Does a little Australian TV channel give us clues for radio’s future?

01/27/19 • 2 min

Television, as we know, is changing rapidly - significantly more so than radio. Viewers to live TV are declining, as audiences get more used to on-demand services like Netflix, Hulu, Stan, or iPlayer. So, TV platforms are trying new things.

At the beginning of this year, the TV system that I subscribe to - a little Australian set-top-box called Fetch TV - added a new channel. It’s a true-crime channel called Oxygen, run by NBC Universal, and it’s on channel 101.

Oxygen is an interesting model - because it isn’t actually a television channel at all.

Sure, it looks like a television channel. It appears in the EPG alongside all the other television channels, and it has a broadcast schedule, too, 24-hours a day. If I flick through the channels in an evening, I’ll flick past Oxygen just like every other channel. You can watch it just like any other channel - you can watch a show, then the show finishes, then something else will start.

In fact, Oxygen is just a collection of on-demand TV shows. On the TV Guide, it exists as a virtual channel - the EPG slot there to promote the shows available on-demand. When you channel-surf into Oxygen, it isn’t giving you a live TV channel at all - in fact, the show conveniently starts at the beginning. It’s an on-demand service - not a live TV channel. Programming has been chosen based on how well it’ll perform as an on-demand product.

What could radio learn from this?

Imagine - you tune into the radio, and the first thing you hear is your favourite song. Followed by, yes, the live presenters (at least, recorded live five minutes ago). A radio station that gives you the travel at 8.20am and only at 8.20am, because that’s the time you’re just getting ready to drive into work. A radio station that has everything that makes great radio - presenters talking about the football last night, the ride into town today; but a radio station that has nothing that makes for bad radio - no poorly-targeted advertising, no overplaying of my favourite songs.

If we were to think of great music radio as a jigsaw, made from short pieces of on-demand audio content, rather than a live unalterable stream - what would that mean?

That “jigsaw” could be assembled just for me, on my mobile phone. And for you, on yours. And a version of that jigsaw also assembled for those listening on FM - with less of the personalisation, but otherwise should sound virtually identical.

Is the future for radio something which is devised as a collection of on-demand audio, assembled for each listener... and where the FM transmitter is just another listener?

Does radio need a bit of Oxygen?

Support the show.

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Oxygen is an interesting model - because it isn’t actually a television channel at all.

What could radio learn from this?

If we were to think of great music radio as a jigsaw, made from short pieces of on-demand audio content, rather than a live unalterable stream - what would that mean?

Is the future for radio something which is devised as a collection of on-demand audio, assembled for each listener... and where the FM transmitter is just another listener?

Does radio need a bit of Oxygen?

Support the show.

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Previous Episode

A commercial radio breakfast show, without the commercials

Last year, Chris Evans was the presenter of the most listened-to breakfast show in Europe - The Chris Evans Breakfast Show on BBC Radio 2.

The BBC earns most of its money from a television licence fee, currently US$195 or so, which households in the UK have to pay if they have a television. This licence fee (and the sale of programmes to other broadcasters) pays for the whole thing - so there are no commercials or sponsor credits on BBC Radio 2: it’s entirely commercial free, and perhaps that’s why 14.6m people tune in every week.

Of course, that’s not entirely true. The BBC does a very good job of promoting its own services. Were they to spend money on similar advertising elsewhere, that would be a very high bill indeed. So there is plenty of promotion of new BBC television shows, and plenty of breathless interviews with big BBC stars who often have something to plug. But that’s fine, and that’s not really “commercial messaging”.

Chris Evans left the BBC at the end of last year; and has just started presenting The Chris Evans Breakfast Show on Virgin Radio, arguably one of the smallest national radio stations in the country, with 414,000 listeners.

Virgin Radio (a trademark of Virgin, yes, but owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in the UK) is a commercial radio station: but the Chris Evans breakfast show is entirely commercial free. There’s not a single commercial in the entire three and a half hours.

Of course, that’s not entirely true, either. He’s sponsored by Sky, one of the UK’s largest TV broadcasters. There are occasional sponsor credits, but if the first show is anything to go by, there’ll be plenty of promotion of new Sky television shows, and plenty of breathless interviews with big Sky stars who often have something to plug. But there won’t be a single 30-second ad for washing powder, sausages, double-glazing, or anything else - “not for the first hundred years,” said Chris - presumably exaggerating slightly - in his first show.

It’s a canny move. If the only thing holding his previous audience back was the prospect of radio commercials, Virgin Radio have removed that objection. And why not.

In truth, the loss of commercial inventory from the breakfast show won’t damage the station much: it stands to considerably gain from the marketing and halo effect that its new big star will have.

When radio’s online competition has a much lighter ad-load, or no ads at all, it’s a clever move to work to rethink commercial radio’s revenue model. Good on Virgin Radio for giving that a go.

Support the show.

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy