Radio stations urged to keep online quality equal to on-air

by Sarah Crawley-Boevey, Media Week 06-Nov-07

GCap Media's Richard Eyre has called on the radio industry to improve its web offering to ensure it is of an equal standard to its on-air services.

Speaking at the Radio Advertising Bureau's autumn conference, billed as
Radio 3.0: Catch the New Radio Wave, GCap chairman Richard Eyre, who
officially began his tenure at the beginning of this month, called on

radio stations to ensure their web and on-air offerings were a seamless

experience for users.

He urged radio stations to exploit the "major advantage" they hold over
internet start-ups because they had an existing audience ready to be
directed.

Eyre said: "You can't tell people to do something they don't want to do
- and that includes spending time on a rubbish website. Cross- promotion
is only a benefit if there's something online worth seeing."

Eyre stressed it was important for stations to work out where their
listeners were congregating, highlighting social networking sites such
as Facebook that have groups attached to various radio stations.

Other speakers at the conference included Darren Henley, managing
director of GCap's Classic FM and its digital station TheJazz. He said
online offered radio players an opportunity to create a one-to-one
relationship with users.

"Embracing digital interactivity simply for the sake of it is not good
enough," he said. "It's about creating great content. And there's no
reason why advertisers and radio stations can't work together to do
that."