This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Media
DAB radio sales pass 10 million – good news or bad?
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 2 December 2009
Over ten million digital radio sets – ie radios that pick up the digital audio broadcasting network – have now been sold in the UK. The DAB industry is rather pleased with this news, because in 2007 only five million had been sold. At that point DAB had been on the market for eight years, so the fact the figure has now doubled in just over two seems to show an increasing appetite for digital radio, even though some commercial radio firms have shut down their digital-only services due to disappointing listening figures and ad revenues.
As previously reported, some in the radio industry have all but given up on DAB, arguing the conventional AM and FM networks will be around much longer than originally assumed, and that in the meantime internet and satellite radio is likely to overtake DAB as the medium of choice for radio fans. Leading the criticism of digital audio broadcasting has been UTV Radio, who recently quit commercial radio trade body RadioCentre partly in a dispute over the speed with which some of their rivals – mainly Global Radio – are pushing for the conventional radio networks to be switched off.
Responding to the news that ten million DAB sets have been sold, UTV Radio MD Scott Taunton told Radio Today: “If there are still 120 million analogue radios in circulation, which industry RAJAR figures show, it means that after ten years of DAB less than ten per cent of UK radios have been converted to digital”.
And that’s assuming all ten million DAB radio sets are still in use. Some early-adopting gadget junkies have no doubt bought multiple units, and I know for a fact there’s an unused DAB radio gathering dust here at CMU HQ.
Taunton continued: “Radio listeners have spoken. Today’s disappointing DAB sales announcement is a resounding ‘no’ vote for the government’s proposal to switch off analogue signals in 2015. Whilst cumulative sales of ten million digital sets prove that DAB is here to stay, there are 120 million analogue radios currently in circulation in the UK. At this rate of sales, it would take up to 60 years to convert them all to digital. DAB is an important platform for radio, but I hope these figures will act as an wake up call for policy makers and parliamentarians who have yet to realise that its best role is as a complementary platform for FM and AM, not a replacement”.
But the Digital Radio Development Bureau have hit back at those claims. Asked to comment on Taunton’s remarks by Radio Today, a spokesman said: “Scott quotes figures of 120 million analogue radios in circulation. Ofcom figures put in-home analogue radios at 46 million and in-car at 22 million used at least once a week, which makes a total of 68 million analogue radios in use. The fact remains that analogue sales have been in decline for the past year. Sales to September 2009 are nearly two million down for the same period in 2008. DAB digital radio sales, meanwhile, continue to hold steady as noted above”.
