Why Radio?

By Ian, on January 23rd, 2009

Yes, I still have a blog, it seems, and I’m still using it to pimp work events.

Next Tuesday, we’re doing What Happens to Radio? And you should book right now, honestly.

Some of you too-cool-for-school nu-media folk might be thinking ‘who gives a shit about radio?’

So this is why I chose radio for our next event.

It’s already proven itself as the most adaptable media. It’s incredibly portable; it can do indoors, outdoors, cars, mobiles, whatever.
It’s also adapted to the Internet era from the start. Almost every radio station has had an internet presence and streaming of some sort from the start (viz. 1995’ish). So we know that they’re great innovators and have been for a long, long time.
At the same time, it’s been very static in terms of presentation and programming. Some disconnect there, surely?
There’s a struggle there. People under-rate radio, again thinking that it’s somehow out-of-date and surpassed by internet services. Check your facts, people. The most meagre local station has hundreds of thousands of listeners. Test that against any internet radio-style service.
There’s tons of innovation: not just DAB but whole new ways of experiencing and interacting with the medium. That’s what we’re going to be talking about!
There’s a massive conundrum factoring the ephemeral and ambient nature of radio with the new demand for interactivity, audience feedback loops and more revenue.
It’s square. Some people think that none of this stuff is happening and I wanted to show how wrong they were.

I promise that my next post will not be quite so promotional.