Last week the BBC revealed exciting new plans for a new Radio iPlayer equivalent – which would mean making radio content just as accessible as TV.

The BBC’s idea to create an on-demand, catch-up service for UK radio looks like there may soon be a downloadable radio service for listeners, meaning Radio listeners will no longer be made to search commercial stations such as Capital Radio or Heart FM on individual websites. BBC are in talks with commercial radio stations to showcase all UK radio so every radio station in Britain will be put on one website by the BBC (to also fit with its plans to create more 'partnerships' and protect its £3.5bn annual licence).

Tim Davie, Head of Audio and Music for the BBC, wants to introduce this service to all broadcasters to make all radio programmes downloadable from one place. This will mean listeners (and PRs chasing coverage!) can find missed radio programmes in one place (with BBC programmes sitting side by side with commercial programmes).

This could also be a positive move following the recent government Digital Britain Report, and could increase the popularity of digital radio.

James, Head of Future Media & Technology for BBC Audio & Music Interactive stressed it is still early days for the new venture, so discussions between the BBC and commercial radio across the UK to gauge opinions are still in motion.

Longer-term proposals include ‘Radio Plus’, similar to that of Sky+ to operate across digital devices to offer the sort of pre-booking services found on Sky+ and other personal video recorders.

So will a Radio iPlayer version be as popular as it is online – and will it attract the audience levels and success of the current BBC iPlayer? It will certainly be useful for us as PROs chasing coverage, and also offer convenience for listeners to play back radio programmes as and when they choose. We will have to wait and see if it reaches the phenomenal success levels of the BBC iPlayer….