A dim future for terrestrial radio?

"The ease of delivery and reception will make Internet radio much more easily listened to than that of FM, which has many technical and cost issues to reach a large audience," Bill Hammerton, executive producer of RadioBangkok.net, Thailand's first Internet radio station, said last week.

Research clearly shows not only that WiFi is gaining acceptance and availability at an astonishing rate, but also that emerging portable devices - including mobile phones - are overtaking conventional media at an incredible pace, he said, adding that in the United Kingdom, more than two million people listened to radio on their mobile phones last month.

Hammerton was a BBC soundman in the UK before moving to Bangkok in 2005 and launching the first English-language radio station. Terrestrial listening is dropping year by year while Internet radio stations have blossomed to over 10,000 around the world, with about 10 in Thailand, he said.

In Thailand, strict regulations and censorship of terrestrial radio will change the face of broadcasting towards Internet radio, he added.

Bangkok-based RadioBangkok.net is now the largest English-language Internet radio station in Asia, accessed by 290,000 regular listeners a month, of whom about 12% are in Thailand.
Its mission is to bring Thailand to the world by exploring the country's rich culture, fascinating traditions and beautiful people. Its target listeners are aged 25-39, of whom 70% are men.

"We have seen enormous potential on the right to develop the station and change our direction. We have expanded the audience of our Internet ratio station and brought ourselves up-market by changing the style of music and presentation with more localised contents, moving from the old American and ‘60s music style with no local interest," Hammerton said.

The station now targets international audiences and focuses on the Thai market with English-educated and English-speaking audiences.

"We're set to expand our contents by developing multiple channels. We are in discussions with the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra on a 24-hour Internet classical radio station. We are talking with airlines for travel radio stations, which will be broadcast 24 hours a day and seven days a week," he said.
The Kingdom receives 12 million visitors a year and the new travel radio station hopes to capture half of them.

It also plans to develop Japanese and Chinese radio channels.
Radio is the same by whatever method it is delivered, but the Internet offers an incredible choice and the delivery of that information is enhanced, Hammerton said.

"As for books and newspapers, this is a much bigger issue. To listen to radio you must have headphones or loudspeakers but printed-page technology has just not been able to deliver a device that has the portability and feel, the comfort factor, of a book or newspaper," he said.

There have been many attempts at e-book devices and digital ink, but so far none has been truly successful. Certainly more people will get their headline news from the Internet but reading a newspaper, for many, is an experience that comprises far more than scanning just the news headlines. Conventional printed newspapers cannot compete with the immediacy of Internet, radio or TV and yet they have their place, he said.

Bridge Ratings estimates global Internet radio advertising at US$500 million (Bt17.4 billion) this year, with the projection to dramatically increase to $19.7 billion in 2020, when Internet radio is expected to generate revenues equal to those terrestrial radio achieved last year.

Bridge Ratings also forecasts that the mobile-phone audio audience by 2015 could reach 40 million, compared to 274 million for terrestrial radio, 15 million for satellite radio.