Comments on: Commercial Radio to Join iPlayer?

By: Terry Purvis

Terry Purvis — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 08:54:16 +0000

Now THAT’S visual radio!
The fact that radio does not require pictures is its greatest strength. What this says turns it into something it is not which also destroys it as a medium. Radio is the most powerful medium of the Internet, but radio people seem not to understand why that is – so a clue here, there is no visual element required.

By: DABMan

DABMan — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 21:23:38 +0000

Matt – perceptive points about the BBC hijacking commercial listening portals. So commercial radio ought to hijack back with DAB visual radio.
When “Profile 2″ receivers with slideshow start to appear, just make sure you can control screen real estate even when listeners have tuned to BBC R4. Imagine showing S&P slides during Woman’s Hour, or at 8:10 after the Today programme’s news bulletin and just before the boring political interview, show a slide of the music now playing on Classic FM. All possible with RadioDNS…..
Now THAT’S visual radio!

By: Terry Purvis

Terry Purvis — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 08:02:51 +0000

Consumers love on-demand listening, it suits them, and is absolutely something all radio stations should do

Not so for music stations, a small issue of music royalty payments gets in the ways for On-Demand use. The popular BBC radio downloads are usually speech based. It doesn’t mean other stations, who don’t produce speech programming should now do something similar.

I might want to listen to the Archers outside of the schedule – it is a one off event, but we, the consumer, generally love to listen to the radio by simply switching it on. It is a station we choose to listen to, not a show, and at a time that suits us. It is up to the station to provide programming (content) suitable for the time.

As music radio programming (content) is entirely based around the time of day, why would I download anything from the morning, say, and listen to it in the evening, a time is wasn’t designed for?

And the general trend is moving away from Do-It-Myself to Do-It-For-Me as far as the Web and Internet is concerned. Anyway, live listening is On-Demand, if you think about it.

Listening to radio on the Internet is only going to get more popular, even though the commercial industry side denies it is at all, doesn’t really want it or can afford it.

The problem is that commercial radio does not understand the reality of the Internet, and how to monetize streaming based on that reality, hence the attitude of focusing on the website, not the stream.

The answer is to get the stream to earn money. That will take more innovative thinking than sticking up a download link for the daily “highlights” of the “John and Jeff breakfast show”.