According to a report published by RAJAR UK http://bit.ly/i14wh, 46.3m of the country's adults, or 90.3% of the population listened to the radio this quarter (to June).
When I initially read this, I was somewhat surprised that the "original" broadcast medium is still relevant to the now Internet-savvy UK population.
Since discussing it with a few people this morning, it has struck me that radio is in fact perhaps the original social media platform, one that embraces the core principles of, say, blogging, commenting, music streaming and, in some cases, microblogging.
Radio is presented as conversational; the audience can call, text or email in their comments on a particular topic, speak to the presenter and even choose what music they want to hear. All these qualities form the basis of radio; the medium talks with the audience, rather than to them, and reflects its general sentiment.
This is all true of social media also; blogs report on a current issue, then invite it's audience for comment - just like a current affairs show; microblogging stimulates conversation with influencers/celebrities - its radio parallel being chat shows; Spotify/Last.fm puts the control of music playlists in the hands of the audience - just like a music request show.
So that's all well and good, but why haven't these social media alternatives replaced radio? First of all is simple - accessibility, more Britons have readily-available access to radio than broadband. Secondly, radio tends to be a one-stop shop for all of the above, acting as a human-powered aggregator for content and interaction opportunities.
So is this going to change any time soon? I doubt it. At the moment, I suppose it is much easier for the not-so Internet savvy to have the content they consume filtered and aggregated by someone else.
Incoherent rambling over... ;-)
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