UK radio is in surprisingly good shape. As the first electronic media mankind ever enjoyed, we might reasonably expect it to have been overtaken or eradicated by something more futuristic. In fact, listening figures are pretty robust and, although 'listen-again' and streaming are gaining ground, the traditional model of switching on a box and listening to the sounds that emerge remains a daily habit for hundreds of thousands of people. Indeed, I'm listening to BBC Radio 5 Live as I write this.
Of course there have been many attempts to disrupt the radio market in recent years. The likes of Spotify, Grooveshark, Pandora, iTunes and podcasts have all tried to remould radio for the 21st century with varying degrees of success. And here comes the latest player on the pitch: Fubar Radio, which describes itself as “broadcasting irreverent, uncensored and unapologetic talk radio”.
Launched in March 2014 and courting the 18 to 35-year-old demographic, you won't find the station of FM, AM or DAB. Fubar broadcasts exclusively via a phone and tablet app, which both streams the output live and offers the opportunity to store shows for on-demand consumption. It's a free download, with six months' free listening included. After that it's £2.99 per month. If the station lasts that long.
"The station isn't covered by Ofcom's rules and regulations, and is therefore free to be more cutting-edge."
Sorry, I hate to be pessimistic and I admire the courage but, to date, no digital-only broadcaster has devised a profitable business structure. Many have fallen over, and I'm not convinced Fubar will make the breakthrough.
CEO, Duncan Smith (unfortunate name), boasts that the station isn't covered by Ofcom's rules and regulations, and is therefore at liberty to be more cutting-edge, without the requirement to be unbiased. Whether that is a sufficiently enticing selling point to draw a big audience remains to be seen.
Admittedly, they've invested in the 'talent'. Jon Gaunt, Katie Price and, particularly, Justin Lee Collins may not be to your tastes - and were probably caught between gigs - but they wouldn't come cheap and are fairly well-known.
Talking to the Guardian, Smith was quite guarded about listening figures. Monthly impressions are said to be 700,000, but that doesn't account for reach or share. That is to say, 700,00 people may have listened for only a second each. Or just downloaded the app and have never listened. Or seven people may have clicked the app 100,000 times. That number doesn't really tell us much. Tricky when your product depends entirely on your listenership.
The problem for Fubar is competition. I have an app on my phone which allows me to listen to hundreds of radio stations from scores of countries. The app was free and the streaming is free. That's a lot of competitors, none of whom will ask me for £2.99 at any time. Fubar's challenge is to create content so funny, so intriguing and so popular, that a listener will ignore all those free channels in favour of a sign-up process and eventually a fee. My short time spent with Fubar suggests they have a long way to go.
True, I am outside their target audience by a good dozen years (although Gaunt's guests have included Richard Littlejohn and Nigel Farage, hardly iconic figures for Britain's youth) but to my ears, the shows were under-prepared and under-produced. There's an important lesson here. It is never sufficient to plonk a vaguely famous mouth in front of a microphone and let them ad-lib for a few hours. Particularly if you're a talk station. No matter how controversial or anarchic, in radio, there is no substitute for preparation.
Says Smith “If an artist can do anything they want within the laws of England and Wales and you make it live, well, anything can happen and listeners know that.” Well, yes. But, in reality, what tends to happen is indulgent, awkward radio.
I would guess Fubar is currently a money pit, requiring someone to pour in substantial funds while it tries to establish a niche. I'm glad that 'someone' isn't me, because I think the possibility of a return is slim.
Broadcast media needs momentous revolutions. Until the iPlayer and Freeview, nothing much had changed since the launch of Sky. The internet is the obvious platform for a multitude of wonderfully innovative and novel channels and it's pleasing to see an outfit like Fubar pushing into that space. However, I will be astonished if they prove to be the big success story.
Fubar doesn't run advertising in the usual radio format. Instead (and because they don't answer to Ofcom), they offer 'in-show' sponsorship.
Here's Duncan Smith again: "(Sponsorship is) a tremendously effective form of advertising. Say an artist is on air and says ‘I’m wearing Nike Air trainers, they’re amazing and, you know what, I’ve pulled more women than I ever have in my whole life in the past week while wearing them’ – it would be a ridiculous statement, totally unsubstantiated and totally outlawed by Ofcom … But if I’m a fan of that artist, I now like those Nike trainers 10 times more than I did five seconds ago.”
I wonder if he actually believes that.
Magnus Shaw is a blogger, copywriter and consultant
