Innovate
Jonathan Marks, Director Critical Distance BV, The Netherlands;former creative director, Radio Netherlands 

Emulating the BBC?

On the European continent, Britain is seen as a leader in many broad-casting fields, especially in innovation surrounding digital applications for the web, electronic programme guides and terrestrial digital TV. European politicians believe that other public broadcasters should try and emulate the BBC, a strategy based on fact that the BBC has a number of popular national TV networks, five national radio networks and that programme sales go a long way to supplement the licence fee. 

The reality is that no country in Europe could afford to copy the BBC. It is the ‘exception to the rule’ and has funding levels which most broadcasters in Europe can only dream of. 

If you look at a recent EBU Radio survey, it would appear that the middle of the broadcaster market is disappearing. Organizations either become national or global players, or have to make the difficult choice to specialize in certain areas or vaporise. However, creative ideas are not confined to the global players. The Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation, for example, has realized its pivotal role in turning round satellite signals from the US, Europe and Asia. All three regions can be ‘seen’ by satellite dishes on this strategically important island in the Mediterranean. This new activity provides technical spin-offs to other parts of the domestic broadcast chain.

At Radio Netherlands, there have been many successful concepts: in-house there has been the early experiments with DRM, the system that makes AM radio sound like FM while retaining the huge coverage advantages of long-, medium- and short-wave; other concepts were created in the field along with one of our 6,000 broadcast partners around the globe.

There have been a lot of great projects, but we have also made a lot of mistakes.

So, how do you choose the good idea?

Never let the Internet cloud what you do. 

The radio industry has become cluttered with new jargon. Terms like content syndication, post-production encoding, digital rights management have crept in. Personally, I avoid anyone who describes his or her organization as a ‘content factory’.
 
Most people consume only a fraction of the output that broadcasters produce. Listeners are selective, and loyal only when involved. Radio continues to grow in popularity in Europe because the passion behind a good programme radiates through the airwaves. 

It is in trouble in the United States precisely because syndication has made every market sound the same. 

I don’t trust a faceless radio pro-duction produced in any ‘corporate content factory’.

As managers in a public service organization, we must always explain our mission to ‘stake-holders’. And the interest from those stake-holders is limited. We have dropped the mysterious jargon because it confuses rather than impresses. We have simply explained that we’re in the business of sharing stories. We do not shout the way we did in 1947 when reception was bad and competition was scarce. A broadcaster today must maintain listeners’ trust, by sharing the information in a format that draws them in, not shuts them out.

Stick to your cross-platform strategy.

There is no future for radio, TV, telephony or the web if they are kept separate from one another. The biggest successes in cross-media production have been when radio has signposted additional original content on the web, and the web has offered relevant ‘on-demand’ audio. 

Anything technically driven in creatively crippled.

Radio is slowly recovering from two major stumbling blocks in its development.

The tuning dial. Broadcasters spend millions of euros making exciting content and then hide it behind the worst human interface ever developed. People remember good programmes by their name, not the frequency they was broadcast on. Network loyalty will be put to a severe test when an electronic programme guide appears on the radio in the same way it is starting to appear on broadcasters’ web-sites. 

Radio marketers will tell you that most people only listen to ‘1.5 stations’ and therefore are extremely loyal.

This is rubbish. The truth is that most listeners are simply afraid of venturing down the tuning dial and not being able to find their current favourite ever again. Have you ever found a new station because of a number you saw on a billboard advert by the side of the highway? Of course not! The second radio revolution will come with the arrival of an electronic programme guide built into the radio. I believe this may be the killer-application for DAB radio.

The second legacy is the fact that radio was started by engineers experimen-ting with a new form of distribution. Anything that is technology-driven is creatively crippled. Once the magic wears off, people ask what’s the use of the new invention. Systems that are content-driven may be technology-dependent. But providing this is relevant technology, they have a good chance of succeeding.

Don’t expect miracles from a content management system. 

Many stations are radically changing their workflow. In effect, their digital production system is putting the ‘archives’ second in the chain, rather than the traditional dumping place after transmission. 

We don’t need to keep everything that is broadcast, only the elements that were produced to make a specific point or record an event. The stations that really make the effort to pick the best for preservation will be able to profit from the ‘cultural curator’ label. Clearly it is a job for public service broadcasters. Without a means to compare the past with the present, there is no informed debate, and there is no democracy without informed debate.

Public broadcasters who want to re-use content for ‘on demand’ use have to spend time and effort cataloguing the content. Some, like the BBC, have built an excellent ‘radio player’, which is a combination of an audio web browser and archives. At Radio Netherlands a variant on this was developed which allowed the automated distribution of content to partners over the web or via satellite.

Yes, it costs money. But many public broadcasters in southern Europe realize that their sound archives are an essential part of their cultural heritage.

Audio production systems for radio are evolving gradually. 

The global market for networked audio production systems is actually quite small. Since the dot.com crash investment in this sector has been small. A lot of the features that vendors promised in 1999 are only rolling out now in a ‘stable’ form that makes sense to put on line.

We have reached the stage where hard disk recording is a better solution to tape. But if you’re planning any digital production system, sit down with the journalists and work through every stage of programme making, from the field right down to the moment the programme hits the antenna mast. If you are going to preserve any of the output for future use, then work out the simplest method of finding that valuable content a year from now. If you don’t, you won’t.

Add e-motion to your website. 

Many public broadcasters still make fantastic radio and terrible websites. All the emotion in their on-air presence is filtered out before it gets to the web. Radio programmes that mention their website as an afterthought are radiating the fact that their web presence is an afterthought. If that is the case, then don’t bother building it. 

Websites that encourage debate and involve the user are a business card to the world. An easy-to-navigate site is an excellent partner to a good radio programme. 

A website is never a replacement for a broadcast. 

Recent webcasts of major events (such as the BBC’s webcast of the toppling of the statute of Saddam Hussein or the EBU Eurovision Song Content 2003) were viewed SIMUL-TANEOUSLY by 40,000 and 25,000 people respectively.

These figures are only a fraction of the traditional radio and TV audience. Although the web is not scalable like a broadcast medium, it can add an extra dimension to a radio pro-gramme. Offering content, such as a live chat with a guest after the radio broadcast, is very successful and yields excellent material for a follow-up transmission.

In short, few broadcasters are multimedia in 2003. They may operate on several platforms such as web and radio but the production software has not yet integrated well enough to allow ‘drag and drop’ of content from one medium to another.

Most systems are ‘cut and paste’ at best, and that means a lot of production time is wasted just converting programme content from one medium to another, leaving very little if any time for adaptation. Integrated production systems are getting there slowly, but only at stations that have properly streamlined their workflow. A broad-caster must know how to make a radio programme combined with a website otherwise any software company will invent their own solution.

Watch the phone companies.

UMTS (3rd generation phones) have not taken off in Europe as yet. Some doubt that they ever will. Others think that the proliferation of wireless broadband internet (Wi-Fi) may make UMTS obsolete.

Telephone companies have managed to sign-up more than 600 million mobile customers worldwide, whereas the global count for DAB radio sets is currently under 600,000. So trials in the UK and Germany of downloadable music services via the mobile phone are something to watch.

Are consumers really willing to pay for this kind of content?

How can we find a device that marries the excellent ‘briefing’ capability of subscription services via the phone with the superior ‘surprise me’ service provided by radio. Some top-of-the-range phones already offer a built-in FM radio. According to the UK’s Radio Advertising Bureau, 1.2 million adults in the UK now listen to the radio via their mobile phones, nearly three times as many as in May 2002. In the 15-24 age group, 27.9% listen this way.

The new style DAB radios in the UK that have been on the market since September 2003 are promising, providing the industry can deliver sufficient quantities. Some supermarket chains are starting to stock DAB radios which is a positive sign.

Keep testing the website.

Many broadcaster websites urgently need revising. They have grown like a weed in the garden of ideas and some severe pruning is needed or ordinary users will never find their way through the jungle of content.

It is much better to have 100 pages of useful, topical content that is refreshed regularly, than 10,000 pages of unsorted trash. Keep testing the site with ‘real users’ - not staff. If good content is more than two clicks away from the home page, chances are it won’t be discovered. Websites should be accessible by the visually impaired. Browsers for the blind do exist, but they rely on broadcasters taking the time to label content properly, describing photos properly. 

And finally . . .

Last but never least, remember the three Ts - training, training, training! Broadcast technology is moving so fast that we’ve entered the era of lifetime training. That applies to the trainers as well.

If trainers haven’t made a web page or a radio programme in the last two years, then chances are they are not following trends and have a hard time sharing contemporary ideas.

Some aspects of radio don’t change - such as how to formulate a good interview. But the way of processing information in the digital menu-driven world is a universe away!