Radio Management: Challenges for Digital Convergence
| Autor | Evandro Fontana |
| Páginas | 89-105 |
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The radio12 was the first mass media tool in human history. For over 100 years it has been an important ally in the dissemination of news, entertainment and knowledge. However, the paternity of the radio itself is quite controversial because while the rest of the world credits to the Italian Guglielmo Marconi the first radio transmissions in 1895, the Brazilians revere priest Landell de Moura, born in the State of Rio Grande Do Sul, as the forerunner of wireless sound transmission technology, since he is said to have sent the first radio signals in the year 1893, in experiments conducted in Campinas, Sao Paulo.
In Brazil, the first radio transmission took place in 1922 during the commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Independence of Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro, and it became a landmark of the so-called “Age of Radio”, uniting a continental country, that age lasted until the mid 50s, when broadcasters selected the major artists of the time for the production of radio soap-operas and radio-theater. Throughout history the radio has shifted to the challenges of each period so as to consolidate its popularity and to remain as business.
Then, in the 50s, when the television was introduced in Brazil, in addition to taking significant portion of the audience, the TV also stole the main radio stars to its programs; they suddenly had a face - beyond a voice to communicate with the public. It was only in the 70s that radios emerged in the “FM” - Frequency Modulation, with better sound quality and use of stereo sound, previously not available for broadcast with the “AM” - Amplitude Modulation - frequency. But the “AM” radios with lower audio quality continued to exist and were forced to seek new ways. Since then, broadcasters began to be recognized by their different content and formats offered: the “AMs” became radio-news broadcasters while the “FMs” favored music.
Today, there is no such distinction. In the two frequencies there are news and music and/or, in some cases, for both frequencies there is only news or only music. Each of them searches their public, in a process of market segmentation. However, the technological advancement, currently under way in the world, places the radio at a time of great concern and expectation. The competition for the search of public, previously limited to television, is now disseminated to other “media” such as internet and cell phones, which also feature platforms for dissemination of content. Media is a Latin word that stands for ‘means’ in Portuguese, it was borrowed from English to describe the whole group of means of communication that there are.
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In Brazil, the radio still transmits its audio analogically, i.e. through a continuous electrical signal as a wave. On the other hand, the digital system sends data with binary pulses, similar to the way in which data travel among computers. But the digitalization of audio and its distribution via unimaginable channels jeopardizes the future of radio. After all, will an equipment, where all sounds, texts and images converge to, be known as radio? For Costa, the digital revolution comes in waves:
The so-called digital revolution, like all technological revolution, is coming in waves. The first wave has changed the way people communicate. The next wave must link the computer to intelligent, fast, reliable and inexpensive peripherals. Then we will see an enormous transformation of products and services, which will move into the digital format, from books and movies to collection papers delivery systems. (COSTA, 2003, p.384)
Given the great technological challenge of introducing the radio to a new digitalized multimedia reality and the more and more unpredictable behaviors in relation to consumption of communication means, this article aims to analyze what different scholars reckon on the subject matter, confronting them with the need to make the “radio business” executable in the face of this imposing new reality: the digitalization. What is the role of radio managers before this new reality in search of uncertain future scenarios to place the radio at current times? A reality that calls for the convergence of content to the same physical unit, where the television, the radio, the newspaper, the cell phone and other media - we do not even know yet, will be united.
The world has never experienced so many technological innovations as it has been in the past 20 years. Long before the new and attractive gadgets as the podcasting - a junction of the iPod, a digital files player, with the broadcasting, radio and television transmission - what draws one’s attention, first of all, are the new demeanors of society, especially among the young. They easily discard old habits as if they had never existed. The youth Worlds Dossier, a research done by the Brazilian MTV channel, in 1999, with youngsters from classes A, B and C, aged between 12 and 30, in the major Brazilian cities caught a good glimpse on the profile of the new millennium youth. More tolerant and open-minded to new ideas, independent and individualistic, a clear contrast with the values of last century’s generation: tradition, prejudice and a collective vision of world (youth Worlds Dossier - ‘DOSSIÊ UNIVERSO JOVEM’, 1999, p. 27).
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A new family model emerges then, in which teenagers leave the coziness of their living room and the company of their parents and siblings in order to pursue their individuality, usually in the bedroom where they get in a new world. It is in their bedrooms that the youngsters enjoy the virtual communion with friends, where they listen to the music they like and where they advance the furthest territories, formerly only allowed through dreams.
The so-called “virtual reality” is more and more common and we can define it as an advanced technology for interconnection between a user and a computer system, recreating the sense of reality to the full. According to the youth Worlds Dossier, changes in social behavior and habits of consumption of young people are directly related to a new family concept:
Although a majority, the traditional family (father, mother and children) houses only 59% of the sample, that leaves 41% of the interviewed living under other patterns of family structure: only with the mother, only with the father, with other relatives, in recomposed families, living alone or with friends (...) about three out of ten of the interviewed have separated parents. The youth live in a time of growing psychosocial adaptation to new forms of family organization. The family roles often intertwine and go astray. And the youth of today is trying to restructure and to adjust themselves in face of the parameters, which often walk away from the standard family (youth Worlds Dossier ‘DOSSIê UNIVERSO JOVEM, 1999, p. 27).
In this new behavioral scenario, one finds the communication means, previously defined as mass media and in a recent past redirected to an increasingly funneled segmentation. If the radio, until the advent of television, was the object around which the family got together to receive information and to have fun, it has been time since it is no longer so. Not even the television fulfils that role today. Radio became a more individual than collective means of consumption.
The emergence of personal computers and especially the World Wide Web has radically changed the new generations’ mental and physical attitude in their social relations in the last decade. The young of today seek contact with his colleagues and friends via the internet with the use of sites like Orkut, Messenger or blogs. It is also more and more common to exchange instant messages by cell phones known as WAP, Bluetooth or SMS. And from these mechanisms, young people also start to produce content and not simply consume it. They have transformed personal photos, electronic diaries, texts, home movies and music into raw material to be shared with all their peers. The doctorate in communication and journalism Cosette Castro broadens this picture:
Currently, one of the most researched areas in the communication field throughout the world, is exactly the scope of reception related to the use and to the annexation of differentPage 93 technological media (television, radio, internet, cross-media games, computers, and more recently, cell phones) by the audiences, since researchers have taken into consideration that the interpretation, recognition and production of meaning (understanding) by the group of reception (audience) work with - at least - independence of the proposals developed in the case of production (CASTRO, 2005, p. 110).
In face of this reality of an increasingly individualized communication, the digital networks era emerges. For Ramonet, it is an era when the cultural industries meet, namely those industries producing creations using the three major symbolic systems known: sounds, images and letters, and digital networks yield the multiplication of production, distribution and terms of consumption of cultural products (RAMONET apud ALBORNOZ, 2003, p. 55).
For Albornoz, however, it is an erroneous vision to replace analogical products and cultural media with new digital products, services and media (ALBORNOZ, 2003, p.57). For him, it is nothing but fear the idea that digital media might eliminate their analogical counterparts. A vision that is shared by Ferrari:
At the end of the 90s I believed that the information available on the World Wide Web, on the internet, could topple the television audience and the circulation of newspapers, modifying...
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