Digital One cuts costs to lure more radio stations

chris

National digital radio operator Digital One is to cut its carriage costs in a bid to encourage more stations on to the struggling digital audio broadcasting – DAB – service.

Digital One currently has four national stations – three of which are already available on analogue – and is likely to have capacity for at least six more.

The service has been hit by a spate of station closures over the past 18 months, including TheJazz, OneWord, Core and Capital Life. Planet Rock, which was rescued from closure by entrepreneur and rock fan Malcolm Bluemel, is the only digital-exclusive station on Digital One.

Glyn Jones, acting chief executive of Digital One, said the company was "looking hard" at how it could offer lower carriage costs to potential customers.

"We're expecting that prices will initially be set below Digital One's 2008 rate card," he added. "One reason for that is to help provide an incentive for people to invest in high quality services."

Co-owned by Global Radio and transmission business Arqiva, Digital One is thought to charge in excess of £1m a year to radio operators who want to broadcast a station on the service, which reaches about 90% of the UK population.

The prospective price cut follows the publication of the report from the Digital Radio Working Group (DRWG) last month on digital radio switchover.

The government-commissioned group, which included representatives of the BBC, commercial radio, the government, manufacturers and consumers, backed DAB but stopped short of predicting an analogue radio switch-off date.

Jones said: "We're turning the ideas set out in the DRWG's report into actions. That includes looking hard at how Digital One can offer lower carriage costs. In turn we're expecting that stakeholders involved in the working group, and other companies with the ambition to launch new national radio stations in 2009, will set up and engage with a view to adding compelling new choice for consumers."

He added that companies providing new services would be expected over time to contribute to the cost of a transmitter roll-out required to boost DAB coverage beyond existing levels.

In an advert inviting new operators on to the service published today, Digital One said proposals based on plays, books and comedy content "would be welcome and other speech or music formats with consumer appeal are also welcome".

But digital plays, books and comedy station OneWord, whose former owners included UBC Media and Channel 4, struggled to compete with the BBC's own archive spoken word channel, BBC7, and was closed at the beginning of last year.

A second national commercial DAB multiplex was due to be launched by the 4 Digital consortium but is now unlikely to happen after lead shareholder Channel 4 announced it was pulling the plug on its radio projects.


Source: MediaGuardian