Gregory Ferrell Lowe

Debates of Thursday 8 May

The previous afternoon, the discussions on "Generalist Radio Tomorrow: Formats and Contents"  were led by Alfonso Sanchez, director of programmes at RNE, with presentations from François Desnoyers, deputy general manager of Radio France; Gregory Ferre Lowe, director of programme development at YLE; Dragos Seleanu, president and director-general of ROR; and Sergio Valzania, director of Radio2 and Radio3 at RAI.

François Desnoyers stated that at present the French market was relatively well balanced even though generalist radio stations had lost some ground to music stations. Admittedly, generalist radio stations had not had much faith in FM initially but nevertheless they were doing well: in 2002, Mediamètrie's figures revealed that 61% of listeners turned to music and 56% to news/information. However, generalist radio stations needed to find a new pitch and attract a younger audience.

In France, he continued, both private and public generalist radio stations need to change approach, they must be proactive and not let their audiences be eroded by music stations. Radio France managed this by having specific brands, for example France Inter and France Bleue.

For Gregory Ferrell Lowe, director of programme development at YLE, today's world is visual, competitive, individualistic: young people make their own programmes. Confronted with this, is it necessary to be creative? Should we continue with what exists today? Is that enough? He believed that generalist radio stations must be revitalized for a new audience and provide content that covers its public service remit in the widest possible sense.

Dragos Seleanu explained that in Romania radio represented a source of information within  a specific social and political context. The director-general of ROR went on to say that the role of public service radio was to give listeners a sense and feeling of national identity in a global world, and to uphold common values.

Sergio Valzania, director of Radio2 & Radio3 at RAI, asked whether public radio would be able to fulfil the expectations of the audience. Though information was important, radio was not all about providing information: new, targeted formats must be found. Aiming for excellence and being better than the competitors were ways for generalist radio stations overcome their problems. It was no longer possible for the monopolies of the past to save public broadcasters.

A panel made up exclusively of women for the debate: "What are the opportunities open to generalist radio stations?"

Thursday's debates ended on the subject "What are the opportunities open to generalist radio stations?" Participants included Daniela Recine, deputy director of programmes at RAI 3; Irina Gerasimova, president of Mayak; Isabelle Binggeli, director of programmes, SSR; and Neva Zajc, RTVSLO, director of the regional centre of Koper-Capodistra.

With a 40% audience share, Isabelle Binggeli, director of programmes at the SSR, was optimistic about the fate of generalist radio stations. However, she did ask whether "generalist radio stations were not overly concerned with facts and not enough with general tendencies". In her opinion, listeners want radio to offer more analysis and to be bolder. Radio has to meet these demands.

Irina Gerasimova, president of Mayek, reminded delegates that Russian radio had existed for 40 years: it had gone through an era of Soviet monopoly to a rude awakening in an age of competition from 2,000 Russian radio stations. In order to retain its leading audience share it was necessary to improve Mayak's radio content in order to keep its current older listeners while at the same time attracting a younger generation by focusing on live radio and interactivity. This would allow the audience to know the content of the programme but at the same time there would be elements of surprise.

Neva Zajc, director of the regional centre of Koper-Capidostra, which broadcasts in Italian and Slovenian, said that the radio station was doing well and that she believed that there was room for all types of content. However, it was difficult to increase the number of theme radio stations in Slovenia because the population was too small for further fragmentation. In the future multimedia was likely to saturate citizens with information in the small amount of time they spent listening to the radio.  The notion of "global" was important but the listener must be able to position himself in this new world. Can radio help?