As 2010 begins, Steve Ahern gazes into the crystal ball for radioinfo and identifies some trends to watch for this year.

Looking into 2010, one of the biggest issues will be the recovery of advertising and the return of radio company share prices. ACMA’s decision about whether the tightening for restrictions on 2Day will flow on to the rest of the commercial radio industry will also be closely watched in the early weeks of this year.

From a technical point of view, the gradual expansion of Australia’s National Broadband Network will challenge the radio industry to keep integrating free to air transmission with online linkages so that listeners are not lured away to the increasing number of international offerings that will eventually bring more competition for radio and tv to every corner of this land via the internet.

For all radio sectors it will be an exciting time as they experiment with new formats and track audience responses to the new transmission technology. With more than 200,000 digital radios sold in Australia within 6 months, there are high hopes within the industry for a healthy take up by consumers in the first year of operation. As more and more new digital radio channels launch during 2010, listener excitement about the technology will increase during the year.

Community radio’s biggest challenges will centre around how the sector moves into Digital Radio, months later than the public and commercial broadcasters. Community radio will also struggle with the balancing act of making enough money to survive without breaking the rules or antagonising rivals in the other sectors.

As the ABC rolls out NewsRadio to many more rural communities and steps up its online production capabilities in the bush, the national broadcaster may struggle to fund its ambitions for radio unless further funding is forthcoming. In a year when the national broadcaster’s budget will be consumed heavily by new digital tv channels and the government will be in no mood to hand out extra money, this may become an issue of tension inside the national broadcaster.

From the business point of view, the newly created Southern Cross Media Group, formerly Macquarie Media Group will have all eyes on it in the first months of the new year as it offers discounted shares to existing investors to raise capital and fund the Macquarie Bank buy out and further expansion. Broadcast Australia will be another company to watch because it is now owned by a Canadian Pension Fund, which is so far taking a healthy long term view of the business and funding technical upgrades and sensible business restructuring within the company.

Two key figures will leave the Australian radio industry in 2010, with Austereo’s CEO Michael Anderson due to depart mid year and ARN’s Bob Longwell leaving Australia this month, to be replaced by Ciaran Davis. Austereo is yet to name a new CEO. Combine that with new dynamics at DMG with Cathy O’Connor and Lachlan Murdoch now in key positions, and the recent new appointments of Kate Dundas at ABC Radio, Dirk Anthony at SBS Radio, and Michele Bawden at the CBAA, then 2010 will be a year to watch the people at the top of Australia’s leading radio companies for signs of change and different directions.

There’s plenty more to look forward to in 2010. If you would like to make your own predictions, please do so on our blog (click below) or send your thoughts to [email protected].

Brian Towers from Adelaide writes:

Australian Radio is dying a slow death …. this is plainly obvious due to outdated programming elements, shallow playlists badly constructed by people who know nothing about music and simply rely on tainted research, monotonous commercial stop sets that go on forever, a bunch of clueless CEO’s with limited vision and blinded by “bottom line” mentality who have their heads securely buried in the sand as well as untrained talent getting little professional direction from PD’s still wet behind the ears… Be warned, unless there is an injection of individual creativity, true innovation and a serious multi-media future no amount of ‘Botox’ will help these old thinking controllers placing a few more “nails in radio’s coffin”.

Read Brian’s detailed posting in the blog section and feel free to make your own contribution to this article.