Clive Dickens presented at the Radio 2.0 Conference in Paris this morning, talking about how the Absolute Radio Network operates in the digital space, with mobile being it’s fastest growing platform. He touched about the station’s digital strategy as well as explaining the significance of Radioplayer.
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Our CEO Donnach O’Driscoll has been asked to give a talk today at the first ever Drive to Digital Conference from Digital UK, an event all about in-vehicle digital radio which is something we are all very excited about at One Golden Square.
Donnach will talk all about the launch of our two brand new digital decade stations – Absolute Radio 60s and Absolute Radio 70s. He will be joined by some of the biggest names in the business including Tim Davie, the BBC’s Director of Audio and Music, Paul Everitt, CEO of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders as well as Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries.
Here’s some interesting research that we conducted with our listeners on in-car Digital Radio:
45% of our London target listeners are “really interested” in having a DAB digital radio in their car. This is up from 28% in 2008.
If you combine “interested” and “really interested” the current figure rises to 69%, up from 42% in 2008.
What do our listeners currently see as the main benefits of DAB digital radio?
Ford Ennals, Chief Executive of Digital Radio UK, says: “Motorists love listening to digital radio in their car and enjoy the extra choice of stations and the digital quality sound. Thanks to the increased DAB coverage and availability in cars, more motorists will be able to listen to their favourite stations
For more info on the Drive to Digital Conference click here
Absolute Radio is continuing its commitment to a digital future by expanding its successful decade brand strategy with two new services: Absolute Radio 60s and Absolute Radio 70s.
Absolute Radio 60s will launch on Tuesday 22nd of November and is set to be The Home of The Beatles, Stones and Motown. From launch, the station will be broadcasting digitally to over a third of the UK population living in London, the North and West of England and Scotland on DAB and online through Radioplayer at http://www.absoluteradio60s.co.uk/ or on mobile via Smartphone apps.
The station will combine ‘The Swinging 60s’ with ‘The Sound of Young America’ – with a playlist which will span The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, The Beatles, Aretha Franklin, Elvis, The Kinks and other timeless acts of the decade who remain as relevant today as ever.
The station will launch with a season of special music documentaries, focusing respectively on Motown, The Beatles, The Beach Boys, and The Rolling Stones. Its daytime line up will be headed by former BBC Radio 2, 6 Music & XFM presenter Pete Mitchell.
A multiple Sony Award winner, Mitchell will host weekday mid-mornings on Absolute Radio 60s and be reunited with his long-time co-presenter, Geoff Lloyd, for the station’s launch, putting ‘Pete & Geoff’ back in the studio together for the first time in over five years. Afternoons will be hosted by presenter Chris Martin.
Lloyd meanwhile will himself host his own new show on Absolute Radio 60s; ‘Beatles Brunch’ which will air every Sunday at 10am. The schedule will also feature Christian O’Connell‘s Commercial Radio Breakfast Show of The Year through the week and Frank Skinner’s Sony Gold winning Saturday morning show.
Absolute Radio 70s will launch a week later on Tuesday 29th of November and is set to be The UK’s Only 70s Radio Station broadcasting in London on DAB, online through Radioplayer at http://www.absoluteradio70s.co.uk/ or on mobile via smartphone apps
Absolute Radio 70s will be the ‘Soundtrack to 70s Britain’, where you can hear the legends of today’s music industry at the peak of their musical creativity from the likes of Rod Stewart, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Marvin Gaye, Slade, T Rex, Jackson 5, Kate Bush, Blondie, and David Bowie.
The station will be fronted by ex BBC Radio 1, Capital Radio and XFM presenter Richard Skinner. A former host of Top of the Pops, The Old Grey Whistle Test and the BBC’s Live Aid broadcast, Skinner will host weekday afternoons on Absolute Radio 70s.
Afternoons will be hosted by presenter Martyn Lee and the station will also feature shows from Christian O’Connell and Frank Skinner. The launch of Absolute Radio 70s will include special programmes featuring Noddy Holder, Nile Rodgers of Chic, Queen and The Sex Pistols’ John Lydon.
Good gravy I’m hungover. I’m pretty sure this is how Oliver Reed felt the day after that Michael Aspel interview. Except Oliver Reed wouldn’t be moaning like a sissy girl on a radio station’s corporate blog about how bad his head felt the day after. No, Oliver Reed would have just ploughed on through. Eight pints of real ale, six cheeky shorts, a mammoth fry up, short stint as Othello at the Old Vic, shot shot shot, pint, jug of orange juice, bed. And he’d dream of riding rainbows and punching unicorns. Because that’s how Oliver Reed rolled.
But I’m not Oliver Reed. I’m in agony. And this is my opportunity to moan about it, while updating you of all the major online news this week. So here we go.
Firstly, if you’re not a Blackberry owner, then last week you may have heard that there were a few problems with RIM’s service. And by a few problems, I mean somebody turned it off and forgot to turn it back on again. If you are a Blackberry owner, you’ve probably just heard that your service was down via email today. An email that was probably sent on Tuesday, last week. Apparent issues with the Blackberry data delivery service brought the network to a complete halt in Europe at the beginning of last week, and problems then followed in North America and parts of Asia. It couldn’t have come at a worse time for RIM, as Friday saw the launch of the iPhone 4S, and the long line of Apple devotes stood at the Regent Street Apple store is surely only to get longer with the addition of irate Blackberry users shunning their Bold’s and Curve’s and opting instead for the ‘Siri’ (yep, her again) ridden statement of brand loyalty previously known as a phone. Of course there’ll probably also be people in that queue that have been in line for days who are going to be massively disappointed when they get to the end and realise that they’re not going to get a go on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.
Hangover update: it’s really kicking in now. My eyes are red raw, I’ve broken through the headache barrier (it’s now just a constant, dull, numbing of the forehead) and everything on the inside of me feels like it should be on the outside.
App of the week this week (according to Apple at least), is Newsstand. Like iBooks, Newsstand is the new home for all of your newspaper and magazine subscriptions. And that, is basically that. Tell you what, enjoy this video of a woman playing with her Photo Booth camera while I find another app – because that Newsstand coverage was rubbish. Here we go, Postagram. For Android phones and iPhones, Postagram will print and then deliver any photo you choose from your Facebook images collection as a postcard. A bit of the old and the new colliding there for the benefit of us all. Like a kid on a skateboard colliding with an old woman, with hilarious consequences. Try as I might I couldn’t find a video on YouTube that matched this description. I did find this though.
So another week done (unless this has gone out on Monday again – in which case, I hope you enjoyed your weekend, it went by so quick didn’t it?) so I leave you with this latest still from the Avengers movie and a lunatic jumping over a Lamborghini. Meanwhile, I’m off to think happy thoughts, play this on repeat, and try to convince myself that I’m not actually dying.
Going out on a school night. Never again.
As part of our 3rd birthday celebrations we’re introducing a better way of reporting playlist data to the industry.
Playlists traditionally report how many times a song is aired each week and that’s the basis for what defines A-list, B-list etc.
Whilst weekly ‘spins’ remains a useful metric it’s far from the full story. Would you rather your song was played every night at 2am or just once by Christian after the 8am news? At the moment five plays is definitely better than one!
A more accurate measure would take into account when tracks are played compared with RAJAR data for how many people are listening at that time. That measure already exists and it’s called Impacts.
From next week we’ll be the first to publish the Impacts of every playlist position on Absolute Radio UK. The data will be reported every Monday morning to mirror the previous chart week and be compiled by radiomonitor.com who monitor the music played on 316 stations or 99.7% of UK radio.
See what Music Week have been saying about us here
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