ITV senior executive warns against forcing digital radio on public

ITV's managing director of commercial and online Fru Hazlitt brands the word digital 'complete bollocks'
Fru Hazlitt
Fru Hazlitt: 'Do you have to ram it down their throats? Because if you do, it’s stuffed.' Photograph: Graham Turner/The Guardian

Senior ITV executive Fru Hazlitt has warned the radio industry not to force digital radio on an unwilling audience, branding the word digital "complete bollocks".

Hazlitt, ITV's managing director of commercial and online and a former commercial radio executive, has previously described digital audio broadcasting (DAB) radio as "flogging a head horse".

Appearing at the Radio Festival in Salford on Tuesday, Hazlitt said: "I have a thing about using the word digital. I think it's complete bollocks.

"So much is digital now, people describe it as some new thing. It's not. You ask the consumer in the street how they receive television or radio, they don't know, they just want the content they like."

The radio industry is still wrestling with the issue of digital radio switchover, with just under a third of listening via digital platforms, including DAB radio.

But hopes that switchover could happen by 2015 were premature with take-up slower than had been predicted.

Hazlitt's comments come as digital radio switchover body Digital Radio UK launches its latest marketing campaign based around an animated spoof soulman, D Love.

Hazlitt said: "If they see a very good reason to change their technology, because of content or functionality, then they will do.

"When you talk about one technology or another, all you have to think is, does it enable the consumer to go 'wow, I want that' or do you have to ram it down their throats? Because if you do, it's stuffed."

Hazlitt said the reason digital TV switchover had been so successful was because of word of mouth and because people wanted a "big new sexy telly that looks cool when people come round the house".

"They set all this help stuff up but hardly anybody used it," she added. "They didn't care about the technology, they cared about the device and the content on it."

Hazlitt said ITV had struggled to generate revenues from product placement but said that was about to change.

She said the phenomenon was so prominent in the US that on The X Factor on Fox, "you can hardly see the judges, they have such huge glasses of Pepsi in front of them".

"Now we are moving it forward, watch this space," she added. "So you may not be able to see our judges [on The X Factor]. No, I mustn't say that."

Hazlitt said the radio industry should embrace Twitter and Facebook, where she said ITV had 20 million "likes".

"If you feel remotely threatened by Facebook or Twitter, then give it up," she added.

