A palavra (em directo e ao vivo) na rádio sairá ainda mais valorizada?

«The shared experience of live radio (social listening at breakfast time, large sporting events and so on) should secure a place for broadcast radio in the digital future. However, in the future live broadcasters will need to become more interactive, more drawn to speech-driven or excitement-driven formats, offering content not available on other platforms. (...) Whilst live broadcasting could remain central for some listeners they will also have continual opportunities to catch up with missed features via delivered audio content. In the future there will still be a role for (live) broadcast radio but as a medium it needs to consolidate and rediscover its strengths and its ‘liveness’. On a professional level, producers will deploy ‘Long Tail’ principles and offer ‘sidechannels’ (specialized audio downloads) to cater for spin-off niches. More non-broadcast businesses will use audio on the new platform to connect with their customers, whether they are students or airline passengers. The ability of grassroots Podcasters to compete on a level playing field with big business is refreshing and means that more than ever it is content that is important rather than brand, heritage or frequency position. That’s the lesson, the revolution the radio industry needs to take away from Podcasting. The iPod has not killed the radio star (yet) but radio may require some retuning» (Berry, 159)

Será através da rádio de palavra que melhor se concretizará a necessidade de auto-actualização, enunciada por Maslow [Maslow, A.H. (1970).  Motivation and Personality(2nd ed.).  New York: Harper and Row]: «The desire to learn is one of the central elements in Maslow’s final level of basic human need.  Acquisition of knowledge for knowledge sake meets the criteria for self-actualization.  It is here that radio continues to excel.  The plethora of radio formats in today’s media environment provides listeners with a variety of information options, from stations that provide; all news, all sport, all weather, current affairs, feature programs, a wide variety of talk-based elements and everything in between.  This variety is coupled with radio’s innate advantages of accessibility, immediacy and localism (when satisfying) to provide profuse opportunities for listeners to access whatever information deemed desirable.  The continued high listenership to talk-based formats suggests this need is being met at a number of different levels» (Radio Listening as a Function of Basic Human Need: Why Did Maslow Listen To Radio? By Morris W. Shanahan1 , New Zealand Broadcasting School, and Nicholas Brown, The Radio Network, New Zealand , 2002)