“Building on success – Enhancing the live radio experience”, is the theme of this year’s two-part New Radio Day hosted by RTVE in Madrid on 13-14 October.

The chair of the EBU’s New Radio Group JP Coakley, Director of Operations for RTE in Ireland, welcomed 50 delegates from 16 EBU Members by saying “live radio, our core product, remains stubbornly popular.”

“Our purpose here is how do we enrich the listener’s experience,” he added.

David Fernandez Quijada, from the EBU’s Media Intelligence Service, highlighted the continued success of live radio with research that showed 85% of Europeans listen to the radio every day for an average of 2 hours and 29 minutes. He compared the figures to that of podcast listening. In the USA 13% of listeners hear a podcast daily – in the UK the figure is less than half. “Podcasts are growing as a complement of linear radio, but as a share of listening time daily, in the UK for instance, it’s still only 2%,” he said.

EBU Head of Radio Graham Dixon told delegates that when it comes to radio “we absolutely have to get it right because we are playing with people’s lives, their access to information, but also to accompany a sense of belonging in society.”

Christophe Pasquier, Euroradio’s Senior Sports Producer, then highlighted “radio surfing on a digital wave” by using social media to add value to radio sports coverage; including Swedish Radio’s audio catch-up of overnight events at the Rio Olympics on Instagram and the BBC’s 20 second football match round-up on Twitter.

Delegates were also shown Storyboard, viewable above, which allows radio sports rights holders to work with audio and pictures to create a new experience of live sporting events and UEFA Livex radio – an online service which guarantees fast delivery audio content.

Producers from EBU Member radio stations showcased their examples of how they are not merely “on” social media but bringing together the online community and live listeners for new experiences. Radio Bremen’s Bremen NEXT and BR PULS showed examples of programmes that are being streamed live on Facebook. Franceinfo is a joint radio and TV news channel which has had 1.3 million visits per day since its launch in September this year.

Swedish Radio demonstrated new software allowing a tablet or PC to become a fully functioning radio studio allowing broadcasting from anywhere while Radio France discussed how they are using their sound expertise to work with car manufacturers offering solutions to in-car audio that ensures traditional stations remain on the dashboard and aren’t bumped off by apps such as Spotify.

The day’s keynote came from Naja Nielsen, Deputy Head of News at Danish Radio and a visiting scholar at Stanford University. She told New Radio Day that in a fast moving digital age public service media needs to use technology to underline its role in society.

“We should not work at getting people to spend all their time with us but if they spend 15 minutes with us and that helps democracy we have served a purpose,” she said.

Highlights from her speech can be found below via the EBU’s Storyboard tool.

The second part of New Radio Day 2016 will focus on reaching younger audiences and new video formats on social media.