Despite the all-pervading influence of television ninety per cent of people in Britain still listen to the radio, clocking up over a billion hours of listening between us every week. It-s a background to all our lives: we wake up to our clock radios, we have the radio on in the kitchen as we make the tea, it-s on at our workplaces and in our cars. From Listen With Mother to the illicit thrill of tuning into pirate stations like Radio Caroline; from receiving a musical education from John Peel or having our imagination unlocked by Douglas Adams- The Hitchhiker-s Guide to the Galaxy; from school-free summers played out against a soundtrack of Radio One and Test Match Special to more grown-up soundtracks of the Today programme on Radio 4 and the solemn, rhythmic intonation of the shipping forecast - in many ways, our lives can be measured in kilohertz.Yet radio is changing because the way we listen to the radio is changing. Last year the number of digital liste
