Media pundits have indicated that digital radio is doomed because GCap, one of Britain's largest commercial radio operators, announcing it would quit digital radio to concentrate on analogue and online services.

Professor Jock Given, a professor of media and communications at Swinburne University, who specialises in digital broadcasting has predicted digital radio will struggle to attract support and that users will move to iPods and online content.

Professor Given's argument is reasonable where you have existing analogue services for which most families have 10 or more radios competing with new digital radio services where families have 0 radios. Professor Given has failed to mention that new mobile phone handsets soon to come onto the market will have digital radio tuners built into the handset. With the rate of change of handsets, approximately 12-18 months, most of the youth market will have digital radio tuners in their hands very soon. For youth the question will then be to pay to hear online...