Stay Tuned! Design recommendation for broadcast radio innovation.

What is it about?

Broadcast radio, also referred to as linear radio, is a popular medium with a long history and a rich tradition. Over the years however, broadcast radio started witnessing competition from many types of technological innovations. Most recently, Social Media in general and music streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music in particular are battling broadcast radio for listeners' ears and attention. Compared to broadcast radio, music streaming services afford people additional choice and control over their listening experience. Interestingly, this seems to have only a relatively modest impact on the popularity of broadcast radio among media consumers. For example, European statistics indicate that, in recent years, radio's reach has remained rather stable, yet that the quantity of actual radio listening time is somewhat decreasing. This observation brings forward the following research question: does radio need to innovate or even reinvent itself in order to stay relevant in the contemporary media landscape? To address this research question (and hence to demystify listeners' wishes with respect to broadcast radio innovation), we report on the results of a three-stage methodology spanning an ideation workshop with radio experts, an exploratory survey and a mixed methods empirical evaluation. The empirical evaluation uses two concrete concepts (i.e., letting listeners on-the-fly replace radio content with preferred content and fostering participatory radio production by involving listeners as radio content curators) as a lens to zoom in on the questionable desirability of radio innovation. It is learned that a significant consumer group exists who will stay loyal to broadcast radio even if it does not evolve substantially, whereas others need disruptive incentives to start listening to radio (again). This finding causes us to conclude that radio must not blindly pursue innovation (e.g., by copying over music streaming features). Instead, radio must keep playing to its core strengths so as to keep its traditional consumers satisfied, and must combine this with targeted innovations that either cater to traditional consumers or try to (re-)attract radio-critical consumers to the medium.

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Photo by Eric Nopanen on Unsplash

Photo by Eric Nopanen on Unsplash

Why is it important?

From our results, we distill five concrete design recommendations to educate the radio production community about how best to approach radio innovation and, thus, how best to move the medium forward. By balancing these five recommendations, it should be feasible to make radio more attractive for consumers who think radio in its present form is too old-fashioned, without hereby making radio lose its charm for its loyal user base. Intricate yet optional personalization opportunities seem especially important to the future of radio, as they hold the power to bridge the gap between both these user groups.