Definir um novo meio chamado rádio

«If we take the classic definitions of radio, as laid out in key texts like Crisell’s Understanding Radio (1986), then we can classify lots of Podcasts as ‘radio’. Yet in some ways to identify Podcasts as ‘radio’ might be ignoring some of the qualities of each medium and perhaps terms like ‘radiogenic’ or ‘radioesque’ are more useful. Black (2001) contributes to this in his discussion of radio streaming on the internet and the debate over what it should be called, asserting that: Listeners have a lot to do with it. A medium’s identity stems in part from how it is received and treated by its users. Listeners may of course be nudged in this or that direction by the industry. But if, for whatever reason, Internet audio is treated as if it were radio, then to some irreducible extent it is radio. (Black, 2001: 398)» (...) If broadcast radio is a ‘push’ medium and internet radio is a ‘pull’ medium, then that raises an interesting debate as to how Podcasting is defined, given that it lies somewhere in between. Whilst the listener selects the content they want to subscribe to, the content arrives by a ‘pushed’ mechanism and the user ultimately decides when it is played (‘pull’). Podcasts are therefore defined as content with the lazy benefits of push media but with all personalization features of pull media. This makes Podcasting ‘personalized media’ or, as BBC ‘In Business’ presenter Peter Day would have it, ‘Radio-Me’, meaning a medium that is more accessible than web radio and more in tune with the needs of some audiences than broadcast services (Day, 2005). Like a lot of radio, Podcasts are consumed alone and, like radio, they tend to be linear in their nature in that the content is heard as though it were live but with the added convenience of being able to pause or rewind if desired. It is this feature that led many industry observers to call it ‘TiVo for Radio’ (Day, 2005).» (Berry, 155-156)

«Podcast pioneers Curry and Winer disagree about what Podcasting will do to radio. Curry feels its effect will be profound whilst Winer is more sceptical, arguing in his weblog: It’ll become radio and vice versa. Airwaves are just another method of distribution . . . What will change is who’s talking and who’s listening. Now the conversation will flow in all directions, with broadcasters listening to people they used to think of as ‘audience’. Blogs changed the architecture of written-word-journalism in the same way. (Winer, 2004)» (Berry, 158)