News story about a presentation made to a radio conference in Germany entitled 'Radio 2020: A Radio Future Between Optimism And Pessimism' which concluded that over-40's will continue listening to radio on the FM platform, written by Grant Goddard in September 2010 for Grant Goddard: Radio Blog.

1. NEWS: EUROPEAN RADIO
CONFERENCE TOLD THAT
"OVER-40'S WILL BE LISTENING
TO RADIO ON FM FOR THE NEXT
FORTY YEARS"
by
GRANT GODDARD
www.grantgoddard.co.uk
September 2010

2. On the afternoon of 10 August 2010, a group of radio people from Germany, Austria and
Luxembourg gathered in Erfurt, Germany to discuss the future of radio in the digital age. They
had been invited there by the media regulator for Thüringer state ('TLM') and some of the
region’s broadcasters. The event was entitled ‘Radio 2020: A Radio Future Between Optimism
And Pessimism’ and followed on from a similar event held a year earlier.
This year, the final conference session tackled the topic ‘Radio and the day after tomorrow:
new possibilities for distribution and exploitation of radio content on the internet’. A
presentation by Dr. Klaus Goldhammer, managing director of the Goldmedia Group in Berlin,
included the assertion:
“Radio broadcasting and internet radio are different markets.”
Goldhammer plotted the flow of daytime audiences in Germany for broadcast radio and
internet radio on the same graph. It demonstrated that the peak broadcast radio audience
between 0700 and 0800 corresponded with the lowest daytime audience for internet radio.
Conversely, the peak audience for internet radio was between 1800 and 0000, corresponding
with broadcast radio’s lowest audience of the day [see the slide below from his presentation].
Goldhammer noted that 31% of internet radio’s daily hours listened were consumed between
1800 and 2100. This appears to be very different from the US experience where a significant
volume of listening to internet radio takes place during office hours in workplaces. In Europe,
listening to radio (any radio) at work is still nowhere near as common as it is in North America.
Goldhammer noted that the growth of internet radio listening was still very slow in Germany,
compared to the growth in available internet bandwidth. He concluded that:
“The over-40’s will be listening to radio on FM for the next 40 years”
Lars Gerdau, managing director of 'LandesWelle' Thüringen, a regional rock/pop radio station
broadcast on 14 FM frequencies, commented:
“We see the whole [internet radio] thing has become much more complicated than a
year ago. Firstly, it is very expensive to stream a lot of radio programmes and,
secondly, we have no claim to be first [in the internet space]. We have time and will
focus first on FM.”
News: European Radio Conference Told That "Over-40's Will Be Listening To Radio On FM For The Next Forty Years"
page 2
©2010 Grant Goddard

3. News: European Radio Conference Told That "Over-40's Will Be Listening To Radio On FM For The Next Forty Years"
page 3
©2010 Grant Goddard
After the conference, Inge Müller-Seibel, a German radio sector commentator, noted that
neither was DAB radio replacing FM as the main listening platform:
“After two decades of experimentation in Germany, the future of digital [terrestrial]
radio remains uncertain. It was 1987 when the new DAB transmission technology was
presented for the first time at the IFA in Berlin. Some ten years later, the German
states listened to Brussels and recommended the closure of their terrestrial FM
frequencies by 2015 at the latest. But almost nobody believes it will happen, and now
the radio stations are putting more hope in new distribution technologies via the
internet.”
And a reporter at this year’s IFA consumer electronics fair wrote:
“Digital radio is not a success story in Germany. Little more than 500,000 digital
receivers have been purchased, a tiny number compared to the several million
analogue FM receivers.”
A recent article in 'Die Welt' newspaper asked ‘When Will FM Radio Die?’ and explained:
“In fact, the [FM] technology should no longer exist. Originally, the abolition of FM was
planned for this year. Instead, radio listeners across the country should have been
receiving only digital signals. But the outcome has been different because most people
are completely satisfied with the quality of good old FM stereo, and because of the
inertia from an estimated 300 million FM radio receivers in Germany. Only a few geeks
have so far bought digital radios with DAB technology.
Additionally, it is mobile phones, a symbol of the triumph of digital technology, that
have supported the continuation of analogue FM radio. This is because most phones
have a built-in FM radio receiver.”
[thanks to Katrin Penzel]
[First published by Grant Goddard: Radio Blog as 'Germany: "The Over-40' Will Be Listening To Radio On FM For The
Next 40 Years', 8 September 2010.]
Grant Goddard is a media analyst / radio specialist / radio consultant with thirty years of
experience in the broadcasting industry, having held senior management and consultancy
roles within the commercial media sector in the United Kingdom, Europe and Asia. Details at
http://www.grantgoddard.co.uk