Particularly thank you to Ben for the comment explaining the process through which T-DMB was chosen.

What was interesting, and something I never really appreciated, was how completely united behind M. Anichini’s concept the entire French radio industry (the GRN?) appeared to be. This is in contrast to other countries where there are public discussions about DAB, DAB+, DRM, DRM+. DVB-H, HD Radio. That was even more interesting when I understood that some people in the radio industry privately disagreed with the choices, but publicly supported them. Gladwell’s explanation of the situation at Korean Air chimed as an explanation of how culturally people agree to not challenge the decisions of a superior – to be deferential to their experience and position.

That’s not a criticism, incidentally. It’s a recognition that different cultures do react to situations differently, and that insight can help people better understand differing views and behaviours. We learn so much from looking outside our normal sphere of experience, it’s amazing.

The french radio market is very developped and the program choice, in most urban areas, offers more than 25 programs in FM. Main groups are Radio France (public radio), NRJGroup (4 national networks), CLT (3 national networks), LAB (3 national networks). There are also some other powerful national networks (skyrock, RMCInfo, MFM), smaller “multi cities” networks, and local independant stations.

When the CSA (the french broadcasting authority) decided that radio had to turn to digital, the major private broadcasters first decided that they would do everything possible to delay – or even better, kill – the process. FM is highly profitable, and they feared that they could lose market shares, specially in a difficult context for music stations. Spending money for digital, and the risk of increased competition was not desired.

What is more surprising is that mr Anichini (public radio) was a part of what was known as “GRN” (an informal association of the biggest radio groups). It appeared later that mr Anichini was plying its own game, and that the former Radio France’s president, J.P. Clusel, was not informed about all that was happening. The digital radio problems are quite technical and I suppose that mr Anichini did what he could to make this as obscure as possible so that nobody at RF’s head could interfere with its own private interests.

When it became clear that the CSA really wanted radio to go digital, and that it would become hard to stop that, the GRN decided to promote the system that would limit the number of possible stations. The official arguments to chose T-DMB were that this system was the “sexiest”, allowing video, BIFS… Those big groups all have FM music networks that are losing listeners every year (because of mp3 players and webradios), and the T-DMB was supposed to have the qualities required to make radio competitive again. The unofficial reason was that fully using the capacities of T-DMB requires a sufficient bitrate, and that naturally reduces the number of stations per multiplex.

But in a way the GRN failed. First, there was a legal obligation for the CSA to offer the possibility for all existing stations to go digital on their existing FM areas, so it was necessary, for exemple, to have the capacity to put the (about) 50 FM stations of Paris on T-DMB. Then the CSA knew that the success of digital radio resides in an increased offer. Who would buy a new receiver to receive what’s already available on the FM band ? The result is that T-DMB will be used at low bitrates, which is enough to do bad radio (the promise of higher audio quality disappears), DAB+ would have been more efficient. And most of the GRN’s big radio groups projects for new networks have not been retained by the CSA: NRJGroup will have it’s 4 networks on the digital radio, LAB will have one more radio (so 4 radios too), and the same for CLT (4 radios instead of 3 in FM at the moment). They all wanted 2 or 3 new networks.

So, to reply to previous messages, I would say that Tina is right, its all about money and not cultural environment (I’m talking about that digital radio problem, not about other things where there can be cultural influences). And when Nick Piggott says “there were people throughout the French industry who *did* disagree with the pursuit of T-DMB as a solution, but seemed unable to speak up or start a discussion” it must be precised that the question is all about “how many people disagree” and what is the weight of these people in the market. It must be understood that the biggest radio groups have the money/people/power for doing powerful lobbying at the “Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication” and “Ministère de l’Industrie” (LAB is a part Lagardère Group, which is a little bit more than just a radio group).

I hope you could understand my point, I apologize for my poor english…

The prospects for DAB+ in Germany are now looking extremely bleak following yesterday’s decision by the KEF not to release funds to public service broadcasters.

If the Germans are not on board what hope is there for DAB+/T-DMB being fitted in European cars as standard?

http://www.bayerndigitalradio.de/news-details/kef-weder-freigabe-noch-streichung-der-mittel/en/

My point is this – there were people throughout the French industry who *did* disagree with the pursuit of T-DMB as a solution, but seemed unable to speak up or start a discussion. In “Outliers” there’s an explanation (with empirical data) of a cultural environment which might explain this.

Arguably, if the UK hadn’t done *something*, nothing would have happened. It’s a shame that our first-mover advantage makes it harder for us to migrate to a more modern solution, but I can’t see how we can be criticised for using the solution available at the time. The Germans – well, there’s a situation for another, longer, discussion.