Is Radio Obsolete?

A while back Italian singer Mina wrote an article for La Stampa on her take of what listening to the radio used to be; parts of which I translate liberally here.

In a world that has alas celebrated the extinction of the verb "to listen" what is left is visual enslavement. In such a world, radio is a last oasis, a natural environment where among bushes and stones one can still find everything -- literature and gossip, from Cole Porter to Puccini, from politics to some extinct musical form. On the radio, it is still possible to find words offered to the listener with that tact that TV abhors.

Carlo Emilio Gadda was an engineer from Milan who worked in Italy, Belgium and Argentina. He became a full time writer around 1940 in Florence and then in the 1950s in Rome, where he worked for RAI (Italian National TV). In 1953, when RAI asked him to write up a compendium of "Policies for Radio Programming", Gadda wrote: 

"Radio listeners are not a 'public', so to speak. In truth, they are 'single people'... every listener is alone... sitting in their own armchair, after having captured the essence... the noble act of listening, he/she is bound to the secret susceptibility of being able to get irritated by the inopportune tone of a catechizing radio apparatus. It is therefore better that the voice, and the text entrusted to it, avoid all those mannerisms that provoke the idea of a condescending tone, an imparted lesson, a sermon, a message coming from on high. It is equal to equal, free citizen to free citizen, thinking brain to thinking brain."

Equal to equal, citizen to citizen, thinking brain to thinking brain. I very rarely watch TV and even more rarely listen to the radio. At dinner about a week ago, a friend told me that he likes to turn the radio on when he gets home. He does that both for company and because he prefers to listen to information rather than watching it. The only times I listen to the radio is when I'm looking for a local traffic report before getting on the expressway and on Sunday morning after my run.

It is really not a preference, just a matter of convenience. I am more often online and that's where I get the news from European and US wires. Growing up our radio was on only during the broadcasting of symphonic music programs. And in the car I mainly listen to music.

In Philadelphia we have good radio programming: Fresh Air with Terri Gross and Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane, yet I rarely listen to these shows. That is too bad, because I believe that radio is a good medium to establish that conversation from person to person in an intimate setting. I use radio networks for advertising at work because they have a reach to our target audience in a select time frame that print and direct mail would not have.

What about you? Do you have favorite radio programs? Is radio part of your communications strategy?

Comments

[Chris]

Being a former radio Programmer, I could blather about this topic all day.

No, radio isn't obsolete. According to an Arbitron RADAR study released in September, radio reaches more than 230 million people each week in the United States. That's about 93% of the total population, ages 12 and up.

While broadcast (terrestrial) radio listenership is slowly eroding in terms of time spent listening and overall reach, the radio industry reaches pretty much everyone.

I do think radio's enthusiasm for pre-recorded programming is self-destructive. Much of what you think is "live" on a local station is neither live nor local, and radio is fooling itself that nobody can *feel* the difference.

As you correctly point out, radio is a one-on-one medium. It's the ultimate media conversation. Radio fails when it becomes a "broadcast' in the sense of other mass-media.

I also think that radio shortchanged itself by abrogating news coverage to TV and the internet. The radio corporate executive mantra "people just don't get their news from radio anymore" was largely a self-fulfilling prophecy.

c.

[Steve Roesler]

Hi, Valeria,

As I was getting ready to write I read Chris' comments and smiled to myself. From 1971 - 1977 I did a Big Band radio program in the Philly area which I programmed myself. I'm not from the Big Band generation but, as a working musician, I loved and played the music. What started off as a short specialty show turned into a fully sold-out program that ran into the wee hours of Friday and Saturday nights. But here's what Chris is talking about.

a. I did my own programming.
b. I took phone calls on the air before we had a label for taking phone calls on the air.
c. It was social networking before we had that label. When we would do a live show with a band or a remote broadcast, the people who called in would attend, connect with each other as a result of having heard their names on the broadcast, and literally develop friendships.
d.My last broadcast was in 1977. I still get phone calls at home from listeners who have looked me up in the phone book and wanted to say "hi" and "thanks for the memories."

Having said that, I have considered using radio for advertising my communications consulting business-- but have not. Chris noted that radio reaches 93% of the population. But the canned programming doesn't allow for enough of a "personality" to emerge through which I want to attach my message.

My radio listening is now confined to a couple of local stations who allow the personalities to program their own music, talk with listeners, and build a sense of relationship. If I want to "listen to music," I plug in my iPod.

Chris is right. When you "broadcast" you are "talking at." Even the most basic marketing research shows that it's all about relationship. But the radio stations are, for some strange reason, held hostage by the outdated and impersonal notion of "all music all the time."

My bet: the first major media outlet that decides to do personality, self-programmed, relational radio will reap huge rewards. Check out WHAT 105.3 out of Philly. They are successful with a version of that approach right now with their morning and afternoon drive-time programs.

Wow. I didn't know that I had that rant stored up!

Keep up the good work.

Steve