Is Radio's Future Central to Public Service Broadcasting?

7 February 2002
Printable version

Text of a lecture given by Jenny Abramsky, News International Visiting Professor of Broadcast Media 2002 at Green College, Oxford University.

Lecture one

Lecture two

Lecture three

This morning, the Director-General of the BBC Greg Dyke set a challenge to everyone who works for it - to make the BBC "the most creative organisation in Britain, if not the World".

He exhorted everyone to be innovative, to take risks, and said "that will mean giving people the right to fail".

So, as the BBC embarks on a new adventure, what will it mean for the present and beyond. Where is radio heading?

Last week the radio industry announced record audience reach figures. Ninety-one per cent of the UK population listened to radio every week - that's 44 million people.

Public service radio achieved record reach and share figures. In my first lecture I said BBC Radio’s share was 51.6%. The audience figures announced last Friday now put its share at 53.4%.

The UK has one of the fastest uptakes of digital television in the world, but radio is thriving, with more listening than ever before, almost 25 hours a week per person.

In the UK, Radio has overtaken television as the most used medium. Indeed some research, carried out in September by the BBC, amongst 25 - 35 year-olds, showed that television consumption amongst younger people has decreased.

That’s worrying news for Television, which makes it even more important for the BBC that Radio is doing well.

Radio is in excellent health all over Europe, with tens of thousands of stations and 210 million listeners who spend an average of three hours a day with them.

Why?

I suspect everyone in this room would give different answers, but among the things those answers would have in common would be ‘its portability’ and the ‘personal relationship’ that listeners have with radio. It’s a friend and companion.

In this lecture I want to look at what the digital revolution could mean to your friend and companion. I also want to examine whether Radio’s present public service remit delivers a sustainable vision for the future. Do we need a publicly funded, public service radio broadcaster at all?

Let me start by telling you what the British public thinks.

In a nationwide survey of just over a thousand people conducted a few weeks ago, 91% said it was important for the UK to continue to have public service radio in the future. The majority said it was very important.

The vast majority, over 80%, thought that public service radio should be entertaining, should provide programmes for all age groups, and should be informative, impartial and educational, catering for all interests and tastes, and reflecting local as well as national news. Those were top of the list.

Only 4% thought public service radio should only broadcast material that cannot be found elsewhere.

All this is very heartening for those of us involved in public service radio, but let’s not be complacent.

The survey found that public service radio should promote new talent, cater for minorities and provide innovative programming? Greg Dyke will be relieved.

But the results of this survey showed that licence payers believed we should do even better. For instance, less than half felt the BBC catered adequately for minorities. And 78% want public service radio to provide programmes for children.

The results, whilst endorsing much of what BBC Radio does, identifies real challenges for public service broadcasting in the UK. For instance do we take enough risks? The audience wants more.

And only 52% were aware the TV licence funded BBC Radio. That fell to 31% amongst 16 to 24 year olds! So in 2002, there is overwhelming support for a broad range of services from BBC Radio, even if there is little understanding as to how it is financed.

Now surveys of this kind only give an indication of how the British Public views public service Radio. And audience figures, however encouraging, reflect the moment. They are not set in stone.

Public service radio must earn its right to exist daily, by the programming it offers to its listeners. And how the medium responds to the technological challenges will affect and ultimately decide its long term health.

In my first lecture I mentioned that the response we had to our Services after September 11th was extraordinary. Radio 4 and Radio Five Live achieved record reach and share of audience. The Today programme added a million listeners. But, as I said, that response was not confined to our speech stations.

Radio 1 was inundated with e-mails from young people. They were very moving messages, but they were also an example of Radio’s continuing resilience, its relevance, its ability to adapt - because adapt is what radio must do, as the digital future becomes the digital present.

Those e-mails show, radio is digital now. And if you want a glimpse of the cross-platform future, look at radio. It’s streamed on the internet. It’s broadcast via digital satellite television, it’s broadcast via cable.

Radio has taken to the net with great success. Nine per cent of adults claim to listen to radio via the internet. Sixteen per cent have visited a radio website. That's millions of people. There are, incidentally, over 6,000 radio stations streamed on the net.

Most commercial radio stations in the UK have bespoke web sites. The five BBC national networks have dedicated ‘live’ sites, with some 30 million page impressions a month and around two million unique visitors.

Radio, in the UK, has seized many of the opportunities of the Internet. It’s a fact that most of the media press, when talking of convergence, mean TV and Online. Its also a fact that radio has got there first.

And it’s not just the internet that offers opportunity. The popularity of radio stations on the digital satellite platform has surprised both the radio industry and the platform owner. The latest figures from RAJAR, the official radio audience measurement system, show 18% of people with DSAT claim to be using it to listen to radio every week. That’s over six million people.

This is all wonderful news for radio. Radio has embraced the future. Digital poses no threat.

Sorry, not so easy. Enough of drum beating. The technological future is unpredictable. Nothing is guaranteed.

There were some in the media who argued that DSAT, D Cable and the Web were all that was needed to secure Radio’s digital future. Today that argument has gone, it will not be enough. The BBC has a multi-platform strategy for radio and part of that strategy includes another technology called DAB - Digital Audio Broadcasting. It’s also at the heart of Commercial Radio’s strategy in this country.

I’ll explain in a moment what DAB can do, but the important point is this. Despite the growing strength new digital platforms offer, Radio still needs portability. It needs a technology that retains that key characteristic. That is why the radio industry is relying on DAB technology. It needs it, so that it can remain portable in a digital world. So you can continue to listen to your favourite radio station in the garden, in the car, in the bath or anywhere else in 20 years time.

But even with the whole radio industry in this country behind DAB, the uncertainty remains. The fact that a DAB chip can deliver a wide range of radio stations to a wide range of devices, not only cars, but mobile phones, personal digital assistants may seem liberating. But, as yet, there is no mass production and few sets at affordable cost in any shops.

What is DAB? It is a technology that will enable radio to take the strengths of its analogue offering digital, and add much more - better sound quality, more stations to choose from, easier tuning and better reception, text services, data storage, even graphics and moving images if you want them. If it all works it will be a pretty powerful proposition.

Hence the reason why commercial radio continues to invest. And the fact is that they are continuing to invest even when, like all commercial media, they have seen a significant downturn in their revenue, as the advertising market remains depressed. But is their investment enough to justify continued public investment using the licence fee? Commercial Radio believes that it is vital for the whole industry that the BBC should embrace this new technology with enthusiasm. But for the BBC the question is different... will the investment enable us to serve our licence payers better? Will it?

To answer that, let me first try to answer an even bigger question. How well is public service radio serving the British licence payers now?

In the last three lectures, I have tried to show some of the reasons why I believe Radio is central to the future of public service broadcasting in this country.

Radio, from its early days, set the standards for Television and lately Online to follow. It set out to deliver the trio of objectives set by Lord Reith - to inform, educate and entertain. A simple yet very powerful idea.

It could have been very different. If Churchill had got his way during the General Strike in 1926, and the government had taken over the BBC, where would the public service concept be today?

I have always assumed radio to be a good thing, but that is because I have had the privilege of being brought up in the UK with programmes like Listen With Mother, The Radio 1 Chart Show and the World At One. But Radio could have become an arm of government. It could have been used as an instrument of propaganda, as radio has in many parts of the world and continues to be to this day.

Fortunately it didn’t happen here. Britain does have an independent public service radio. What sort of state is it in?

Let me start with music radio, because I do not think you should define Radio’s contribution to society, its public service role, simply in the narrow terms of democratic debate and high ‘culture’. I believe Radio has as much of a responsibility to contribute to the ‘popular culture’ of society.

Music reflects the society which creates it, it satirises it, celebrates it, comments on it, and embraces and develops the attitudes of the day.

I said in my first lecture that enabling listeners to gain access to the music of their choice, setting that music in context, opening their minds to other forms of music, is as important to a vibrant society as an understanding of the minutiae of politics.

Music matters to most people whatever their age. It is extremely important to the young. In the UK, between 80 and 90% of 15-24-year-olds are passionate about music. If you want to speak to young people music radio is the way to do so.

Indeed, music dominates radio listening... in the sense that 70% of all our listening to radio is to music radio. Most of it, of course, is to Commercial Radio, because there are now more than 250 commercial radio stations in the UK, 90% of them playing popular music.

Despite the present downturn, Commercial Radio has become a powerful force in advertising. Its share of advertising revenue has grown from 2% in 1992, to nearly 7% a decade later.

Now I admire many of my Commercial Radio colleagues. They run some terrific radio stations. But their decisions are made to ensure the best return for their shareholders. They schedule their programming to gain maximum advertising revenue... rightly so.

Public service radio is different. It must put the needs of the audience first, not the interests of shareholders and advertisers and it must provide something distinctive for those who pay the licence fee.

I promised last week that I would return to the debate that has existed since the very start of Radio 1 in 1967. Is there a role for public service in popular music or should it be left to the commercial sector?

Let me answer that question now.

Radio 1 has a weekly audience of just under 14 million. Fifty-two percent of 15-24-year-olds listen to it.

It does play pop music. It does have the Official Top 40 Chart. But it does not play safe. It innovates. It is at the forefront of supporting the new music of the young.

In the UK Commercial Radio stations play records once they have become hits. I have no difficulty with that. But that is not the role for a public service radio station for young people. Such a service must take risks with new bands, new musicians, new music. Its play list must not consist entirely of hit records.

Soon after I became Director of BBC Radio, a senior person from the record industry told a group of commercial radio station bosses that they didn’t know how lucky they were in the UK to have the BBC. In the United States commercial radio stations have to take risks and play new music before it becomes successful, whilst in the UK the BBC takes all the risks and delivers the hits "on a conveyor belt" to the commercial sector.

The music industry is very important to the UK, it contributes three and a quarter billion pounds to the British economy. It earns £1.3 billion through exports. It employs 130,000 people. I would argue that Radio 1, by championing new music and covering the whole range of contemporary popular music, has done much to enable the UK music industry to grow.

I would also argue that, by providing a platform for British talent to be heard, Radio 1 has done much to prevent the UK Chart from being dominated by the music of the United States.

But even that is not enough. If you are a public service broadcaster, anxious to serve the seven million 15-24-year-olds, anxious to be a force for democratic good, then you have to provide more than popular music. You have to invest in documentaries and news.

Last year the turnout in the General Election was at a record low. The turnout amongst young people was the lowest of all. This apathy, this sense of alienation, is a challenge for our democracy. Radio could be an effective way of connecting once again.

When Commercial Radio began in the UK, it had a range of speech programming as part of its schedules. Capital Radio did drama, it created fine current affairs programmes. Regular news was part of its fabric. Now, 25 years later, most commercial radio stations only carry headline news. They do not invest in speech programmes that add depth and context. There's no reason why they should. They have decided to focus exclusively on music.

But there is an obligation on a publicly funded radio station to do just that. It must not just offer headlines, but solid news bulletins bringing BBC news values to young people, in a style specially tailored for them. It must provide current affairs programmes and it must cover politics - but in ways relevant to a young audience.

That’s what I believe the BBC must demand of Radio 1. What’s more, it cannot shirk politics just because young people seem alienated from it. That’s why I think experimenting with a dedicated political correspondent, Polly Billington, is so important. Whether it will make a difference time will tell - but it’s an experiment worth doing.

So bringing an understanding of political and social issues is something public service Radio needs to do. And bringing an understanding of the pressures on young people today, the choices they are asked to make, far more than I ever had to - the challenges they face - race, drugs, Aids, changing family units, fragmented employment is something radio also needs to do. And it can - by running social action campaigns tackling just these kinds of issues. It is a crucial part of delivering a public service in a democratic society. It’s no good putting these campaigns on minority channels appealing to an elite… you need mass appeal if you are going to make the impact.

And that mass appeal must reflect and embrace the diversity of music culture... black music, hip hop, dance and so on. By playing and nurturing their music, radio can give young people a platform, for their values to be heard, their language to be used, their concerns to be debated.

The market will not do it. Remember that, although commercial radio has grown to over 250 stations, the market has in fact delivered much more of the same... it has not significantly extended range or depth, with a few honourable exceptions, in particular Classic FM. So, if the market won’t do it, Public service radio must.

As I said a moment ago, music is as important for the old as the young. Its familiarity, its companionship, its reinforcement of taste, its representation of time and culture.

For that reason much of what I have said about Radio 1 applies equally to Radio 2 - now the most listened to station in the UK - with a share of 15% and an audience of over 12 million.

Radio 2 must give its audiences more than entertainment. It must offer a range of music unmatched by any other radio station in the UK - soul, reggae, folk, jazz, gospel, r’n’b, rock, punk as well as brass band, organ and light classical. Public service radio should stretch its audience. It should introduce them to different kinds of music. But as with Radio 1 its not just about music.

Being funded by a licence fee is a privilege. Privilege brings obligations. In the 21st century, I do not believe Commercial Radio will invest in documentaries on the history of popular culture, on its icons, on its genres, on its achievements. It hasn’t done so in the last 20 years, and I doubt whether it will in the future. That is an obligation a publicly funded radio station must fulfil week in, week out.

For instance, last year Lionel Richie presented a series of eight one-hour programmes on Radio 2 telling the story of how black people have formed popular music over the centuries - The Colour Of Music.

Documentaries like that take time to research, time to compile, and they take money. I am not convinced the market would lead to Commercial Radio stations investing in Religious programming on a music station, but Radio 2 does... with documentaries like Anno Domini charting the history of Christianity in the UK, with daily and weekly religious programmes. It’s one of the key distinctions between public and commercial.

And I am unaware of any commercial music station producing original readings like Hugh Laurie’s Conan Doyle?

This is investment in quality and in serving audience needs. It makes it relevant.

I have spoken passionately about Radios 1 and 2 because I think they are regularly misrepresented. I do believe they are central to the BBC’s delivery to all licence payers. I do not accept that ‘public service’ for Radio should be defined in such a way that it denies the majority of licence payers Radio stations that are relevant to them. And I do not think the BBC should cut itself off from people whose main interest is music of a popular kind.

But it’s not just the popular that is important. Artistic expression, in all its forms, must be reflected on public service Radio.

The debate that has haunted Radios 1 and 2 for the last 20 years has, in an inverse way, engulfed Radio 3. Both inside the BBC and without.

There have been some in the BBC who have argued that a Radio station that delivers an audience of only two million, a share of 1.2% at a cost of £59 million, should not be part of a contemporary BBC... Why not use that money to reach the young? To get to under served audiences, to enable BBC ONE and BBC TWO to compete more effectively?

Those siren voices have argued that the BBC superserves (whatever that means) older upmarket listeners with Radio 4 and BBC TWO and will do with BBC FOUR, so what’s the point of Radio 3?

And externally Radio 3 has been under the spotlight as Classic FM has found an audience three times its size.

Classic FM is a wonderful station, but it is quite different. It does not do, and has no intention of doing, the range of programmes - speech as well as live music - you can hear on Radio 3. Classic FM aims, as its Controller regularly admits, at the audience that listens to Radio 4 and to Radio 2. It is about easy listening. And it is very good.

What it does not do is offer the cultural variety and cultural support of Radio 3. BBC Radio commissions more new writing than any other institution in the UK, and much of it is for Radio 3. It commissions more new classical music than any other institution in the world, all for Radio 3. Writing that is challenging, modern classical music that breaks with traditional form and expectation. It might appeal to a minority, but minorities have as much right to see their interests reflected on public service radio, as the majority.

Radio 3 funds 72 concerts of The Proms. It funds the five BBC Orchestras and the BBC Singers - £23 million a year. It broadcasts concerts from all the leading orchestras in the UK - without its patronage musical life in this country would be very bleak indeed. And it has embraced new music in all its forms - including jazz and World Music.

I’m sure a lot of you did not expect to hear that on Radio 3. But public service Radio can act as an impresario, and I really do believe that without that nurturing of all sorts of talent, the whole cultural fabric of this country would be the poorer.

An organisation that has an income of over £3 billion - £2.4 billion from the licence - can surely spend £59 million of that income on a culture service that aims high, even if it only appeals to a minority. If my mathematics are right, it’s less than 2% of our income. I think it’s worth it.

So I would argue that public service radio has an important role in my opinion in ensuring the UK has a thriving cultural and musical community. What of its role as educator?

Education, in the informal sense, has been embedded into the fabric of the BBC since its start. There is a long tradition stretching back to the Twenties. But let me reel off a host of relevant programmes from the present day.

Let’s take Literature with Paul Scofield’s readings of TS Eliot’s The Wasteland and The Four Quartets. Or the dramatisation of Les Miserables over the last five weeks

Lets take Science with programmes like Leading Edge exploring Advanced Cell Technology, Frontiers doing a documentary on Gamma Ray Bursts, In Our Time discussing the origins of life and matter.

Or History with series like This Sceptr’d Isle on the history of the British Isles, or Charles Wheeler’s Conscripts, seeing history through the eyes of ordinary people, facing call up.

The point I want to make is that the informal role that Radio can play in enriching the minds of its listeners is one of the most important roles it must play.

Radio is a medium for ideas, for discussing and debating the great moral issues of the day, allowing the widest range of opinions, however uncomfortable, to be heard on the most controversial subjects.

That’s why it’s right to be broadcasting programmes discussing freedom of religious expression, what is racial justice, the nature of evil, refugees and asylum seekers, the nature of treason. You often want to shout back at your radio at some of the assertions... but that is why Radio should be tackling these subjects. They provide a contribution to the national debate.

Let me give you some examples from the major agriculture and food stories of the last few years - BSE, Mad Cow disease, GM Crops and Foot and Mouth. In covering all three, radio offered its audiences a range of programming, of information and of understanding second to none... that’s quite apart form coverage on the daily news programmes.

BSE was first brought to the public’s attention on Radio 4’s farming programme Farming Today. When the then Conservative government only offered 50% compensation for slaughtered animals Farming Today exposed the danger that farmers might not disclose whether an animal had BSE. For six months the programme led the way in informing the public of this, then unknown disease, until the rest of the media caught up.

Or genetically modified foods - for many emotive words. It’s a subject which clearly exercises people from all walks of life. And Radio programmes have been caught in the cross fire between government and those opposing its GM crops policy.

The Prince of Wales started the debate when he wrote in the Daily Telegraph, in summer 1998, about "interfering in matters best left to God". The then Food Minister, Jeff Rooker, came onto the Today programme to say the Prince of Wales was entitled to his views but that the Government remained confident of their approach. As you know the debate did not end there. Indeed it’s never ended.

But Today was not the only radio programme grappling with the subject on a regular basis.

The GM debate was being aired across all the Radio Networks. On Radio 2, the Jimmy Young Programme broadcast a GM Special at peak time, and even the veteran broadcaster Alastair Cooke found himself in the midst of the battle when, on his weekly Letter From America, he questioned what he saw as "an inexplicable fuss". The audience responded with venom.

And then The Archers became involved. One of its central characters planted GM crops for research and another character destroyed them and was arrested for doing so - a story line that was soon emulated in real life when the leader of Friends of the Earth, Lord Melchett, did the same thing.

The Archers, a soap opera, listened to by more than four-and-a-half million people a week, gave a comprehensive airing to the arguments on all sides of the GM debate. And it devoted a whole episode to the jury discussing the rights and wrongs of the case.
For those of you who don’t know or remember, Tommy Archer was found ‘Not Guilty’, after his defence argued that he had "lawful excuse" for his actions.

So how good was radio’s contribution to this debate?

If all we had done was the cut and thrust of the political argument, on programmes like Today, I think I might have felt we had failed our listeners. They need more than that. You can get a lot out of a three minute interview, but so much more when you also offer a half hour documentary or a lengthy debate, when you offer debates on the ethical issues, when you broadcast scientific documentaries examining the claims and counter claims. When you try to look at ‘risk’ - a difficult concept to get across in such an emotive debate but one that goes to the heart of the issue. Radio did all that.

We have to be acutely aware of our use of language, of the dangers of allowing the environmental pressure groups to go unchallenged, of allowing government and the industry to go unchallenged. I think this became even more acute during last year’s Foot and Mouth crisis.

Once again it was Farming Today that led the way, providing first hand accounts from infected farms and giving daily news of the progress of the disease and attempts to contain it. Farming Today, even though it goes out at 5.45am, has nearly 900,000 listeners. It’s the programme that really understands the way the agricultural industry works, and it was able to convey information in a way that neither general reporters nor the trade press could.

Radio 4 took advantage of Farming Today’s expertise, and combined the team with the consumer programme You And Yours, to produce specials at peak time. But it didn’t end there. The Food Programme looked at its impact, and The Archers changed their plans and added a live scene every day to chart the effect it was having on farmers lives.

But public service radio is not just national networks. There was outstanding coverage from Local Radio, in particular Radio Cumbria at the heart of the worst affected area. It became the voice of a devastated county, allowing its communities to talk to each other as they became trapped in their homes, allowing tragedies to find a voice.

This was a human tragedy. However well The Archers responded, the important thing was the way listeners, living the crisis, responded and used their local radio station as an outlet to tell the country how terrible it was, used radio to connect.

We don’t get it right all of the time, but we do understand the importance of reaching out to all audiences, even with the most highly charged subject.

And I think public service radio is playing an important role in society today. And in that recent survey 82% of people questioned said just that.

Can it in the future?

It’s an important time for Radio. Our commercial colleagues have launched new national, regional and local digital services across the country. By the end of 2004 there will be an additional 200 commercial stations in the UK, making more than 400 altogether. And the whole industry is working together to turn the medium digital.

Last weekend the BBC launched the first of five new digital radio services. We are all moving into the unknown.

It took 25 years for FM to become the dominant frequency in this country, despite its obvious advantages over AM. Acceptance of Digital Radio will also be slow, and Radio will be using as many different digital platforms as it can to ensure our new services eventually gain universality. As I said at the beginning, Television platforms - satellite, cable, digital terrestrial - as well as its own digital platform DAB.

Seven years ago the BBC became the first in the world to broadcast over a national DAB network, by switching on transmitters and simulcasting the five national radio stations. The decision, by the then Managing Director of Radio Liz Forgan, had been taken in the hope, that by doing so, it would stimulate a market, see sets in shops and assure Radio’s future.

As the years have gone by, so scepticism in the BBC and the broadcasting press has rightly increased. Continued promises that sets would be in the shops "next year", that cheap sets would be there by Christmas, were, equally rightly, greeted with derision. I’m not surprised.

At times I will admit, it has been tempting to express the scepticism publicly, particularly when you go into a hi-fi shop and ask for a digital radio and they give you a radio with a digital clock. I do believe that if we had, at any time over the last three years, stated that the BBC no longer believed in DAB, we would have killed it as a technology in the UK perhaps across Europe.

But the Government has given the BBC, because of its privileged funding, the responsibility to help drive digital take up in this country. That means radio as well as television.

The launch of five new services in this calendar year is to do just that. It will transform BBC Radio, at a stroke, doubling the number of national networks its runs - the biggest change ever.

And that change must add to the public service offering, not dissipate it.

We have to use the opportunity digital technology gives to address the gaps in our programming and create services capable of addressing the needs of people we currently underserve.

We live in a multicultural society. The opinion survey we conducted last year recognised that public service radio does not cater well for ethnic minorities. The fact is we do very badly - only 35% of ethnic minorities listen to BBC Radio. We are perceived as white and middle class, of little relevance to them. That is a serious situation for a publicly funded organisation.

So two of the new digital public services will be try to respond to these weaknesses.

The Asian Network is already a successful local service in the West Midlands, but there are many Asians all over the UK that it does not reach with its mix of news, discussion, speech and music. Over 46% of all UK Asians live in London and the South East. They have no public service concentrating on their needs and interests.

There is no analogue spectrum available. Digital has the spectrum to enable the Asian Network to become a national service providing programmes in English and Asian languages, for the whole of the Asian community. We hope it will become a source of on and off air talent.

I think it also very important that there is a publicly funded radio station devoted to contemporary black music - hip hop, r‘n’b, underground garage, urban. I hope it will play a leading role the development of Black Music in the UK, actively seeking out and championing British talent and bringing new music and live music to young audiences with passion and commitment.

Eighty per cent of the Black Music played in the UK today comes from the States. But there are young people across the country who are writing and playing new music, and we must give them a voice. In so doing, public service radio can discover new DJ and artist talent, as well as support many independent record labels.

It must not just be a music station. It must have news, documentaries and social action programming relevant for its audience - otherwise I do not believe you could justify spending licence payers money. And if it does those things, it will be a real addition to what audiences can get from Radio.

The radio industry recognises this is a crucial time to move forward. Unlike our television colleagues we are not battling each other with different set top boxes, confusing the public.

We are working together. In fact we have formed a joint industry body the Digital Radio Development Bureau to speak with one voice to consumers, manufacturers and retailers. We know the move to digital is going to be a challenge.

There are many in the radio industry who believe that the reason the British public will buy digital radio is the exciting technical extras digital offers - data, text, interactivity, electronic programme guides - and for some that will be the reason. But I do not believe exciting gizmos alone, will entice the 91% of people who listen to radio today.

When manufacturers developed wirelesses 80 years ago - they formed a company - the BBC, as I said in my first lecture, because they needed programmes.

Without the programming people would not buy wirelesses. I think the same is true today. If the content is not right then people will not buy digital radio.

Think of Television again. Thirty nine per cent of the population has now bought some kind of digital television, but 30 to 40% of the population is showing a reluctance to ever switch to digital, because they doubt it will add to their enjoyment. They are not impressed by the wizard technology, the interactivity, the electronic programme guides, the access to the internet through their television screens... no thank you. What they want is great programmes or they will not switch to digital.

The radio industry needs to take note... and we have noted that Television has always made considerable use of its archive, its golden programmes like Only Fools And Horses and Fawlty Towers.

I do think the promise of hearing great Radio will attract audiences. Digital will enable the BBC to throw open the doors to the archives - both speech and music.

The archive is unique. Over the years, it has captured and created moments of history in music, popular culture, drama, comedy and yet most of its most prized gems have only been broadcast once. There are sessions with every major pop artist of the last 40 years - Sting, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Jim Morrison of the Doors... the list could go on and on. There are early recordings of the Beatles, The Rolling Stones - they’ve all been interviewed. We have over 300 episodes of I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue.

Two of the new digital public services will be able to give licence payers access to all of that and to new programming as well, particularly for children. So I think this will be a real addition to what the BBC currently offers its licence payers.

But anyone who predicts the future will get it wrong. Five years ago I was fervently told by many in television that the future meant everyone accessing the internet through their television screens. Well so far there is little sign of that and one senior new media expert told me "yesterday the internet doesn’t work on television - Broadband is the future."

But we have to try new things. You can never be certain of the outcome, but if we had not decided to broadcast all our radio services on satellite TV we would have never discovered that people would listen via a TV set.

My colleagues in television have embraced interactivity - two years ago there were many who doubted its importance, who believed it was not an appropriate way to use licence payers money.

Now, with the evidence of the Wimbledon coverage, when over four million people used the service, Walking With Beasts when two million people used the site, and News Interactive with nearly three million people using the interactive service every month, it’s clear that if public service wants to remain relevant and innovative, it cannot ignore the opportunity that interactivity offers television.

It even offers Radio new audiences. The BBC’s FA Cup interactive service gives you the ability to substitute the television commentary for the radio one.

We have to continue to innovate, allow blue sky thinking on what digital may offer radio in the future.

Imagine for a moment - its possible you might see a new type of radio develop, an enhanced audio service. So if you tune to Radio 1 on your TV set, or a PDA, you might be able to see the webcam as you listen, get a ticker giving information of what you are listening to. It might give you information on what is coming up, the next track, or the next programme, and most important it might give you, the listener an interface where you can answer back, can vote, can interact... You may see all the text, e-mails being received. A dream... for some... a nightmare for others. But what we do know is that as radio embraces digital it can offer so much more.

Already the ability to catch up on programmes, interviews you have missed is one of the most successful elements of Radio Online sites. It adds value. The Today programme you slept through, the World At One at Two, the Archers on demand...

Radio has to adapt as society expectations change. We have to respond to how our audiences live their lives. As we have done with text messaging for instance. Over a billion text messages a year - young people using their telephones to send an average of 15 text messages a day. Some using their phone only for text messaging. If you want to have a radio station that is relevant to young people you cannot ignore this phenomenon, so Radio 1, and indeed most Commercial Radio, now routinely receive and use thousands of text messages every week.

I started by saying that I have always seen Radio as a force for good in this country. Radio has made, and continues to make, a unique contribution to life in the UK... and I am sure that if I were on this podium in 20 years time, I would be saying the same thing. Radio’s contribution is vital.

So far as the BBC is concerned, what it must do is remain different and distinctive.

That means continuing to create music stations that innovate... encouraging music-making right across the spectrum... giving new talent a platform... commissioning new music and new drama... … investing in serious speech and funny speech... making programmes about ideas... inventing new services for the many different cultures and communities in this country... giving its audiences a voice... and, perhaps, above all, covering the news as comprehensively and robustly as we can.

I’ve talked a lot about news and current affairs in the course of these lectures, because they are central to public service broadcasting. The BBC was set up under a Royal Charter. It is enshrined in the Charter that we be "impartial, fair and accurate", that we provide a balanced view. It is not for us to make judgements... it is for us to provide the information to enable our listeners to do so. To enable them to hear many voices, many views, however uncomfortable and then make up their own minds. That is a critical public service role.

Greg Dyke asked three questions this morning, "In a world of massive choice, why do we need the BBC? Why do we need a publicly funded, public service broadcaster at all? Surely the market will provide all that viewers, listeners, and online users want?"

Those were his questions. And he answered that he believed "the role of the BBC will be more important in a decade’s time, not less... because, as a result of market fragmentation, the commercial market will not be able to provide some of the services it has historically produced. More will be required of the BBC, not less."

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