Internet And The Private Radio

In the early nineties I used to be a radio DJ. It was during the years Sweden went from government monopoly radio, to commercial radio. It was great fun.

Unfortunately the government decided sell the commercial frequencies to the highest bid. The best frequencies went for millions of SEK, a fee to be paid every year. This killed any chance the private radio had to produce local material. The stations could only afford to send networked music radio. Hiring local DJ:s and producing local material wasn't in the budget.

If you haven't heard the Swedish private radio, believe me - It's less fun listening to, than washing your car!

Ever since I stopped DJ'ing, I've been interested in how the Internet will change the the listening habits. Today web radio is becoming more and more popular. RUAB have asked 20 000 Swedes aged 9-79 about their web radio listening:

- 2, 3 percent or 178 200 Swedes are listening to web radio on a daily basis.

- 10, 4 percent or 795 600 of the Swedes are listening to web radio every week. That?s up 2, 2 percent since last year.

- In the ages 9-34 well over 15 percent are listening on web radio every week.

In fact - The daily web radio listeners equals the number of inhabitants in Uppsala, Sweden?s fourth largest city. Uppsala is the home of two private radio stations, Rix FM and City Radio.

City Radio are paying 2.539.000 SEK yearly for their frequency in Uppsala. As if that wasn't bad enough, City Radio have to compete with a lot of local public- and amateur radio stations. Given the fact that City Radio is reaching a percentage of all listeners in Uppsala, the frequency cost per listener gets very high.

My conclusion is that the private radio stations are paying a lot, for analogue frequencies that the Internet is overriding.

The politicians could give the Swedish private radio a break by lowering the frequency fees. Then the local stations could hire some local talent and add that important local touch that's missing today.

Or is it too late, with the Podcasting revolution just around the corner?