Yesterday saw Mediaguardian host Radio Reborn 2009, with a wide range of top radio industry people discussing the state of radio and its future.

The morning saw keynotes from Tim Davie, director of audio and radio at the BBC who said that radio needs to act now to avoid a future of managing decline.

With Andrew Harrison, Chief Executive of RadioCentre, he announced a new partnership between the BBC and commercial radio.

Stephen Miron, CEO of Global Radio talked about the power of radio, and how it probably does a disservice to itself. It’s still the second biggest medium behind TV in our lives. He called for greater creativity – especially commercial creativity.

Kane Kramer, the man credited with first coming up with the digital audio player in 1979, gave us some blue sky thinking. Much of it was very blue sky, although his “DABr” product sounded a little like Unique’s Cliq music download service – something that hasn’t taken off.

David Mansfield, executive director of Ingenious Media, and chairman of RAJAR, talked about the opportunities we can take during a recession. He thought that it should have been radio groups that had developed products like Pandora, Last.fm or Spotify. He ended with a great quote from Charles Darwin: “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

A panel discussion got into the nitty gritty of DAB. Most were broadly positive accepting that DAB had a part to play in a digital world – with its strengths as a broadcast medium. However, not all were happy, and there were planning changes that were felt to be needed.

Stuart Taylor, CEO of GMG Radio gave a talk about what commercial broadcasters could do to build audiences. He highlighted some of GMG’s investment in documentaries, and considered things like collaboration between brands that target similar brands across different radio groups. He mentioned the unique funding model of the Chris Tarrant show that airs on GMG services. But he also highlighted how the Ofcom Broadcasting Code needs amending and updating in relation to sponsorship and promotions.

The final session before lunch was with James Cridland from the BBC and Radio Academy, who gave us a quick whizz through current technologies both within the UK and further afield. So there was Twitter, Audioboo and Stitcher. He focused on services like Swedish Radio who promote their podcasts to listeners other than their current ones (and even have a very neat application to let you find the right length podcast for your commute).

After lunch, Paul Robinson interviewed Paul Gambaccini from who you’re always going to hear exactly what he’s thinking. He was critical of Radio 1 letting Chris Moyles continue having made homophobic comments, and also criticised the previous Radio 2 regime that let presenters like Russell Brand end up with the problems that he did have. He thought that the length of breakfast shows was too long, and the with that amount of airtime to fill, they were always more likely to say ill-advised things.

Dianne Thompson, who’s Chief Executive of Camelot and the newly appointed chair of RadioCentre, then spoke – essentially taking us through RadioCentre’s recent response to the Digital Britain interim report.

Then Absolute Radio’s Chris Lawson led a panel discussion with participants from Ofcom, GMG, Last.fm, RadioCentre and Global, examining the multimedia mix. Jonathan Gillespie of GMG (and only very recently Google), thought that there was only a certain amount that could be taken as learnings from the West Coast tech companies. Peter Davies said Ofcom would listen to services and adapt to keep the industry alive. There’d be an S&P review.

Robert Andrews, editor of PaidContent:UK interviewed Paul Brown, the very new managing director of Spotify. Brown was keen to work with content owners including radio stations, but was less forthcoming about the precise details of either their revenue models or their agreements with the copyright bodies.

Finally Clive Dickens (from Absolute Radio), gave a newly revised presentation detailing the rebranding of Virgin Radio to Absolute Radio. You can see the presentation below:

Overall, it was an interesting and worthwhile event, generally a lot more upbeat than the equivalent conference last year had been. It’d have been nice to see more people there, but budgets are tight just now.

Mediaguardian has, of course, much more coverage of this conference. And you can relive Radio Today’s live blogging of the conference here.