The Chief Operating Officer of Absolute Radio has proposed that digital listening could account for a third of all radio listening in the UK.
Clive Dickens, writing exclusively for RadioToday.co.uk's weekly industry newsletter today, says whilst RAJAR reports 21 per cent of listening is via digital, there's an extra 12.8 per cent of unknown platform listening.
Clive says: "The 21.1 per cent figure also represents 15-99 year olds listening. This doesn’t take into account the share of listening that a younger, more commercially important 25-54 year olds where it rises well above 33 per cent."
Clive was writing in response to a piece by William Rogers, the Chief Executive of UKRD and The Local Radio Company, in which he detailed his reasons for leaving RadioCentre and why he didn’t think the time was right for Digital Radio Upgrade.
"He accused the entire radio industry of having no route map, and of not considering the consequences of its actions and he appeared to base his assumptions around a single estimated figure that only 21 per cent of all radio listening is currently digital," Clive said.
"That’s the figure that RAJAR reported in quarter 3 2009 as being the UK average percentage of all listening to the radio that takes place on a digital device. But if there’s one thing we know for certain, it’s that this estimated figure is incorrect. That’s not to belittle RAJAR in any way, which is providing the best platform figure that it’s currently able to. But at the very least, there’s a substantial amount of digital listening that’s not currently being included."
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