Austereo CEO, Michael Anderson told Neil Shoebridge in the AFR (01/09/2008) that he wasn’t “sure” when his stations would launch their new digital channels. radioinfo has since discovered that what Anderson meant was that he was “sure” as hell not going to tell any of us.

In the AFR story Anderson seemed to have become suddenly cautious about launching digital. Shoebridge pointed out that in March Mr Anderson had told his paper, “The take-up of digital radio will be a bit quicker than most people anticipate.”

“But now”, observes Shoebridge, “he is not so optimistic.”

When radioinfo rang for Mr Anderson to explain why he would have such a change of heart and how it would look for the industry if its own CRA Chairman was seen to be wavering on digital, we were told that he was on leave and that someone else would contact us on his behalf.

In a demonstration of why Austereo’s upper management is all class, our call was soon returned by Chairman, Peter Harvie.

Mr Harvie explained that while it is true that Austereo had been ready to launch with the rest of the industry on January 1st, 2009 (and even pre-empt that with a soft launch in December this year) the change in the company’s policy since March has come about because the Federal Government changed its launch policy in May.

“We were originally all locked in to the ‘use it or lose it date’ of January 1st, 2009 but then in May this government extended the date to July 1st which gave us more options.

“I assure we’ve had no change in heart about digital. We’re ready to go anytime. It’s just that we don’t want to signal our intentions to our competitors. We’d rather keep our cards close to our chest regarding the exact launch date,” Mr Harvie said.