Channel 4 National DAB radio network bid

Press release: Channel 4 bid details for new national DAB radio multiplex [PDF]

I'm not hugely qualified to comment, but Matt and James have, so I thought I might as well add my own tuppence.

Firstly, I'm encouraged by the commitment to speech content with Channel 4 Radio, which would broadcast 'lively and provocative comment, drama, comedy and documentary programming. TalkRadio would also be all-speech, and there's mention of speech on Original and Radio Disney.

It would be interesting to know the proportion of live/pre-recorded stuff there would be on Channel 4 Radio. New digital TV stations get away with having small commissioning budgets by just repeating the same stuff over and over (hello E4, More4, abc1, ITV2-4). The music-based stations can fill time by just playing records and relatively inexpensive DJs, for speech-based services will they repeat loads of pre-recorded stuff or run numerous live talk shows?

There's a commitment to podcasts too, from a variety of partners including Gaydar and NME, although I'm not sure to what extent this is a core part of the bid, seeing as they could just do these anyway without Ofcom go-ahead.

James is excited by their proposed technical innovations, but there's not much in the way of detail, other than enhanced EPGs (hardly that valuable, especially for the music stations), colour screens (which doesn't feel that important for a device that mostly sits in the background, unlike television and mobile phones) and 'mobile TV' (which I can theoretically already get on my 3G phone, but have never bothered to try). The more interesting angle is the partnership with wi-fi providers, which could provide an integrated return-path for radio sets for use in interactivity, although SMS and e-mail fulfil this relatively well already, and are already widespread and don't require a physical interface on the radio.

One potentially interesting option which hasn't been mentioned is that, given Channel 4's unique position as a traditional television provider, they could investigate the production of programmes that have both a TV and a radio version. Obviously, just broadcasting the soundtrack of a made-for-TV programme would rarely work, but some programmes might not take that much extra effort to produce two versions, especially if that was considered from the start. This might be useful in a number of ways: as a way for people to catch-up on their favourite TV programmes without having to watch them (eg they could listen at work, or on the drive home), as a way of building more of a relationship with audiences around a TV show (eg you could broadcast additional audio-only extras, delivered through the more personal medium of radio), and as a service for the blind, partially sighted, or people who otherwise prefer not to watch television.

Update

Interestingly, I've just seen that the CBeebies TV channel is now also broadcasting on BBC7, "allowing you to interact with your favourite characters and programmes in a new way".