ASIA

What’s working for leading radio stations around the world at the cutting edge of creativity in programming, sales, marketing, and technology? How do they unlock potential, extend reach, strengthen brands, develop new revenue models, and create sustainable advantages?A panel of experts discussed this in the session “Creativity, Innovation and Competitive Advantage”.The session was moderated by Francis Currie and the panel included Anna Dixon, Senior Service Designer, ABC, Udit Tyagi, Chief Digital Officer, Radio Mirchi, India and Chris Johnson, Head of Digital & Innovation, SCA.Francis began the session by asking the panelists what is the most exciting thing they have seen in the digital space?Chris said: “The practical applications of AI, they are going to add to our daily lives.” For Anna, “seeing a shift to sharing more authentic experiences is very interesting,” and Udit found in car consumption and NFT initiatives to be most promising.When asked which part of AI they found most interesting, everyone had a different opinion. Chris found content creation to be very interesting, “We wanted to have an IP an we gave an AI program 5 minutes of audio and it’s consistently creating an audio tree,” he said.Anna said: “News. If there’s endless amounts of data, AI can sift through it and save time. We’re also working with a company in Spain on a misinformation ping system. If a politician or someone says something that’s not accurate or true, you’ll get a ‘ping’ wherever you’re seeing them.”Udit spoke of integrating AI with wearables. “Information from wearables can integrate with audio to make recommendations relevant to users.”Moving on, Francis asked Udit: “Is traditional radio dead? If not, why has Mirchi dropped it from its name?”“It’s not dead. In fact, Mirchi is back at pre-covid numbers on Radio, which will grow but maybe not at the same pace as digital. We don’t want to constrict ourselves to radio, you have to be everywhere. As some quoted Charles Darwin – It’s not the strongest or the fittest who survive, it’s those who are most adaptable,” replied Udit.“Anna, you have access to a lot of research. When you see the younger generation, is radio dead for them?” said Francis.“First of all, I think one should kill the question ‘’Is radio dead’. In Australia there’s still a big digital divide and a lot of people don’t have data access. For them radio is important,” she replied.Discussing content monetisation, Francis asked about new ideas to make new money from new people.Chris said that they focus on premium services and products such as podcasts and with integrated sponsorships. Udit said in India people have been lethargic to move from radio to digital and more groundwork needs to be done.What does the audio landscape look like 10 years ahead?Udit said: “It has to evolve. Currently it’s a very app driven market. As soon as everyone digitizes, you can be platform agnostic which will create enormous opportunities. NFTs would be very aggressive.”Anna said discovery of content and personalisation would be important in the future.“Radio is slowly going to decline as smart speakers rise. Podcasting will grow in momentum and you’re also going to have new formats. Many people will be thinking how to distill their business down to an icon on a screen,” said Chris.Photo – John Maizels […]

The car of the future challenges radio’s prominent role in the dashboard: new connected cars will come with internet connections in-built and large touchscreens that make accessing entertainment other than live radio the easiest it has ever been. Radio’s role in the car is under threat.Jamie Chaux, Head of Digital, Commercial Radio Australia (CRA), spoke on what does audio entertainment look like in the future connected car? What is being done right now to ensure radio is as best placed for the rise of the connected car?Speaking about VR, he said: “The car is the original VR experience. The cabin is the VR screen and what’s going on around it is the experience.” More than 80 percent of the people surveyed across the world in a WorldDAb 2021 Car Buyers Survey said they typically listen to the radio in a car and broadcast radio is a must have in cars. When considering which car to purchase, radio is the most important audio feature to have ahead of USB ports, Bluetooth, Android Auto and CarPlay.“In car radio is one of the easiest ways to consume radio in the world,” he said.Giving an example of an initiative to improve the car radio experience, he discussed a pilot project by NAB, US, of which CRA is a member, working with google to design the user experience based on what consumers expect from radio in car. In Australia, DTS has partnered with radio so that radio comes through broadcast, but visuals, artworks and information comes through IP. CRA is also in talks with local government for regulatory support. In Europe, DAB has already been mandated in all new cars.“Radio needs to have depth of content and look really nice. The fact that usage can be measured will also be beneficial in terms of analytics for creating content.”Photo – John MaizelsCars now come with a SIM, which brings a new interface and helps understand the consumption of the car. New models don’t have physical buttons in the dashboard, only touchscreens, “cars have become an extension of your phone without connecting to it.”What does the automotive industry think of all of this? Its aware that consumer expectations are high, but is concerned about the role of big tech in the car –
Who is collecting the data in the car?
Should you let big tech have access to all data points?
How do you manage a logged in driver’s data?
Who is ultimately writing revenue from the consumer?
Speaking about what broadcasters can do he said everyone should be prepared for fragmentation in all the different ways the connected car will go beyond broadcast radio. They need to see if their audio content is fit for the purpose of the future connected car and what other hybrid content they can have ready for car radio.On how competition will evolve, he said: “With touchscreens, you may not be competing with just other stations. The users may not switch stations, they may go to something totally different on their screen.” […]

In the session titled ‘Emergency Broadcasting’ we heard from Australia and Japan how the ABC and NHK have innovated their readiness and organisation to function at the very best when urgent and reliable information is needed the most in case of natural disasters.Seiichi Kuriki, Senior Producer, Global strategy division, NHK WORLD, Japan, was fascinated by radio since childhood and that’s why he chose to join NHK’s international division when he grew up.He made a presentation about NHK’s innovations to provide foreign residents and visitors with more detailed disaster emergency information through broadcasts and webcasts.At first, NHK established its foreign language service for an overseas audience, but in recent years, the number of foreign residents in Japan has been increasing. NHK has included an initiative in its 2021-23 corporate plan to target them for the first time.However, there’s a dilemma that the foreign language service faces. It reaches overseas audience as well as foreigners in Japan, and information for both targets is delivered in the same foreign languages. But the needs of the two audiences are not the same. For the overseas audience, overdetailed disaster emergency info may be boring, although it is very important for foreign residents in Japan.They are addressing this issue in two ways through automation – Code table conversion for fixed pattern information, and AI Translation for freestyle, pattern less, real time information.In order to make it effective, Japan Meteorological Agency is linked with NHK and automatically shares immediate updates in case of strong earthquakes and tsunamis on the public broadcaster’s app and website.Along with automated bulletins, manual updates are also important as they’re more efficient in conveying information flexibly to meet the demand.At the moment, NHK’s technical team is considering applying text-to-speech technology to its multilingual service. In the future, automated bulletins and AI-translated subtitles may be used for podcasts, webcasts or radio broadcasts.Patrick Hession, Emergency Broadcast Lead, ABC, Australia, said that fired and floods are the biggest emergencies that need to be covered in Australia and “we’re focusing on those whose life and property are under immediate threat.”He said that coverage in natural disasters involves doing a bunch of fairly simple things properly and structuring them together to make it useful. It involves maintaining key contacts on ground, for which preparations should be made well in advance keeping in the mind various capacity constraints. It’s also very important to communicate plans clearly with teams and debrief them.“Audience respond and turn to trusted sources in emergencies as events become more serious, and radio is the most trusted source in Australia,” he said.In the last couple of years, ABC has launched an emergency website, which contains some timeless information which can be accessed anywhere, anytime. It also allows one to search for nearby incidents by linking to ABC Radio and digital coverage.He also stressed on managing growing audience expectations, better managing constraints and targeted coverage as important factors in emergency broadcasts. […]

As radio’s audiences are getting older, how do you successfully engage with the younger, future audiences?On day 2 of Radiodays Asia, Anna Dixon shared some of the work and experiments focused on younger audiences that has been explored by the ABC Innovation Lab.Teens and tweens remember what they watched in their childhood and they think about what their parents watched, but one of the things that was found in this study of younger audiences, is that in the main, this younger audience has no real connection to the ABC.By 2032 two-thirds of the Australian population will be made up of Gen Z, Millennials and Alpha.Teens and tweens care more about the content than the publisher. They rely on the algorithms of their social media feeds to give them the content they like, and this means they are less likely to undertake their own discovery for new content.It also means that if content providers are not already in their feeds, they are unlikely to get there.The under 30’s are also less likely to recall media brands and more likely to remember talent and influencers.The ABC looked at the explosion of TikTok and, along with the establishment of the Talent Fund, were able to employ young new diverse talent to work on their 3rd party platforms.TikTok has provided the ABC with a cost-effective way of testing a broad range of content on the one account, and this has allowed different teams within to organisation to create content, test it and see what works and what should be discarded.Looking at what is so enticing about TikTok, Anna says what stood out is “…that they have a huge range and variety, short modular segments, a continuous flow of content and they serve a unique set of content to each person.” The ABC has now added a new audio product, ABC Streams, and like TikTok, it is a collection of skippable short ABC Podcasts and radio segments of between 1-3 minutes.This allows listeners to access a broad range of topics in a small amount of time while also allowing for links to longer versions of podcasts and radio segments.Anna’s broad takeaways from what the ABC has learnt about this young emerging audience are
They love video. How can you create video to support your audio
Don’t wait for them to come to you, go to where they are
How can you leverage influencers? Think about what the benefits are for them to work with you
Create a model that suits experimentation, and allows things to be abandoned when they don’t work. […]

Podnews proprietor James Cridland surveyed some of the new technology being used by radio broadcasters and podcasters in a session today at RadioDays Asia.SpoolerSpooler is a new CMS for publishing audio that gives creators flexibility to edit and re-edit podcasts quickly and easily, making timely updates feasible in a way never possible before. Spoken, text based, instantly updatable content is the key to Spooler’s offering.The technology is built on the creation of individual digital story modules that can be updated and effortlessly packaged together in a way that is seamless and adaptive, resulting in a finished product that sounds as polished as highly-produced podcasts which can take many hours to create and edit.AdoriAdori allow visuals to be added easily to audio podcasts, for publication on Youtube. “Youtube is the second largest search engine on the internet, it has lots of audio, but needs pictures to make it even better.”Cridland expects that YouTube will increase its emphasis on podcasts in the near future. About half of the content on Youtube is audio content. He urged broadcasters to think about adding pictures and text that can be displayed if people are ‘watching’ the audio on YouTube, and gave the example of True Crime Reporter’s podcast as an example of how this can be done.Adori intends to be usable for TikTok and other platforms in time.SquadcastSquadcast is a Zoom-like tool that records at the person’s own end, ensuring that the quality of each speaker is consistently high, rather than the variable quality that is common in Zoom. Once the recording is finished, audio at the guest’s end will automatically be uploaded to teh broadcaster’s studio computer.Veritone VoiceArtificial voice company Veritone Voice uses familiar voices from the station team to deliver other content when they are not there. For example the synthetically generated voices of the breakfast team are used out of hours to deliver overnight weather, and then the voice reminds people that the team will be on air soon, at 6am.Other technologies mentioned include:The syndicated music countdown show 10 most wanted uses a system developed by the host Gav Richards that allows localisation content to be easily added into the syndicated show.RCS cloud based radio stations allow broadcasters to instantly expand their radio station offerings, such as a range of Kids stations offered by one broadcaster to serve its young audience. […]

Founder and Executive Creative Director, Eardrum, Ralph Van Dijk (pictured below), addressed Radiodays Asia, speaking about Love, the emotion that trumps all others, with the most successful brands those that are loved and shared at warp speed.He says consumers want to be engaged, entertained, and inspired, and the fastest way to a consumer’s heart is through their ears, but for too long “radio has been associated with one-night flings. It’s been the medium that shows up for one night, shouts a few things at you, and the advertising disappears after one night.” These ads have often tried too hard and are “…the audio equivalent of the cheap suit and too much cologne.” Ralph says audios lack of pictures gives it a massive advantage and “…advertisers on audio get to be with listeners all day, every day, at home, while they are on the move, in the most intimate and one on one environment.“We need to help our advertisers create long term campaigns that form long term relationships with our listeners. And if we do, those advertisers will come back time after time to radio.” He says barking lists of prices and talking at listeners doesn’t work, “…because 75% of consumers say they make their decisions based on emotions so if you can find a way to connect with your audience emotionally you are more than halfway to converting them into loyal customers.” […]