Commercial radio: it's not going to live forever

The Guardian's Changing Media summit today had a poke at the state of the UK's commercial radio sector and made a sucking noise:

UK commercial radio 'dying out'

That was the gloomy headline, although it's not quite as bad as it sounds:

Commercial radio could die out within 15 to 20 years as advertising revenues dwindle, the MediaGuardian Changing Media Summit heard today.

Claire Enders, the founder of Enders Analysis, made the prediction, pointing to the large number of radio stations in the UK that are currently unprofitable.

In twenty years? Seriously? In twenty years we're all going to have music and news weeped straight into our faces by highly trained, internet-connected fact bats, so predicting there might not be a space for thirty thousand variants of Heart FM isn't quite so daring.

She said revenues from classified, online and search advertising all outstripped those from radio, and that advertising agencies were tuning out of the medium.

"There is a next generation of people in agencies who are not that keen on radio," she said."

Which is unfortunate, as - listening to commercial radio - there also appears to be a generation of people in radio who are not that keen on radio.

Clive Dickens, out of that station that used to be Virgin, reckons he knows what the problem is:

"As an operator who has been in the sector with this brand for five months, [I would say] a whole range of failed models – plc models – have failed to grasp what consumers wanted: extended choice not upgraded sets," he said.

"Greater choice in the first seven years [of digital radio] came from the BBC. As someone operating for five months, I say watch this space."

Dickens is keen to stress that he's only been doing it for five months, but he's being modest: in that time, he's managed to chase away audience in numbers that some more seasoned heads would take years to lose.

Is it true that audiences want more choice, though? Isn't it that they want to feel a connection with the station they listen to, and most of the UK's commercial sector has been busily losing the valuable sense of connection by turning well-loved local brands into centralised, one-size-fits-all megabrands?