How can radio broadcasters discover more about their listeners and provide more targeted content? That's question on the minds of more than 50 professionals from 20 Active and Associate EBU Members who have gathered in Riga, Latvia for the 3^rd annual New Radio Day. This year’s event, hosted by Latvijas Radio, is focussing on “personalised radio”. The first day’s discussions explored niche services and the challenges presented by finding out more about listener preferences.

Firstly, the delegates heard that radio was in good health. David Fernandez-Quijada, Senior Media Analyst at the EBU’s Media Intelligence Service, presented statistics which show that in 2014 84% of Europeans listened to radio every week - that’s 420 million people. On average they listened for 2.42 hours a day. He said traditional audience measuring tools, like diaries and telephone interviews, however don’t provide much information on the listeners themselves. Anne Catherine Berg, Senior Legal Advisor at the EBU, highlighted that gathering detailed information can be problematic with regards to local and EU laws on the use of personal data. “Meet with listeners”, she said. “Reassure them that you will respect their privacy.”

Kristian Tolonen Head of Audience Research at NRK then explored his country's switch over to DAB. Norway will be the first country to exclusively broadcast on digital radio from 2017 onwards. The changeover is going well he said: “55 percent of radio listeners are tuning in digitally every day including on internet devices.” He went on to explain that digital radio offers the chance for more targeted stations. “Traditionally in Norway 48 percent of radio listeners are women – now we have stations where that figure is much higher,” he explained. “To quote Winston Churchill, ‘this is not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning’.”

“If we want our listeners to listen more, we can only achieve that by personalising interactions with them,” argued Pierre Nicolas Schwab, CRM Manager for French Belgian Member RTBF. “We want them to open their minds and to bring them new and richer content,” he continued before explaining how RTBF is capturing and analysing data about audiences via big TV shows like The Voice and using the broadcaster’s Sports Facebook page with 66,000 followers. “It’s important to us to know more than just the age and gender of our listeners now. We want to know what they like, what interests them, so we can promote existing or new content to them,” he concluded.

Three case studies of ‘personalised radio’ were presented by Christian Schalt, a German radio consultant who has worked in the commercial sector.

REGIOCAST is an app that offers an experience that goes beyond radio. The idea behind it is that it accompanies the listener through their day. A personal alarm clock can wake them up with the voice of their favourite DJ. It can even go off early if there’s heavy traffic on the roads. At night, delegates were told, the favourite sound most users want to go to sleep to is that of a crackling fire.

#Radioselfie, from Radio 1 Norway, enables listeners to record a message telling others how they are feeling that morning and allows them to select a matching song from the station’s playlist, upload it online and then hear it on air and on Facebook. Finally, ‘Enter Zagreb’, a new youth station in the Croatian capital, has even set up its own nightclub to allow it to get closer to its listeners.  

Peter Fohrwikl, from German EBU Member Bayerischer Rundfunk, presented 'BR Heimat' (BR Homeland) where he said “tradition meets hipsterness”. The digital radio station plays only Bavarian folk music, once considered kitsch, and has proved hugely popular with older and younger listeners. “Look into your history,” he told the attendees. “You can take something that has worked on the radio for so many years and in the digital age you can make it bigger with low costs and very few editorial staff. You can offer something new to special interest and hard-core fans of different genres in every country.”

The day concluded with a presentation by Karel Zyka, Technical Director at Czech Radio. He told New Radio Day that the Czech Republic is a “huge digital tiger” before showcasing 6 new digital channels catering for niche audiences including children, jazz fans and young audiences:

“D-dur is our classical music station and is very affordable. It has only one full time employee. All other staff is shared with other channels. We use our very rich archive and benefit a lot from the live concerts shared by the EBU,” he said.

The second part of New Radio Day 2015 will look at other innovations including new app NPR One from the USA and how ‘personalised radio’ goes ‘beyond the music’.