Daniel Danker, general manager for programmes and on-demand (left)
Mark Friend, controller of multiplatform and interactive for the BBC’s Audio & Music division (right)
The recent launch of the BBC’s iPlayer Radio app marks the start of the slow migration of its radio output from the iPlayer onto its own distinct platform. A free app for now, the BBC may move to monetise it by harnessing impulse purchasing. Here Daniel Danker and Mark Friend discuss how the app will be distinct from iPlayer, why Spotify and Pandora are not overturning the discovery power of radio (yet) and how the radio experience is going to have to change for different age groups.
Why build the standalone iPlayer Radio app when the iPlayer app exists already?
DD: It’s important to see this in the context of something bigger than the app. What we have launched is iPlayer Radio and the reasons behind doing it are fairly simple. Radio has made up around 25% of the consumption on iPlayer over the last few years. But the usage patterns are very different. When you look at TV use on the iPlayer, around 20% of the consumption is live TV today. When you look at radio on iPlayer, around 90% of the consumption is live.
As we look to the future, we really see there is a huge opportunity for radio and that opportunity will only be possible to realise if we give radio its own platform on which to grow and we don’t try to push it into the same paradigm as television.
What international plans do you have?
DD: The website is available globally. When it came to making an app, because we work in the public service, our North Star is delighting the Licence Fee payer. Our aim was to stay focused. You can get distracted trying to make a global application from day one – whereas it is much easier on the web. We wanted to stay focused with a UK-only app, but it might broaden out in the future.
Will you be commercialising it? Shazam, for example, has high click-through purchase rates and this is something your app could harness.
MF: We are a radio broadcaster and a radio business – not a music playback service.
DD: I wouldn’t rule it out. On the web we link through to some places where people can purchase music so there is no reason to rule it out. The focus today is rolling out on Android, learning from the audience reaction, helping the production teams in the studios get closer to their audience and get the audience closer to the production teams in the studios.
That is our aim and, trust me, that is more than enough to keep us very busy. But if the feedback down the line comes in the form of people liking the favouriting feature because it lets them keep track of their favourite tracks – but they wish it was easier to connect into services where you can buy music – it’s possible but it doesn’t even make the top 3 list now.
It is a distinct platform outside of iPlayer but the two will run concurrently for now. When will radio migrate fully onto it?
DD: Eventually we will complete that migration and you can see the first big steps towards that on the web today on bbc.co.uk/iplayer and click the radio tab – a light box pops up and asks you if you’d like to try the new product. It fairly strongly encourages that.
We are going to see the vast majority of users immediately move over and by the end of the process it will just be a total redirect. That is on the web where it is easiest to make the change. In mobile apps we will probably make the change next and then question what we do on the connected TV experience. Eventually that experience will migrate completely to iPlayer Radio.
Were consumers just seeing iPlayer as mainly a TV platform so radio needed to be given its own space?
DD: When you make the change, people only see it for what you have out there today. What we are really doing here is creating a platform for radio in the connected world. I feel that if we didn’t make this change, we would be holding back the huge possibility that radio has in a connected world; but our ambition goes well beyond just taking the existing functionality and splitting it into its own world.
If you look back on iPlayer when it first launched five years ago and compare that to what it is today, it bears almost no resemblance as it’s moved on so much. I suspect that five years from now if you look back you’ll have the same reaction about iPlayer Radio.
MF: It’s worth bearing in mind that each radio station now effectively has its own web presence. There were something like 5m unique browsers a week coming into the Radio 1 station page, Radio 3, Radio 4, local radio etc. There are over 55 radio stations in the BBC.
It’s also worth remembering that the other big move is that you are bringing all of those into this one coherent product – which is a really big change. The challenge is how to get the benefit of that one product experience, iPlayer Radio, and retain the character and personality of the individual station – which is what we are trying to do.
What impact will this have on the DAB market given digital-only stations like 6 Music and 1xtra are big draws for it?
MF: If you look at the way radio discusses digital, it talks about ‘digital radio’ and not DAB and internet radio. The drive in the UK is to take digital radio listening to 50% of listening as quickly as we can. That will take us to the point where we can drive a proper digital switchover for radio and effectively migrate away from analogue.
As an industry, we look at DAB and internet as two really important drivers towards that. There is clearly a level of crossover, but at the moment DAB is the predominant form of digital listening – in terms of volume of listening and the numbers of people accessing it. This will help to meet our ambition to increase the amount of internet listening and TV listening.
What about a BlackBerry app for younger listeners given Radio 1 is under pressure to lower the average age of its listeners?
DD: Right now the mobile web experience is what we are targeting for BlackBerry and Windows Phone. It works across all platforms and even Android users are using it now. We are able to deliver a pretty rich experience on mobile web so our strategy for now for them [younger listeners] is the mobile web.
How does radio loyalty work in the digital age?
MF: In radio, listener loyalty is to stations more than it is to programmes; whereas in TV it’s more to programmes than to channels. If you look on television, typically it’s about using catch-up for a particular programme. That is the drive – “Come and catch up with these shows” – and it’s not really network-specific. For radio stations, it’s all part of the live output.
If you listen to a Radio 1 show, you’ll be going to the Radio 1 website to look at a picture or hear a clip or see a video. That’s just a daily dialogue with the audience coming out of a radio station. All the research we have done shows that is where the prime relationship is. People define themselves as, say, a Radio 2 listener, a Radio 1 listener or a Radio 4 listener more than they are a listener to You & Yours or to Fearne Cotton. There is that kind of relationship.
What we are doing to the product, both on the desktop and within the app, is to try and reflect the character of each individual station by the way we curate the content, the type of content we are pushing to the front and the kind of conversation, as we build this up, that we want to be having through these services.
The radio landscape is changing and there is rising competition from foreign stations. How does the BBC compete?
MF: I would put it slightly differently. If we look at where the real competition is, I would point to key parts of the day where there are other media that are competing for people’s attention. This isn’t just about the BBC – this is about radio and its future as a vibrant medium. Radio has incredible strength in its relationship with the audience. But during the day [it is about understanding] what other things compete for your attention other than the radio.
You say that 90% of radio listening on iPlayer is to live radio. Are the archives getting lost and do people even want it?
DD: Companies in our industry love talking about innovation, but then the first thing that happens when anyone tries to innovate is that innovation gets reviewed through the lens of how people do things today. Here’s a bit of a news flash – innovation is all about doing something new and you can’t always back it with data in terms of how people work on things today.
The archive and the programming don’t surface themselves; it needs to be surfaced – and it needs to be surfaced in a curated way. Those sparks are what we want to enable in our live experience so you can have a smooth transition from live to catch-up and archive. We want to make it an enjoyable experience to move back in time for our radio programming. That’s what I mean when I talk about creating that platform. We aren’t just starting by creating a product – we are creating a platform for radio.
BBC TV has the red button to access extra content. How does that work with iPlayer Radio?
MF: You can see it now. If you go to 6 Music, there are all the recent Lauren Laverne sessions [with bands playing live sets at Maida Vale studios in London]. They are all there and available and we are bringing those to the fore. Radio 1 did the Teen Awards recently and all those clips are available on the desktop or in the app.
The key things that audiences tell us they want, certainly for the younger audiences, is radio to be more visual, more social and more connected to the other things they are doing online. Older audiences want something slightly different. They may want more related information around a topic and see what debates are going on around that topic.
Our job is to try and bring these elements together in a way that is appropriate for a particular show. We know that a Radio 1 audience wants a much more visual, social, immediate experience compared to a Radio 4 audience. What we have done with the product is to make it possible to dial up and down the visual elements and the social elements. Our plans for the future will focus on bringing that out more – particularly around the live experience.
In an age of Spotify and Pandora, how relevant is radio today?
DD: This app went from a standing start to the number 1 app in the App Store within 22 hours. The appetite was clearly there.
MF: It’s great for consumers to have all these things and all of this choice. Radio has had this competition for the best part of a decade now and it’s still really strong.
Reach has never been as high in radio. We have more than 91% of the population accessing over 20 hours a week. The role that radio plays is that it’s a companion, a great thing to have on while you are doing something else, something you can really connect to with the personalities and programmes. And in music particularly that role of radio as the number 1 source for music discovery is still there.
Over the last decade we have seen that change a bit but radio is still the number 1 place for music discovery and friends and family are second, hence why the likes of Spotify want to integrate that friends and family element [via Facebook]. I think radio is really strong with it. That competition from Pandora and Spotify is great and you can also see them as a wonderful companion to radio. I don’t think Pandora and Spotify have really nailed the discovery element yet.
Will this app kill off cross-radio initiative RadioPlayer?
MF: We are still a full part of RadioPlayer and a full supporter. If you look at the app for iPlayer Radio that has just launched, the ambition for all of this is to grow radio listening overall. The fact the app went to number 1 in the first day shows the power of the BBC to change dynamics – particularly in the UK. RadioPlayer has a really important part to play. iPlayer Radio is the place to get all the BBC radio in one place and RadioPlayer is the place to get all of UK radio in one place. The two are significant and run alongside each other.
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