Rarely can a sector have undergone so much fundamental change in 12 months. Rumbling along all year has been the will they/won't they story of the Channel 4-led second digital radio multiplex, which, with well-regarded former BBC radio executive Bob Shennan on board, now looks set to launch next April, once a capacity deal has been finalised with the owners of the first multiplex - Global/GCap.
At the end of last year, Emap cut a deal with Bauer to transfer its radio interests to the German media group, and the magazine specialist has spent this year absorbing these into its UK operations.
Global is in the process of integrating GCap into its business to form a radio behemoth that will really take shape in 2009. And now Virgin Radio has rebranded as Absolute, in a bold move that seems initially to have gone down well in the media sector (see page 14).
The names that ran the industry in 2008, including Ralph Bernard, Fru Hazlitt, Richard Eyre and Phil Riley, have been replaced by new blood such as Ashley Tabor, Stephen Miron, Donnach O'Driscoll (see profile on page 12) and Clive Dickens. But as figures for Q2 ad spend in 2008 show (Media Week, 2 September, page 4), radio faces severe challenges. Spend was down 10.2% year on year, with national ad spend down a massive 15.9%.
Q4 is going to be vital for radio if it is to continue to make its case as a really effective ad medium. In many ways, radio suffers from its flexibility: it is good at reacting quickly and being able to accept bookings at short notice, but that also means advertisers can wait until the last minute in an uncertain market to allocate their money.
Much of commercial radio has had the pressures of the stock market removed from it and is now in the private sector. Let's hope this fact, combined with the current noise and attention surrounding radio, can be translated into energy that will be reflected in greater client spend.
