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The BBC is one of Asia's major radio programs which covers the entire region and receives high credibility ratings as an information source. Rev. Norman Winter, a producer of BBC Religious programs, talked about the present problems and the future of radio at the WACC Radio Broadcasters Seminar in Singapore in November 1998.
BBC is run and regulated under the Royal Charter, and her income comes from license fees which are regulated by the British government. Compared to his own radio days of the 1970s and the 1980s, he said, the 1990s in the BBC have become the years of computer technology; digital communications; and a shift to other pre-recorded media, of higher quality, lower cost, and lighter weight. "We are living in a new age of oral tradition, where we no longer do things according to handbooks, but find tools through networking within and beyond our organization," said Winter.
The future of radio will be heavily influenced by current technology. He noted that radio is very dependent on available finances, and so it has been affected by new technology development; computer networking through ISDN has opened up increasing possibilities for the range of contributors to programs, the Internet has opened up new methods of research. But Winter said that even though technology has saved staffing costs, the selection of production materials and systems of music is one area which cannot be done by machine. While digital technology has given us lower cost and higher quality productions, there is one area which it leaves almost untouched: the need for a skillful engineer who can use a microphone to do the actual collection of audio material. This is a labor intensive area and without it we won't have a good product which can be modified to digitized forms.
 Norman Winter (BBC) center shows interested participants a digital editing machine which has the capacity of a small studio inside a powerful portable device. |
He introduced some common computer audio tools used in editing, cutting, and mixing, like ProTools, Sonic Solutions. The technology could then be combined with others: this new trend is called 'convergence', he said. Digital broad-casting of audio, DAB, can deliver text and pictures, and live broadcasts of the web can be turned immediately into archived materials, and automated playout offers a way to reducing staff cost, Winter said.
Broadcasters must maintain a relationship with their audience, so there is a need to know the audience and to build audience loyalty. This could be said in Christian terms as being, "a pastoral rather than a propagandist relationship." In order to build loyalty, they need to have a clear station identity, and to build listener participation through phone, fax, e-mails, public events, and so on. He points out three elements to consider: the listeners' need to find out what they can get, and where to get it, the broadcaster's need to understand the listeners' lifestyle, and their need to know listeners' patterns of to access to the media, not only radio but other media. Since the contents of radio can now be broadcast through the web and digital TV, special attention to other media is also needed.
Whenever we consider technology, Winter noted, there are audiences who won't stay with us after some point. We think that we're providing this new technology for them and that they will tune in, "because it's there." However, we have to realize that information "on-demand," is also needed to provide immediate information to the audience. This has become one of the new challenges to radio producers. He hinted that archiving on the web is one way to solve this question. 
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