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| Celebrating 100 Years of Radio |
| A note from the RadioAsia 2006 conference in Singapore |
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Lily Yulianti (myfawwaz)  |
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Published 2006-06-23 16:51 (KST) |
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Radio is entering the new era as we celebrate 100 years of radio broadcast this year. On Christmas' eve in 1906, Canadian inventor Reginald Fessenden made the world's first radio broadcast, where wireless operators in several ships in the Atlantic picked up an unusual program transmitted over their radio sets. It was a recording of Handel's "Largo" and Fessenden's own performance on his violin.
Today, radio industries quickly set up new strategies as audio technology such as podcasting and digital radio gain huge popularity. Radio stations in developing countries are competing to apply those new audio technologies and offering innovative programs. However, community radio stations in these countries are struggling to expand their roles in isolated areas, using very limited infrastructures.
In big cities such as New York, London, Tokyo or Singapore, people with earphones and slim gadgets such as an iPod or mobile phone, commute while listening to their favorite songs or radio programs. Audio information and entertainment have become more sophisticated: download and listen to it whenever you want. Listeners are in control. Meanwhile, in isolated areas in Nepal and Africa, volunteers who work for community radio stations need to cross rivers and mountains to install their radio sets for villagers. Radio is about real-time information and entertainment, that is what urban communities say. Radio is about promoting democracy and good governance, that is the voice of villagers in Nepal.
Speaking at the RadioAsia 2006 conference in Singapore (June 20-23), Joan Warner, CEO of Commercial Radio Australia said that radio audience is sharply increasing thanks to podcasting. Austereo, in Australia, reports 5,000 downloads per month. As young generations turn their attention to radio programs, radio industries are in a rush to set up new strategies in order to attract more listeners and of course to gain more profits.
Warner sees that radio people have no choice but to look forward to the new era of radio. Listeners are now feeling much closer to radio as they can freely download their favorite programs and listen to them whenever they like.
"Let's take the World Cup as an example," Warner said. "This is the first digital World Cup we have ever had, where news and other information about the games are easily accessed everywhere in real time. There are four million World Cup related Web sites all over the world, thousands of World Cup related podcasting services. Now we are looking forward for innovative programs to attract people's attention, because the technology is highly developed and the form of media is interrelated one to each other."
Of course, talking about radio in today's world we need to consider the transformation of the medium itself. We now have become familiar with internet radio and podcasting, and we have heard about the ongoing development of visual radio. Singapore is one of the developed countries that focus on visual radio. According to Lim Chin Siang, director of IT at Singapore's Media Development Authority, the country launched the first visual radio in the Asia-Pacific region in December 2005, and is now planning to expand the technology.
Visual radio is an integrated mobile application that redefines the traditional FM radio experience by synchronizing images and text with the radio broadcast to deliver information and interactivity directly to the target audience.
There is no doubt that the latest audio technologies such as DAB (digital audio broadcasting), visual radio and podcasting, bring new hope for radio industries in developed world. Despite this, issues of poor infrastructures, licensing and limited human resources remain as serious problems for radio developments in developing countries. We see different situations in African and South Asian countries.
Jocelyne Josiah, advisor in Communication and Information Asia, UNESCO, India explained that community radio in isolated areas is used to deliver basic information for people. In Africa, the HIV/AIDS prevention program has mainly reached villagers through radio. In Nepal, local teachers use radio to broadcast a school's distance learning program.
"People in isolated areas in India explained in an interview saying that from radio they learned that politicians should not bribe people to vote for them in the election," said Josiah. "So, when the election took place, we found a female villager expressing her voice about the fair election and she thanked the radio program she listened to. Indeed, for developing and poor countries, we do not talk much about advanced audio technology and how we should take part in it, but we focus to encourage more and more people to simply express their opinion, telling their stories through radio."
It is true that whenever it comes to high technology -- radio is just an example -- we need to realize that there are still many people out there not included in the big wave of the technology revolution.
An African fellow, who just recently purchased an analog short wave/AM radio on a recent trip to Tokyo, said it was the most essential tool for him:
"Don't tell me about high technology, broadband internet or digital radio. In my country, I just need a small radio and batteries. No phone lines, no sufficient electricity."
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©2006 OhmyNews
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