Radiodays: Grow, brand, build and be proud

Europe’s biggest radio conference has opened in Barcelona with a message to the industry to grow areas like on-demand listening.

BBC Director of Audience and Music Tim Davie also told delegates the most important thing they could do was lobby mobile phone companies to include broadcast radio receivers in all models.

Annika Nyberg, in her inaugural Radiodays Europe speech as Media Director at the EBU, said that radio was a ‘unique medium with unique features’ and revealed that the EBU is applying to ICANN for control of web domains ending .radio

Speaking in one of the opening sessions at the conference, Davie – who is responsible for all BBC network radio – summed up how going beyond the norm could help drive growth across the industry. “Only 0.35% of UK radio is on-demand. If we turned that into 5% – that would offer huge growth,” he said. Davie added that broadcasters should be thinking about mobile devices instead of computers as the next big platform to crack. “The most important thing you can do today is tell your mobile operator that you want phones to receive a broadcast signal, as IP can’t deliver us the growth that we need,” he said.

In her second presentation of the day, Annika Nyberg from the EBU summed up where broadcasters and the radio industry need to be now and in the future, she quoted Tim Davie, saying ‘We can either develop radio together or we can manage its decline.’ Her message was to be open, be bold and be proud. “There’s no reason to complain – 86% of Europeans listen to radio for up to 3 hours every day,” she said. “We need to get on with being proud of the job we are doing.”

Radiodays Europe continues until tomorrow lunchtime (Friday). You can follow our coverage at Radio Today Live or on Twitter.

There is also coverage on the Radiodays Europe website.