Andrew Harrison, Chief Executive, RadioCentre

Commercial broadcasters have long been wary of BBC Executives bearing gifts, but the comments by Radio 1 controller, Ben Cooper, in last week’s mediaguardian (interview Feb 6) seemed to herald a real watershed moment for UK radio.

For the first time in years the controller of Radio 1 has stated explicitly that it is his intention to drive its audience younger.   In fact Cooper went further - saying ‘the metric of success is going to be the average age.’ [of the R1 listener].   This mission has been given added impetus by the BBC Trust, which has – rightly – been asking Radio 1 to ‘renew its focus’ on younger listeners ever since it reviewed the stations performance in 2009.

But why does this shift in emphasis and output matter so much?  Well, there are two reasons.  First, the BBC is gifted billions of pounds of licence fee income to deliver its public purposes.  The service licence for Radio 1 is quiet clear: this is a station for 16-29 year olds.  That’s what the licence fee is for, so an average listener age consistently over 30 is beyond its remit.  Ben Cooper is right to address this.  Secondly, radio needs younger listeners to safeguard its future for the long term – especially against the attractions of numerous other digital music services.

If Ben Cooper can genuinely move its output younger, then Radio 1 will help increase diversity and distinctiveness of radio on offer, which is great news for everyone.  So bringing down the average age of the Radio 1 listener is good news for listeners, and it’s good news for Radio 1’s public service mission to specifically meet the needs of a youth audience.

But why does commercial radio care so much about the age of Radio 1’s listeners?  The answer is deceptively simple, and we need to be honest about it.  The deliberate targeting of the public investment at commercial radio’s audience hits us where it hurts – in the pocket – to the tune of some £50 million a year in lost revenue.  

Over the last ten years, BBC Radio has gradually poured more money into competing for commercial radio’s heartland audience of 25–44 year olds (the listeners most important to our advertisers), and it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that this deliberate strategy has meant growth in BBC audience at the expense of the commercial sector.  This in turn has a direct impact on the profitability and viability of commercial radio.  Indeed, we estimate that the targeting of listeners from commercial radio by BBC Radios 1 and 2 since 1999 now costs the industry around £50m a year, and have highlighted this to the BBC Trust. 

This is a significant sum of money for commercial radio, around 10% of our revenues, potentially damaging the viability of commercial stations, reducing choice and short-changing licence fee payers.   

So we wish Ben Cooper every success in his mission to bring down the average age of the Radio 1 audience – in fact, we’re banking on it.

An abridged version of this article was published as a letter in the Guardian on Feb 10th.