roles within the commercial media sector in the United Kingdom, Europe and Asia. Details at
http://www.grantgoddard.co.uk