The document summarizes lessons that should have been learned from the slow consumer adoption of FM radio and applied to the development of DAB digital radio. It notes that while FM provided superior sound quality to AM, it took decades to gain widespread acceptance among listeners. Similarly, DAB faced slow adoption despite promises of CD-quality sound. The document argues that broadcasters focused too much on the technical advantages without considering cultural listening habits and that DAB did not offer enough new content to drive upgrades. It concludes that successful new radio technologies require understanding complex adoption factors beyond just technology.

1. SLOW CONSUMER TAKE-UP OF
DAB RADIO: LESSONS SHOULD
HAVE BEEN LEARNED FROM FM
RADIO 50 YEARS EARLIER
by
GRANT GODDARD
www.grantgoddard.co.uk
July 2010

2. Slow Consumer Take-Up Of DAB Radio: Lessons Should Have Been Learned From FM Radio 50 Years Earlier
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©2010 Grant Goddard
“Without a knowledge of your history, you cannot determine your destiny”
Misty In Roots, ‘Live At The Counter-Eurovision 1979’
Recent history can teach us important lessons. Efforts to turn dreams into reality come a lot
easier if we learn from what has gone before us, what has gone right, and what has gone
wrong. This is as true in radio as it is in any human endeavour.
Dr. Stephen Lax, Senior Lecturer in Communications Technology at the University of Leeds’
Institute of Communications Studies, has written an excellent paper entitled ‘A Vision For
Radio: Engineering Solutions For Changing Audiences – From FM to DAB’. It was published in
a recent anthology ‘Digital Radio In Europe’. The following are excerpts taken directly from Dr.
Lax’s work and document what the radio industry should have learnt from the slow consumer
take-up of FM radio half a century ago before it embarked upon DAB radio.
“The introduction of FM was itself no straightforward matter of replacing its AM
forebear, and neither have innovations in radio technology in the half century that
followed been unproblematic. It is in the context of this history that the emergence of
DAB should be studied.
Like DAB, FM was widely claimed to offer a significant improvement in sound quality in
comparison with the then universal AM modulation system. By the early 1940s, its
technical superiority was established. One leading figure amongst US radio engineers,
W.R.G. Baker, suggested in 1943 that FM was ‘so much better technically than the
present regular broadcast system that it can’t fail of acceptance.’ Yet, despite such
advantages, for several decades it did indeed fail to be accepted as a replacement for
AM.
[…]
Following a UK launch in 1955, the BBC rolled out the FM service relatively quickly: by
the end of 1959, most transmitters had been upgraded and 96.4% of the population
was within range of the signals; but, even ten years later, when coverage was over
99%, the corporation noted that only one third of households had any form of FM
receiver. A similarly slow rise in the popularity of FM continued in the US: although FM
services had begun there on the VHF band some ten years earlier than in the UK, it
was not until after 1979 that FM finally achieved a higher share of listening than AM.
[…]
[In 1974], [BBC director of engineering James] Redmond expressed puzzlement at the
slow adoption of FM, even for fixed reception in the home. Despite its superior sound
quality, he noted that ‘changeover has been slower than anticipated.’ …. [One] reason
was the simulcasting of radio programmes on FM and on AM, rather than offering new
programmes on the new service: listeners would only be able to hear on FM what their
AM receivers already gave them.
[…]
This history serves as an illustration of how an apparently self-evidently superior
technology pursued as a solution to a problem of audio quality did not automatically
find favour with listeners, who […] were apparently prepared to put up with inferior
sound and were less inclined to adopt FM while it offered little new programming or
competition with television in the evening.
[…]
A mismatch is revealed between the broadcasters’ and engineers’ beliefs as to what
was important to listeners, and the preferences and priorities of the vast majority of
those listeners themselves.

3. Slow Consumer Take-Up Of DAB Radio: Lessons Should Have Been Learned From FM Radio 50 Years Earlier
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©2010 Grant Goddard
[…]
[A group of audio enthusiasts] was contrasted [by Wireless World magazine in 1961]
with ‘the most important group of all, the reasonable layman’ who simply wants decent
reproduction at a reasonable cost, and it is this far larger group that no doubt hesitated
to replace perfectly adequate AM receivers with the more expensive FM variety.
[…]
…. early promotion of DAB by the industry certainly used the phrase ‘CD-quality
sound’, and placed this and related phrases at the top of the list of DAB’s advantages.
[…]
However, just as the slow pace of adoption of FM confounded broadcasters, for whom
its advantages were self-evident, DAB too has failed to gain an enthusiastic embrace
from the audience.
[…]
The exhortation ‘radio must go digital’ has been expressed repeatedly over the years:
for example, by the Director General of Audio Visual Policy at the European Union’s
Media programme, Spyros Papas, in 1998; by BBC Director of Radio, Jenny
Abramsky, in 2003; and, more recently, in 2009 by French National Assembly member
Patrice Martin-Lalande and, less surprisingly, by Quentin Howard of World DMB. For
these commentators, the logic of this transition is self-evident and so needs little
explanation, technical or otherwise, and none is offered – put simply, radio cannot
remain an analogue technology when all other consumer technologies are digital. Yet,
however compelling the logic might be from a technical point of view, the development
of both FM and of DAB have failed to follow it: both have emerged only slowly and, in
the case of DAB, its future remains uncertain.
[…]
A further difficulty for DAB was the changing landscape of radio in many countries
during the period of its development such that, by the time of its public launch in 1995,
it was seen by some as reflecting a view of the radio industry that was out of date.
[…]
Just as, by the time FM was launched, other changes in radio had made its
introduction more complex, so too we can observe similar, non-technological reasons
for the problems in introducing DAB.
[…]
In the case of digital radio, it is possible to identify a number of intentions behind its
development, from an imagined need to compete with other emerging technologies to
a macro-economic need to aid a key industry. In contrast to the history of radio
technology frequently presented as a straightforward series of technical challenges
faced and solutions proffered, we find instead that apparently compelling innovations
follow a complex path in which cultural practices and economic interests must be
taken into account.”
[reprinted with permission of the author]

4. Slow Consumer Take-Up Of DAB Radio: Lessons Should Have Been Learned From FM Radio 50 Years Earlier
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©2010 Grant Goddard
[First published by Grant Goddard: Radio Blog as 'DAB Radio's Slow Consumer Take-Up: Lessons Not Learnt From
FM Radio 50 Years Earlier', 26 July 2010.]
Grant Goddard is a media analyst / radio specialist / radio consultant with thirty years of
experience in the broadcasting industry, having held senior management and consultancy
roles within the commercial media sector in the United Kingdom, Europe and Asia. Details at
http://www.grantgoddard.co.uk