BBC salaries and Digital Radio

The BBC Trust today published it’s report into the alleged overpayment of it’s top on-screen presenters. If you remember, last year details of salaries and ‘golden handcuff’ deals were leaked to the press and alleged that Jonathan Ross was up for £18m over 3 years, Wogan £800k pa and Moyles £630k pa.

Basically, the report says that whilst they’re quite rightly not confirming what the actual salaries are, apparently, and I have no reason to doubt it, the Trust say that the figures are fair and not above the market rate. Then again, I don’t know anyone in commercial radio getting anything like this! The real response is that in terms of radio the BBC has no true competition, but to be honest as a society we’re probably better off for it. As has been proved, you just can’t provide anything remotely like BBC Radio 4 or Five Live on a commercial basis. And as for BBC Radios 1, 2 and 3, again, not without compromising so much that you lose the essence and public value of the services.

I’ve wondered before about the value of the BBC Radio digital spin-offs (hmm, perhaps I need to get out more…). 1-Extra and Asian Network are part of the corporation’s diversity commitment from receiving the license fee and as such do a good job. Radio 7 exploits the archive and delivers targetted children’s programmes. Sports Extra delivers a better return on the high costs of rights. And 6-Music, well, ermm… OK, so nothing comes to mind right now, but overall the cost of delivering these services is small, in the grand scale of things. I’ve seen the pie chart break up of how the license fee is spent and I’m happy with the minuscule sliver allocated to the digital radio channels!

But this arguement just doesn’t hold up in commercial industry. We’re seen a handful of digital channels fold over the past few months and Planet Rock only just survived by the skin of it’s teeth, thanks to a individual fan. Is this just the business model of Digital One, the national commercial DAB multiplex operator? The jury’s out on that one, but I don’t know what the alternative would be.

On the face of it regional digital radio, rather than national, is doing quite the opposite. Veritably flourishing! Ofcom seems to be licensing new multiplexes all the time and I see there are even fairly well developed plans afoot for the next generation local city based ones. And the number of DAB digital radio receivers is getting really quite reasonable now. Oh how different from just a few years ago…

 

Magic lands in Kent, as Virgin leaves London

Hot UK radio news, ‘Kiss’ has been removed from most regional DAB multiplexes, Kent included. It’s been replaced with the wonders of ‘Magic 105.4′, also produced from London. Lovely.

I don’t think I’ve ever intentionally tuned into ‘Kiss’, not that I’m in the target audience profile though, you understand! ‘Magic’, on the other hand… OK, I’m a secret fan and on long M25 journies I do often tune to 105.4 FM and get a bit annoyed when it fades out half way down the M2/M20.

But ‘Magic’ seems to have quite a wide appeal, much more so than it’s other London rivals. My Girlfriend is a definite fan, as is my Father. In fact, I suspect that this may have a dramatic affect on radio listening in my Parents’ home!

Other hot radio news, and DAB again, ‘Planet Rock’ has a new owner. And there was more than one person after it!! I read at the weekend that Brian May, yes he of big hair and the very fabulous Queen, was annoyed that someone had beaten him to it! And it turn out today that it’s been bought by Malcolm Bluemel. No, I hadn’t heard of him either, but the very best of luck to him. And ‘Digital One’ now has a new row on it’s income spreadsheet!

More hot radio news! Virgin Radio is no more. SMG have sold up to ‘TIML Golden Square Ltd’, a wholly owned subsidiary of ‘Times of India Group’. And they must give up the Virgin name within 90 days or pay £8m extra, on top of the £53.2m proper price tag.

I predict the arrival of national ‘Radio Jack’, in 89 days time…

Radio news hasn’t been this hot since the passing of Home, Light and Third.