Blog: C4 Radio tunes out

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As Channel 4 announces that it has scrapped plans to launch its own radio station, Robin Parker reflects on where it all went wrong.

As recently as last month's RTS International Television Conference, Channel 4 chief executive Andy Duncan was still presenting radio as the next big thing to help dig the broadcaster out of the hole it finds itself in.

Just as its profitable digital channels now help subsidise the main channel, the argument went, so too should the proposed radio stations act as a financial prop by the time the money runs intangibly short – 2012.

Moreover, if the spirit of PSB is all about plurality, why should the BBC's 55% share of radio go unchallenged from other PSB operators?

The much-trumpeted Next on 4 document spells out the potential value to the creative community: 28 different indies have delivered more than 316 hours of content to channel4radio.com to date across a wide range of genres.

But no matter how often digital radio was held up as a means of taking C4's PSB heritage onto new future-proof platforms, the plan looked increasingly untenable.

Why, critics argued, should more than £100m be forked out from the public force if C4 could afford a potentially risky foray into largely uncharted territory?

C4 never disclosed how much its radio venture would have cost, but estimates suggest the stations would have cost £1.5m a year to run. Pulling out of radio has already shaved up to £10m from next year's spend, making a sizeable dent in C4's £100m savings target for 2008 and 2009.

The departure of C4 from the radio market is symptomatic of a deeper malaise about the future of DAB. With channels such as GCap's The Jazz falling by the wayside on the existing multiplex, the merits or otherwise of launching a scaled back service on the second multiplex will be intensely scrutinised by every part of the industry.

Of course, had C4 launched E4 Radio in July as planned, the sharp economic downturn, which has led to a 5% dip in TV advertising revenues, would have blighted its early days and could foreesably have stalled the launch of the other two stations.

Now just Project Kangaroo remains the only new business on the table at C4 and even that is now subject to delays.

C4 had simply been left too exposed and the case for radio had been overtaken by events.

Robin Parker is deputy news editor of Broadcast