Joan Warner hits key note at Broadcast Asia

If you didn’t already know it, the CEO of Australia’s Commercial Radio Industry body, Joan Warner has been quietly – no, scrub that – loudly spruiking the benefits of DAB+ to radio station operators around the world. 

Her latest address was Thursday morning at the Broadcast Asia conference. And although she’d been delivering such speeches for several years now, she had plenty of new developments to talk about.

The topic that most drew the crowd’s attention was Ms Warner’s experience of the first smartphone ever to include a DAB+ tuner. Australia was the first market in the world to offer the LG Stylus DAB+ for sale to the public.

Ms Warner’s message for countries which already have or will soon have DAB+ is to understand that smartphone manufacturers have many options for new features in which to invest their resources.  Therefore you must offer them an incentive,  “If you put a DAB+ chip in your phone to test the market, we will give you free advertising. It should be a deal too good to pass up.”

In Australia alone, LG has received around $5 million worth of radio advertising and promotion for the LG Stylus DAB+. 

For radio industry bodies wanting their government to implement DAB+ in their country, Ms Warner advised that they become proactive and lobby their officials as a united front with a well developed agenda.

“It’s up to radio to go to government with a plan to introduce DAB+. Governments around the world have told me that they are just waiting for the radio industry to come to them with what they want in order to go digital,” Ms Warner said.