Digital One says its founder and CEO, Quentin Howard, will leave the company at the end of June.
Operations director, Glyn Jones, will become acting CEO upon his departure.
The company said Howard was instrumental in creation of Digital One, the world’s first commercial DAB service, 10 years ago as a subsidiary of GWR Group, with partners NTL (now Arqiva). The organization credited him with driving much of the success of DAB in the United Kingdom.
While the format is not universally accepted there, it has achieved greater reach than terrestrial digital radio in the United States. The platform accounts for 11 percent of U.K. radio listening and is used in 28 percent of homes; more than 7 million DAB receivers have been sold, according to Digital One.
He also was responsible for Digital One’s co-development of DAB chipsets that helped bring down the costs of DAB radios.
Howard will continue in his role as president of WorldDMB, the organization responsible for promotion and rollout of DAB and DMB technologies.
Related story: Read Skip Pizzi’s recent column “DAB on the Up and Down Track” on this topic.
