Apr 25th 2007

The key to the future of radio is to stop thinking about radio as radio

3 Comments Radio Web 2.0

(life blogging from the MAC 07 in Granollers, Barcelona)

I’ve been invited to participate in the MAC 07 (Mercat Audiovisual de Catalunya) held in an old warehouse in Granollers (Barcelona) the 25nd and 26th of April. The Catalan radio station RAC1 was kind enough to propose me after my role in developing the RAC1.cat and RAC105.cat websites.

I’m participating in a roundtable about “New Content For Digital Formats” and I guess I’m gonna be the bad guy who tells radio executives the future of radio is internet. Is it? Well, yes and no. Of course nobody knows what the future is going to be especially in the internet area (could anyone guess the explosion of the blogosphere five years ago?) but we can make a wild guess.

The future is not the internet. Internet will be the “new” radio and the radio and the rest of traditional media, will be the building blocks of a new medium we still don’t know the name but we know it will be fun. Call it Negroponte’s “Media Convergence” call it Andersen’s “Long Tail” applied to audio, call it Web 2.0 or whatever you want.

We should probably redefine the meaning of “the golden era of radio” as never before so much radio has been produced, be broadcast radio, on-line radio or podcast. Different names and technologies but radio at the end.

Here’s my today’s presentation (only in Catalan but it has a lot pictures don’t worry)

Radio 20

For those who’ve read my previous presentation Web 2.0 look how close the two presentations are. This is done intentionally as I think Web 2.0 will have a key role in redefining radio (and also saved me a lot of time preparing it)

Here’s the panel of the “New Content For Digital Formats” (look for the Internet Expert!)

Mr. Lluis Cuevas and Mr. Marc Vicenç (Coordinator and musicalcoordinator of iCATFM), Mr. Bruno Sokolowicz (Co-director of Scanner FM), Mr José María Delgado (Contents Management project manager of Unión Radio), Ms. Arantxa Ormazabal (head of visual radio product marketing for Telefónica Móviles), Mr. Francesc Xavier Ribes (Image, Sound and Synthesis Research Group in the Audiovisual Communication and Advertising Dept. of the UAB), Mr. Robert Freeman (Multimedia Expert), Mr. Josep Maria Ganyet (Internet Expert).

And finally let me credit Nicholas Negroponte for the quotation in the title of the post. He said it referred to TV and I just adapted it to radio.

The original quote was: “The key to the future of television is to stop thinking about television as television”.

3 comments | Leave yours

  1. 27/04/07 xavier

    Nice presentation, dear internet expert.

    I’m often wondering what is going to happen to advertising in this new world, and if we are about to say goodbye to expensive high-quality contents. Any interesting insight? Did you get to attend the “Transformation of the advertising market in response to new trends in the audiovisual sector” talk?

  2. 27/04/07 toni

    Another nice example of future applications playing with online content is described in the best William Gibson novel in years: Pattern Recognition

    http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Recognition-William-Gibson/dp/0425198685/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-4484571-7137626?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1177696658&sr=1-1

    The example is called “the footage” and it follows many points from your presentation plus an extra: a great anonymous artist.

    ‘Nuff said.

  3. 29/04/07 Josep M. Ganyet

    Xavier, I didn’t attend the “Transformation of the advertising….” talk, although by the name it would have been a good complement to mine. I’ll try to get the presentation and the permit to post it here.

    I’m not an expert on this area (remember I’m just an internet expert), but l guess Google will have a lot to say especially after acquiring DoubleClick.

    Here’s some AdWords features:

    • Changed the advertising business model from pay-per-hit to pay-per-click
    • Delivers non-intrusive context sensitive text ads instead that most users regarded as contents
    • Allows for individuals with a small budget to reach a global audience

    This simple concept turned Google into the world’s biggest advertising reseller and now they’re moving it to radio by means of Google Audio Ads.

    Check the AdWords blog for more accurate info on Google Audio Ads.
    http://adwords.blogspot.com/2006/12/bringing-radio-advertising-to-google.html

    I guess that the same principle can be applied to TV and in fact product placement it’s a bit like AdWords: advertising and contents the same time.

    Movies? Would the next George Lucas not shoot the next Star Wars blockbuster if movies were free? I think she would. Blockbusters get more revenue from merchandising and popcorn than from the actual tickets. But AdWords (MovieWords) could work in movies.

    Here’s how MovieWords would work:

    • I sell beans in my Barcelona corner shop and I have a special offer this week end
    • Woody Allen’s next movie which is set in Barcelona features many shots where street shops are shown
    • People that watch this movie in my neighborhood the week end of my offer, see my logo on the front window of the shop with my special offer

    This would also make the whole thing more real.

Leave your comment

Name and email are required.
Track comments via RSS.

Posts RSS · Comments RSS