With UK culture minister Tessa Jowell claiming that conventional television sets are expected to be redundant by 2010, it may be that the day of digital radio and TV has finally dawned in Britain, with official figures showing that digital TV viewing is on the increase, and that millions of listeners are tuning in to new radio stations, often through their computers and television sets.
Authoritative listening figures clearly show how the renaissance in radio is being fuelled by the growing availability of more than 50 digital stations. Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) radio sets have tumbled in price to 150 US dollars. The growth in satellite and cable subscribers and the expansion of the internet have also provided ways of receiving digital stations.
The BBC World Service will have had a large proportion of digital listeners among its weekly UK reach of 1.36 million. Jenny Abramsky, the BBC’s director of radio and music, said: “[These] figures show that the whole industry goes from strength to strength with more people listening to radio.” She highlighted the success of the BBC’s Asian Network, which has picked up hundreds of thousands of digital listeners.
The rise of digital radio has been hampered by the difficulty in buying DAB sets. Mandy Green, of the Digital Radio Development Bureau, said that such problems were over. “The people making these radios in this country are not Sony and Hitachi. They are small, mostly British, entrepreneurial manufacturers.