Listening strategy

There seems to have been an entertaining conference today about the Drive to Digital - essentially asking how we're going to listen to radio in cars in the future; a future which the BBC's current DG Mark Thompson believes shouldn't include Long Wave and Medium Wave transmitters.

The main BBC speaker was Tim Davie, Director of Audio & Music, whose first love is marketing. He's quoted thus 'Truth is, all radios are going to have DAB, FM, and IP. The issue is how the listener navigates between those'. Once again, marketing out of touch with product - cheap radios are going to continue to have FM and AM worldwide for a very long time; a range of specialist manufacturers may grace the UK market with boxes that do DAB and FM and IP - but at a premium.   Hey, Tim, why not an ariel for Freeview as well ?

The other key quote from Tim gives the lie to the DAB transmitter story. "Tim Davie confirms further national DAB rollout will cover all motorways, and match FM coverage of primary road network". Which means DAB is patchy on motorways and major roads so far, so if you're buying a new car now, you need the yet-to-be manufactured DAB/FM/IP model. Unless we can stop Thommo turning off medium wave and long wave.