• by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, July 15, 2014

I've never been the biggest fan of local commercial radio stations. I'm sure I'm not the only person who finds cheesy presenters laughing at their own jokes just a tad annoying, but what can be even more galling are the adverts. To borrow an American term -- they truly suck. 

While commercial radio stations carry on pretending they're local -- when they're actually a small cog in a large wheel or co-joined stations across the country - it's ironically the adverts that remind people we're listening to a so-called local station. Pirate voices singing terrible rhymes to tell us to buy new car tyres or double glazing make Phoebe's 'Smelly Cat' classic jingle in "Friends" worthy of an Ivor Novello. 

And what happens when commercial stations go national on DAB? Precious little, other than they can be accessed on DAB radio sets.

Therein lies my issue. Most launches come with a huge exaggeration of what they will offer -- remember WAP -- but one of the big selling points of DAB was scrolling text and digital information. Well, my radio set just reverts back to the clock every time I change channel, so I don't even get to see what's playing. I know some sets do let you get to the end of the line which reveals the current song, though.

However, that's just about it. Sure, that's quite useful for those 'who sings this' questions you may be asking yourself but it leaves me screaming out, where is the commercial sense here?

To put in to perspective, radio is about to drop from just above 2 per cent of the UK total advertising spend to just below. That puts it at about half the size of magazines and a fifth of the size of newspapers. Considering this year will see digital advertising account for nearly half of all advertising (47.5 per cent), radio represents the reversing of a trend. Every other digital medium is booming and radio carries on declining.

So, I wasn't surprised when Channel 4 pulled out of a potential DAB launch and I'm a little surprised to see that Bauer and UTV are considering joining forces with Arqiva to acquire a new licence for ten additional national commercial DAB station slots. Against a backdrop of ad revenue decreasing each year, one can only assume they expect to make their serious money through web sites and organising events and gigs as well as those 'native' deals which prompt presenters to talk about how great a particular movie or new album is?

I just can't help but wonder, though, why a medium that is now digital acts so analogue. Where is the real-time for advertisers in a medium that has always been real-time for consumers, through news, phone-ins and requests?

Why are there never any sponsored requests, perhaps hashtag activated. Some stations do allow requests to be made online but it can't be unimaginable to have a sponsored service branded by a company running a national campaign at the time. Maybe the x biscuit brand tea break anthem, or the get up and go to work section sponsored by a coffee brand or fast food breakfast provider?

The screen on DAB radios is another thing that perplexes me. It never appears to have the website or twitter ID of an advertiser nor even their name or a special offer on what they're advertising. Why not scroll their name and address, maybe with a coupon code that gets activated if you buy online or call up to place an order before the next news bulletin?

Listen, I'm not in radio, so I'm not too sure how possible or not these things are. But there's a screen there, doing precious little. There's a medium that's on in the background throughout many peoples' work and social lives, so why not use digital or real-time marketing techniques to make it more lean forward? Some stations are using branded online players with adverts which encourage listeners on to an offers page. I'd say this is a nice try but why not make it a bit more immediate and real-time. Click here to download a voucher for x or buy a y and you'll get entered in to our prize giveaway. If online's taught us one thing, it's that you have to fight banner blindness with every fibre of your being and immediate calls to action, coupled with a reward for that action, have to be worth trying, surely?

I just can't help but think the demise of radio is just being accepted without trying to fully utilise the features digital offers. 

It's just perplexing -- why is there such a low drive to be digital or act digital in a medium that actually has digital as the first name of its latest acronym; DAB?