It is time for commercial radio types to wake up and smell the coffee, a new report says today. Digital audio broadcasting, the shiny bright new platform better known as DAB, is in trouble. Deal with it - or face the consequences.
The conclusions from Enders Analysis makes gloomy reading, drawing uncomfortable comparisons with ITV Digital and - even more depressingly - the decline of AM at the fag end of the last century.
Digital radio, for which DAB is just one outlet - alongside digital TV and the web - was meant to be the saviour of the commercial sector, not snap its proverbial aerial off. So what went wrong?
The problem is that DAB digital radio remains prohibitively expensive and the big radio groups, with little revenue to show for the millions of pounds invested so far, are beginning to turn their back.
Goodbye Core. Farewell Oneword. Adieu, Virgin Radio Groove. Virgin Radio Viva - we never even knew you. Which one's next for the chop?
Still, things should get better later this year with the launch of the second national commercial digital multiplex, headed by Channel 4. But as the Enders Analysis report points out the first national multiplex no longer has enough stations to fill it, so what's the point launching a second?
I can't wait to find out. But the radio environment into which Channel 4 will launch - against the backdrop of economic recession - is rather different to the one in which it won the second national licence from media regulator Ofcom last year.
Once upon a time DAB looked like a sure thing. It still does - to lose money.
That's not to say digital radio won't succeed. It's just that you don't need a DAB licence to broadcast on digital. Do it on the web. Or Freeview. Or Sky Digital.
But Ofcom needs DAB to succeed. Otherwise listeners might be asking for their money back on the 6.5 million DAB radio sets bought so far.
It is hard to imagine a world in which the main commercial networks will not be simulcast on DAB, with the BBC's national analogue services plus a few extra digital offerings - BBC7, 6Music etc - thrown in for good measure. But such a skeletal service is not quite the one we envisaged when DAB kicked off.
As Grant Goddard's report for Enders Analysis suggests, it's time to knock some heads together. Where would you start?
