Month: October 2021

At Radiodays Lisbon, this morning’s Radio Summit session featured four radio company leaders from around Europe with different perspectives on how they have adapted to the needs of their audiences during the covid pandemic.Pedro Leal, the Director General of Production at Renascença said there has been more interaction between journalists and presenters at his station during the pandemic.“We put into practice more increased interaction between them, giving information in a more informal way, where the presenters put the views and the questions of the audience to our news journalists. “We also broadcast news on our social media channels… The comments boxes have never been so full and so connected to our audiences.“We tried to fight fake news with excellence… We always had fake news, the issue now is that there is so much of it… To fight it we had to continue to do good journalism.”Patricia Schlesinger, the Director General of Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg said the pandemic has made people and governments more aware of the need for “quality media.“Radio keeps recreating itself and connecting with us in many ways. Radio is a medium that never ages, it is still a young medium. “The pandemic has increased a longing for privacy in people in lockdown, radio is a personal private medium for this generation.“In Germany, podcasts are booming but not at the expense of free to air radio. Our listeners enjoy our content and count on our reliability during this pandemic.“A recent study shows that people feel safer in a society with a public broadcaster… Covid has triggered a need for well researched information and is a strong weapon against fake news and filter bubbles.”Marc Vossen, the CEO of NGroup says he is not a chief executive officer but “the chief enthusiastic officer… and our COO is the chief optimistic officer.”“There are so many new trends today, the podcast industry is worth $1 billion… connected devices, smart speakers, you can do anything with audio, it is the most accessible format and cheaper to produce than any other.“Audio has resisted the confidence crisis in the media. During these 18 unbelievable months of pandemic, the voice has regained strength… the voices of our hosts have prevented our listeners from loneliness, being ambassadors of solidarity empathy and love. Those voices speak directly to one person.“The voice on radio is a weapon of mass construction. We wake up every morning to be a positive force for the world. Even as music radio we have a role to play in making the world better. We lead by example.”Anne-Marie Dohn is Head of Radio 4. She said:“The audio industry has developed a multitude of new players in the past few years. Radio 4 which I represent has been on air for 2 years. We were born with the pandemic, broadcasting almost immediately from home.“We have had to ask how do we fulfill the promise of journalism to support democracy and society, that is the ground we stand on as public service media providers.“Our goal is to attract more people across more demographics than other BBC outlets. The majority of our users find us on new platforms that we don’t control… We have to compete on those platforms on the same basis as everyone else, we have to compete to be heard from the jungle of content that is on those platforms. Our task is to keep up with technology so we can do that.“We have to ensure that everyday we have unique content and offer the best companionship… We made a vow to the public to make content that would engage more people across many different social, cultural and economic areas.”Session host Matt Degan led a discussion after the leaders spoke where Marc Vossen of NGroup made an impassioned plea about how to make a great radio show or run a great radio station:“Ask yourself when you wake up every day, what is my purpose? At the end of the day ask, what have I done today that has made the world better.”[embedded content] […]

Radiodays Europe has begun.As a media partner for Radiodays Europe, radioinfo can bring you exclusive content from the conference, which is taking place now in Lisbon.Yesterday (Saturday 9 Oct) the conference began with a covid safe Fast and Curious meet, greet and discuss session and this morning Lisbon time in-person delegates began to enter the conference, while virtual participants logged in from their home offices in their own time zones.In the first session of the world leading radio and audio conference, Peter Niegel opened by telling the audience that 60% of them are at the conference centre in person, while another 40% of attendees are virtual.[embedded content]

Marianne Bugge Zederkof, the Director of the commercial radio body Danske Medier, said one of the important things on the agenda for radio companies in Europe is to prevent anticompetitive practices such as third party apps that do not pay to rebroadcast radio services and apps that insert ads into radio streams without the permission of the original broadcaster.
“We will act to ensure that listeners can continue to access and enjoy free radio.”

[embedded content]Adam Bowie, Business Development Manager at the BBC World Service looked at changing audience habits during the pandemic.In The UK, Rajar surveys stopped because the methodology involved visiting people’s homes and capturing the data on paper, but Adam used other information to extrapolate the changes to audience habits during this disrupted covid period.“What we know about radio is that it is habit driven, but habits were disrupted. We know that the commute is an important part of radio listening, but working from home became more common.“People are now coming back to work in cars and commuting data shows car transport returning to normal, but we have seen that public transport commuting has not returned to normal so listening on public transport has decreased. But what we have found is that people are listening more during the day than they were previously, especially to podcasts, which you can do between work and parenting from home.”“People are also exercising more and having picnics. their audio listening has adapted. 22% of Americans are listening to more podcasts during the pandemic. Listening has not been lost, it has been displaced.“Longer term there may be some reversion to normal listening, but it will not be a total return to normal in radio listening nor many other things either, habits have changed, such as online shopping and many other changed things too.”[embedded content]
📺 Watch the Opening Session of #RDE21 in Lisbon… https://t.co/yS0OUEDg7s
— Radiodays Europe (@RadiodaysEurope) October 10, 2021 […]