The director of the Digital Radio UK campaign has called on the industry to refocus on all things digital.

Enthusiasm for the main digital radio platform has waned somewhat in the UK commercial radio community after significant investment in infrastructure and new digital-only radio stations failed to bring in any real returns as advertisers and, to an extent, listeners failed to get excited about new digital services.

Efforts by big radio firm, Global Radio and the BBC might be enough to rescue digital broadcasting project.

The head of TalkSport, Scott Taunton, has said that the government's target for switching off AM and FM radio services is "not realistic".

Asked about the government's aims for turning the UK's radio listeners over to digital and internet services in six years, Taunton told The Guardian:

"I don't think there is anyone who genuinely believes 2015 is realistic", adding that the proposals were "over-ambitious to the point of being farcical".

When Channel 4's bid to launch a second national DAB network collapsed, some in the commercial sector proclaimed DAB dead in the water, despite the BBC remaining committed to the platform.

And some are now predicting that FM radio will survive a lot longer than originally thought, and that by the time FM disappears it will be internet radio rather than DAB that takes its place.

"Internet can't cope"

Lisa Kerr, charged with the job of turning broadcasters, listeners and advertisers to digital, and preferably DAB, sooner rather than later, argued that the internet simply can't cope with being the primary infrastructure for the radio industry.

According to Radio Today, Kerr told the Radio At The Edge conference in London:

"(Internet radio) would be hopeless. It simply can't cope with the simultaneous levels of listening that radio demands. For example, at eight o'clock on a typical morning, there are about seventeen million people listening to the radio. But the entire UK broadband infrastructure could only support simultaneous listening for about four million of them - even if no one was using the internet for anything else, anywhere in the country. And the costs would be enormous - hundreds of millions of pounds a year for the radio industry - and more for the ISPs. Any kind of IP technology that we either have today or even have sight of today, just can't match up to broadcast radio".

Looking forward to the next phase of DAB, Kerr continued:

"Let's get real: legislation and fixing infrastructure first; content and services next; followed by promoting like crazy, then uptake and then upgrade. That's how it's going to work. And that's how, in a few years from now, we'll have a radio industry spending more money on content and less on transmission, and therefore an audience that has more choice, more interactivity, and cracking, not crackling, reception".

Additional reporting by - CMU Network