Participants in the "theme radio" debate

Talk programmes

Tibor Soltenszky, deputy head of the literature and culture department at MR, said that talk radio was not a great success in Hungary. The audience only listened to news and art & culture information and turned off the radio afterwards. This was no doubt due to the fact that in the past radio programmes were politically biased, such as a weekend cultural magazine that broadcast veiled extreme right-wing propaganda. However, rising audience figures for literary and artistic programmes made Tibor Soltenskzky optimistic that this would change.

Young audiences

Beatriz Pécker, RNE, director of Radio 3, believed that it was difficult to satisfy this audience as it was constantly changing. Though 82% of 18–30-year-olds listened to the radio, the majority of this segment listened to music. Confronted with Internet competition for music, pubic radio had to offer more than just the hit parade. Children had to be targeted in order to give them a taste of radio, but unfortunately this was not done in Spain. Radio 3 was neither a theme station nor a vehicle for hit parades, but concentrated on risk-taking, identifying minority styles, cultural information. Every day it also broadcast a concert, for example Lou Reed, or a festival. Respect of the audience is RNE's philosophy.

Marc Garcia, director of Le Mouv' at Radio France, stated that young people were the first to abandon general-interest stations. In order to try and win back the under 35-year-old listeners in 1997 Le Mouv' decided to dedicate 70% of air time to music and the remaining time was given to information presented in a younger format. NRJ, FUN and SKYROCK provide a vast music offer (excluding classical music). In 1999 the format changed: more rock, less French music. Since then, results had improved in particular in the 15–34 age range.

Trends

Heinz Dieter Sommer, director of ARD/HR, felt that market share had levelled out in Germany: radio had lost ground and fallen to third place behind TV and newspaper consumption, and in fourth place for young people who preferred the Internet. The problem in Germany was that public radio was stuck with "traditional categories". For example: even if SWR's four stations had increased its audience share, it was still necessary to think about niche radios: information, classical music, cultural questions, sport, weather, road traffic, lifestyle. New formats had to be considered and an open mind was necessary with regard to conquering new markets in the future.

Local and regional radio

Participants in the "local and regional radio" debate

Anne Sandelin of YLE moderated the debate, which included presentations from Michel Meyer, director of France Bleue, Radio France; Frans Leve, director of VRT; Malte Lind,  director of SR Vastmanland; Fredy Franzoni, strategic projects, RSI; and Juan de la Peña, director of Radio 1 at RNE.

Michel Meyer believed that broadcasters should not give up on general-interest radio stations. He put forward another option for public radio caught between two opposing forces, i.e. the integration of public service, the break up of the private sector: regionalizing radio but keeping it in a network. France Bleue, with its 43 regions, used a regional approach within the framework of national Radio France. 

Michel Meyer described the situation in which radio found itself in as "globcal": global understanding with a regional focus. To achieve this, France Bleue had adopted a cascade structure: local, network, global view of the world while at the same time able to surprise, to be useful and relevant. Its seven audience-point lead proved that this structure was working, and in the near future France Bleue was aiming for a 10-point lead. It was symbolic that the last station to be incorporated into this structure was the Paris station.

Frans Leven of VRT explained that for an audience of 5 million listeners, there were five channels. The five regional stations of Radio 2 offered both local programmes and national windows. Seven times a day, Radio 2 broadcast local information, it also maintained a local profile by having its premises in the area and playing a role in local life. In the future, this will be reinforced by hiring local people to work in radio, the Net, television and later on news programmes, plus creating identifiable jingles that correspond to each individual local stations.

Malte Lind, director of Vastmanland (SR), stated that the concept of formats had to be looked at. Why does a Swede listen to 1 of 26 local radio stations? Despite the long absence of competition, the emergence of new TV channels, the Internet, etc, still had not dented the audience levels for radio. Why? The reason for this was probably that despite an interest in what was happening in the world the listener was still identifying himself in relation to local information.

Fredy Franzoni believed that it was important to define new radio spectrum. In view of transmission problems due to the lie of the land, RSI reminded delegates of the importance of transfrontier radios, sharing the same "local" information (e.g. road traffic), and in view of new radio spectrum, there was also the need to have a reform of the mechanism used to allocate radio frequencies. It was now up to public service radio to use this space.

For Juan de la Peña, director of Radio 1 (RNE), as listeners identify with local radio it is important to pay attention to programming that answers listeners' questions. At the same time local is moving onto satellite and the Internet and programmes can now be heard around the world. In the information age, local radio is faced with more challenges in an increasingly complex world, financial imperatives, and the need to be profitable (is this a trap?). Last but not least, local radio must give listeners a feeling of sense and values.

Participants in the "arts and radio" debate

Culture and radio

Christian Maillard, director of international affairs of Radio France opened the debat "Art and Music on Radio".

Nicholas Kenyon, controller of BBC Proms (for more, click here), live events and TV classical music, asked "What is culture?" The Proms? Wimbledon? There are two examples of re-adaption: over the past 20 years cinema had changed and now showed films in a comfortable, attractive setting, the Proms had also adapted and now added interactivity to its offer thereby giving Internet users the possibility to decided what the programme will be via Radio 3, a Proms which reflected new cultures and which had a wider range of music to appeal to today's audience. Radio had to be flexible and rapidly adapt to new formats in order to give audiences before they know they want it.

Olivier Kaeppelin, deputy director of France Culture, said that culture had changed. Now it represented a plurality of different worlds. Though mainstream art was still present, the way it was broadcast was different as was the appreciating culture. It was important to think about this. Olivier Kaeppelin continued by saying that "zapping" was a cultural phenomenon that was inherent in young people's sense of freedom.  Though art was not often discussed on radio, museums were visited by over 15 million people a year and this was something that could be followed up. Radio had to try to adapt and re-examine its formats. It was important to recognize that culture had to be presented in a format that corresponded to the station and its audience:  how about 10 broadcasts lasting 2 minutes 30 seconds  each.

Fernand Argenta, director of Clasicos Populares at RNE, couldn't really explain the success of the programme but he believed that it depended on "putting your heart and soul into what you do, being sincere and becoming a friend of the family. Nothing has changed over the past 27 years in my programme apart from the music and the audience."

Steve Robinson, vice-president, WFMT (Chicago)

The closing session was the opportunity to hear the North-American point of view from Steve Robinson, vice-president of WFMT (Chicago), who gave an overview of culture in public stations in the United States. Sylvain Lafrance, French radio and new media, and vice-president of Radio Canada, reminded delegates that 98% of Canadians listened to the radio.

Sylvain Lafrance, vice-president Radio Canada

Canadian public radio was different from commercial radio and was based on the values of democracy, cultural diversity and quality. The fight for preserving culture was an every day battle.

Radio is a public forum in a cyber space. Sylvain Lafrance believed that radio had to be a local medium, and not only in geographic terms. It had to accelerate exchanges among different national cultures, who had to learn to live together. Public broadcasters had to create the basis for this new society.