6.30pm update
Next up, it's a special Radio Festival edition of Fighting Talk, writes John Plunkett. As anyone who has heard the Radio Five Live show will know, it's probably not going to be very easy to keep track of. So here are the highlights.
Taking part are GMG Radio chief executive John Myers, former Capital Radio boss Keith Pringle, LBC breakfast host Nick Ferrari, and comic writer, DJ and everything else, Jon Holmes. It is hosted, as every, by Colin Murray, and for non-listeners - the tone is VERY irreverent.
Myers kicks things off with a dig at Channel 4's newly awarded national commercial digital multiplex, which he describes as the "biggest non-event of the year".
Pringle's not keen on digital audio broadcasting, or DAB, either. "There is only 15 years of it left before it becomes completely obsolete."
The next topic is Lesley Douglas, Radio 2 controller. Holmes: "She is a transformer. She can transform herself from a Pure Evoke radio into a tank."
"She has spent all these years learning tricks from me," adds Myers. "She has done so well with the meagre resources at her disposal."
Pringle, meanwhile, is catching on to the format. "I've realised you've got to be unpleasant to everyone." That's the idea, Keith.
Myers hits the jackpot with a gag about Ofcom - "did you know it's an anagram of Focom?". It's enough to get the GMG man into the final, along with LBC's Ferrari.
And despite a huge audience vote in favour of Myers, in true Fighting Talk style, Ferrari wins the title. Shame.
5pm update
We're discussing TV stars taking over the airwaves, a supposedly recent trend that threatens to deny grassroots radio talent from coming through, writes Chris Tryhorn. It all goes back to Chris Tarrant joining Capital Radio in 1984, according to the historians (well, a VT from Keith Pringle).
DJ Spoony is asking the panel - Vanessa Feltz, Jamie Theakston and Martha Kearney - what they think about this. None of them here really embodies the TV-to-radio trend - they're all actually radio-to-TV-to-radio people.
What's emerging is not really terribly illuminating in terms of analysing any industry trend for recruiting from TV. They're talking more about the skills required for the two media, which turn out to be fairly complementary.
"The whole argument is underlined by talent - if they're talented they can do it," Theakston says. He points out how live TV presenters need the talent to fill time when things "go tits up", whereas on radio you can bung on a record. "In your ear you have people screaming in the gallery, you have five minutes to fill and no one to talk to [on live TV]. It can be the loneliest place in the world. But it is the biggest rush in the world when you nail it."
The drive towards multimedia consumption also means that broadcasters need to develop new skills - or to put it another way embrace the opportunities to do something different. Kearney says she enjoys using the internet to write articles on the BBC website, for instance.
Theakston candidly admits the competition from young upstarts is also a spur to established presenters to "spread themselves thinly" and "maximise income streams".
What about getting Ant and Dec to host a breakfast show and networking it across the country? Would that close down the competition? "There's an appetite for more than even the legendary and unsurpassable Ant and Dec," says Feltz.
4pm update
"What a session! Who understood it? Anoraks off now." That was Jeremy Vine's very apt verdict on the seminar we've just been treated to, writes Chris Tryhorn.
It was a lowdown on "compression" from John Sullivan - sadly not the bloke who wrote Only Fools and Horses. This was more Only Mpegs and Bit Rates. I was always rubbish at physics and I must say I struggled with this, but let me attempt an explanation.
Using a tape of Suzanne Vega's Tom's Diner ("I opened up the paper, there's a story of an actor who had died while he was drinking, it was no one I had heard of..."), which we heard five times in all, he showed that DAB takes out 90% of the data required for CD quality without you really noticing. Stretch that further, however, and you start to tell that the sound is degraded.
At the moment DAB gets away with what is sometimes worse reception than you get on analogue - 81% of DAB's 5 million listeners are happy with it. But decisions lie ahead for commercial operators as they balance launching more stations against maintaining sound quality when spectrum is limited.
The picture is further complicated by the advent of DAB plus and the trialling of DRM, an alternative system. Sullivan predicts a "mixed economy" in the future. Does it matter? That question wasn't really addressed, unfortunately. Perahps we should hope it doesn't: as Jeremy Vine's comments indicate, you have to wonder how many people in the industry actually know their onions on this.
3pm update
Can radio stations prosper by axing their daytime DJs, or having no DJs altogether? GCap group operations director Steve Orchard says they can - he's done it, writes John Plunkett.
GCap, you will remember, is home to Xfm, the new music network that earlier this year got rid of its DJs between 10am and 4pm during the week, handing its playlist over to its listeners.
The group's digital station Chill, went one better, with no DJs whatsoever or, in Orchard's words, a bloke in Bristol "with 12 Café del Mar CDs". It's doing pretty well too, with 187,000 listeners at the last count.
But what of Xfm? Its first listening figures since the big changeover will be published next month. "Of course it may take time to have an impact," jokes Orchard. "Obviously if it is a good Rajar then it is an enormous success!"
But seriously, folks. "There are other ways of doing radio," says the GCap man. "The daytime DJ is not as important to the 19 or 20-year-old listening to Xfm as the daytime DJ thinks he is.
"Commercial radio is criticised all the time for not taking risks. What we must not allow to happen when someone puts their head above the parapet and does something different everyone says that's terrible, it sounds like an iPod."
So how's the new Xfm going so far? Orchard says the new Xfm might be a bit over-produced, with more words than if a DJ was doing the talking. Oh the irony!
Orchard denies the change was about cutting costs - hiring 23 or 24-year-old hotshot producers doesn't come cheap. "It might cost us more in the long run." And he says he isn't considering axing DJs round the clock.
"There are 18 hours of the day with DJs at Xfm and so it should be. This is not automated radio programming. Chill is an extreme example of that, very low cost and very consistent.
"I think [Xfm] sounds better between 10am and 4pm than it did when we had DJs on there."
Xfm listeners - what do you think?
