Good news bad news for C4

http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,,2120255,00.html

http://media.guardian.co.uk/radio/story/0,,2120230,00.html


Firstly, the good news - C4 Radio have won the bid to run the second national digital radio multiplex, which isn't too surprising considering their rivals bid was based on types of stations, but with no one in place to provide them.

It'll be interesting to see how this turns out though - it wouldn't surprise me if it flopped to be honest considering the BBC's dominance in the industry already means commercial radio is struggling.


And secondly, the not so good news, ICSTIS have issued a £150,000 fine to Eckoh for the Richard and Judy affair and revealed almost half of the 5 million entrants since late 2004 were not entered in the competition and ordered them to be reimbursed at a cost of £2.5m. The investigation has also been passed onto OFCOM, who could issue further fines - though personally I don't see the logic in issuing two fines.


Firstly, good that Eckoh cop this fine, though I imagine C4 will get fined again via OFCOM - and are probably liable for the repayments too. I guess it is a case of the buck stopping with C4, though whether that's always fair I guess is a matter for debate.


I still have serious question marks though over ICSTIS and how the regulator could be so oblivious to cases like this happening across the industry for so long.

And also again I raise the issue of the treasury coming out of this scot free, firstly taking 17.5% VAT on the initial calls (which in this case equate to nearly £1m, half of which came from calls which had no chance of winning) - and then they get the £150,000 fines (and any more from OFCOM) to top up their coffers too!

I really don't think the BBC has anything to do with it. They are paid for by us, and can provide more diverse services as a result. Commercial radio relies on advertising, which means they have to pander to the advertisers wants and go with what the surveys say the majority of the listeners in that area want. This means similar stations that fight over the same listeners and can't make money.

I can't listen to commercial radio. The ads drive me absolutely spare - at least with TV ads you can hit mute and keep half an eye out for the program starting again.

Plus commercial radio songs play the same songs over and over again!!

Have you listened to BBC Radio 1 lately?

I agree with tesandco, Radio 1 is much worse for that. Just go onto their interactive service on Freeview and select to see the playlist, it's not very big. The commecial station here I listen to (Q103) has much less repeats.

Ditto that. Radio 1's going the same way as far as playing the same songs over and over again are concerned.

Re: ads - I don't listen to much radio, but with Radio 1 especially I think they have as many ads for BBC products as commercial radio has regular ads.

PS: I don't listen to Radio 1 either [Never have, come to think of it...]

The flagship station on the new multiplex will be almost all speech based output, very much sounding like a BBC Radio 4, from the description.

Done well, this could be extremely popular with its target audience; but to do it well will be extremely expensive, and I doubt the advertisers will want to pay such high rates as will be required to produce quality drama, etc.

There is talk of "alternative" means of funding as well as advertising, but with little detail of what those alternatives would be. Definitely not "quiz radio", though; they HAVE ruled that out.

There was an interesting piece about this on You and Yours on BBC Radio 4 at 12noon on Friday 6th. It should still be available on "Listen Again" if anyone's interested.

Speech based commercial radio has a better chance than music based, nowadays, as the music stations are taking a huge battering from iPods and the like; but I still think this new one will have an uphill struggle.

I still think of the huge initial promises of OneWord when it comes to speech based commercial, but even though they are still going, they have hardly lived up to their initial promises.

I don't know the details, but I think a large part of the funding plan is C4 leasing the space to the other stations to part fund the 4 Radio stations.


I know when NGW included C4 Radio in the rival bid C4 said they wouldn't pursue it otherwise as the revenue from leasing the space to other stations was a crucial part of their funding plan.