"Let us be rubbish, and we'll give you a national rubbish station" pledges Commercial Radio

The Radio Centre, the body which represents "the UK commercial radio industry" (which is, what, two companies and bit of the Guardian?) has come up with a nifty idea to save DAB:

The confidential report by Ingenious Consulting, seen by MediaGuardian.co.uk, said commercial radio would launch a 24-hour national news and speech station and a national music-based entertainment service on the troubled digital audio broadcasting (DAB) platform.

Blimey. That's awfully good of you, people. Investing in a solid product will certainly help DAB and, by providing a quality service, attract advertising which will enable you to make a profit.

That is the idea, isn't it?

You just see this as a commercial deal?

Oh:

In return for the extra commitment to DAB, the report urged the government and media regulator Ofcom to slash the number of hours that small commercial stations are required to produce and allow more co-locating of small-scale broadcasters.

In other words, in order to launch a product that may or may not have a commercial future, the companies what the already pissweak rules which keep local radio vaguely local to be thrown away.

Now, it's not that I don't trust these guys - but does anyone really trust them? Isn't this like when someone comes to your door and offers to clean your garden for a tenner, pockets the tenner, and then disappears? Surely not even Ofcom is dim enough to believe that the commercial news and talk station would remain delivering a premium service for more than about ten seconds after they were allowed to shed off the last of their obligations to the local areas they were supposed to be serving?

What sort of approach is it to say "hey, we can't afford to deliver a proper service in Oldham, or Hastings, or Brigadoon, but we could, somehow, offer you a top-quality pair of 24 hour national stations if you let us drop our obligations"?

Here's an idea - why not try going up to the police and offering to do a spot of forensic work for them if they ignore the law about not stealing stuff from WH Smiths?

Radio listeners want what radio does, says radio

You might recall when RadioCentre, the commercial radio's industry body, launched the Big Listen, we cynically suggested the self-selecting nature of the participants and the angle of the quesations asked might generate the expectation of results giving thumbs-up to commercial radio plans.

James P has been on to tell us that - somewhat surprisingly - the responses have been collated and tabulated and in less than a month. Surprising not only because that's quite a fast turnaround, but also because the RadioCentre's own website hasn't published the results yet. To be fair, though, the Arqiva Awards, which they hold because very few commercial stations are in with a prayer of winning a Sony, came and went this week but the RadioCentre website is still encouraging its members to enter.

So, then, we're turning to Digital Spy to find out what RadioCentre discovered:

Chief executive of the RadioCentre, Andrew Harrison praised Ofcom's consultation paper on the Future of Radio, but said changes needed to be made now rather than when digital radio listeners targets have been met.

He said "Many of the areas require change to legislation and this unnecessarily hampers Ofcom's ability to regulate radio flexibly in the light of changing market circumstances. We recommend that future legislation should give Ofcom greater discretion within the context of policy goals established by Parliament."

The online poll also showed that listeners were not overly concerned about quotas for locally-produced programming, and so the RadioCentre has called for a focus on the provision of local material.

What excellent news for the radio companies - their own poll amongst their dwindling share of the audience has found that people aren't bothered by the expensive and time-consuming idea of local radio franchise holders actually making their programmes locally. Why, they couldn't have got better news if they'd rigged the poll...