Wk 5: Sound Lecture

I’m not a fan of the radio, but I listen to it almost every day. Any time I get in my car or go to work, it’s on. This week’s lecture on ‘stories for the radio’ made me consider radio from a different perspective. I learnt that radio is not struggling to maintain its audience like text media is, but rather is flourishing in the modern world. Below is the radio broadcast which expressed that the British would go to war with Germany, it was a dark message and I believe it sounds much more personal coming through radio than it would through a television. 

Since its beginnings, radio has adapted itself to be used in conjunction with social media, through facebook and twitter. It’s also developed podcasts which can be downloaded as an MP3, again furthering their availability to the public. Furthermore, digital radio appears to be moving forward as well, with images, song names and severe weather warnings all being used as part of the radio experience. I found it very interesting that even though radio is the oldest electronic media, it’s still going strong, blending perfectly into today’s society. 

Steve Austin attributed the radio’s success to the fact that people today are ‘time poor’. We don’t have many spare hours in the day to sit and read the paper, or listen to music. For this purpose radio is perfect. It can be used easily in out multitasking lives, slipping into the background as we drive, played in the kitchen when we are cooking or in the car on the way to work. Radio is possibly the easiest way for us to receive news and information. It’s available for free, from your home, mobile phone, workplace and online. It seems to me that the challenge with presenting radio is to keep people tuned in to what you are saying, because most of the time while they are listening to you, people are also doing something else.

Richard Fidler stated that one of the most important things to do as a radio presenter is to make your listeners feel included. You must never forget that you are being listened to by people who may have different views than yourself, or the person you are interviewing. Interviewers who forget this run the risk of making their viewers feel uninvolved in the story. We must also take note of the way we approach the people being interviewed. Prosecutorial interview styles or ‘entrapment radio’ can often prove to be fruitless, both Richard and Steve agreed with this.

It appears people react better to silence than to prodding. Given space, interviewees will often feel more comfortable and are more likely to share their story. However if the conversation starts to go in the wrong direction, it is the interviewer’s job to steer them back. We still must be thinking about what is interesting to the audience, because on the radio, they will hear everything; not just the exciting parts as in television and newspapers.