A rádio (DAB) deve preocupar-se com a tv móvel

Se o standard escolhido para a tv portátil for o DVB-H (da Nokia) isso será mau para quem tem DAB. Por causa da falta de convergência. «For a radio broadcaster, DVB-H is bad news: because it’s not backwards compatible with anything, so you’ll have more transmission costs to get onto this new platform. For a manufacturer or network provider, it’s not particularly good news either: a brand new network will have to be built, and in many cases (the UK included) the frequencies won’t become free for another few years. And for the consumer, it’s also bad news: my device will only pick up those broadcasters who’ve elected to spend money to broadcast on this new network.»

Já se for o DMB... «DMB is based on DAB technology - so, for a radio broadcaster, DMB is good news: because it’s backwards compatible with DAB Digital Radio. That iRiver device picked up Das Erste, but also picks up nearly twenty different digital radio stations. For a manufacturer or network provider, that’s also good news: because the radio companies have already paid to build a DAB network, and the frequencies are already internationally allocated. And for the consumer, that’s also good news: a consumer that thrives on content and choice (and all consumers do, no matter what Mark Ramsey says) will get the content they already know and love with DAB Digital Radio, as well as additional multimedia content with DMB television services»

É a velha questão da convergência: «DMB is the only way for them to deliver broadcast television. Because it can deliver radio as well. The choice of mobile TV technology really does matter for radio broadcasters. If the world chooses DMB, any DAB radio broadcaster will be available on millions of new devices at no extra cost. If the world chooses DVB-H, we won’t be. It’s time to get involved.»

fonte: «Why radio should care about mobile Tv», James Cridland, 18/03/07

Uma característica da rádio portuguesa

«Os jovens são grandes consumidores deste meio, sendo no grupo etário dos 25 aos 34 anos que se observa maior audiência de rádio. Pelo contrário, nos mais idosos observam-se taxas inferiores à média.»

O video na rádio

«(...) Anyhow, the debate has moved on and the new mantra is that radio journalists don't do video. Apparently, it's one thing to encroach on the territory of print journalists by producing text for the website, but they draw the line at video. That's TV, they claim. Sadly, they still haven't grasped multimedia and don't understand convergence.  Web video is not television - the grammar is completely different. But don't take my word for it, check out the video segments that TV news stations are shovelling onto the Web - a lot of it just doesn't work. But if done properly, online video can target niche groups and exploit the long-tail in ways that are impossible for traditional broadcast media. There is a smilar relationship between podcasting and traditional radio.

(...)BBC Five Live is rising to the challenge by providing images to accompany many of its sporting programmes. I have heard that they are turning Mark Kermode's film reviews into video podcasts. No doubt, some of my colleagues will accuse Radio Five Live of making "cheap television." Pay no attention: for the most part, they are the same people who predicted no-one would ever read a news article online. »

(fonte: Multimedia meets radio, «Why video is a must for radio stations», 19/03/07)

Novos e velhos meios (o hibridismo de McLuhan na actual convergência)

«McLuhan entendia que todo meio novo trata, num primeiro momento, de integrar os meios precedentes e se referir a eles. O termo hibridização foi cunhado na década de 60 para caracterizar as mudanças provocadas pela grande penetrabilidade da televisão. Trinta anos depois, permanece atual e oferece uma oportunidade especiamente favorável à observaçao dos componentes e propriedades estruturais da dinâmica do processo em curso. (...) Por esse conceito é possível entender hoje que as mutações emergentes por hibridização desencadeiam um realinhamento do sistema de comunicação, abrindo caminho para a convergência de processos e práticas. É nesse ambiente de modificações e reciclagens, onde uma forma não subsiste sem a outra, é que estão sendo moldadas na contemporaneidade as bases do processo de convergência ou integração entre novos e velhos meios» (Nélia Del Bianco, in Teorias do Rádio, 2005: 160-1) 

Um risco a tentar evitar neste trabalho

«O passado foi embora naquela direção. Quando confrontados com uma situação inteiramente nova, tendemos a ligar-nos aos objetos, ao sabor do passado mais recente. Olhamos o presente através de um espelho retrovisor. Caminhamos de costas em direção ao futuro". (McLuhan, s/d: 54 in O tambor tribal de McLuhan, Nélia Del Bianco, Teorias do Rádio, Meditsch org, 2005, pág 160)

Talvez a rádio mais evoluída (adaptada aos novos tempos)

É público que BBC, NPR e outras rádios de serviço público são as menos receosas relativamente ao podcasting e às novas mudanças que a rádio está a sofrer.

De acordo com a edição de 2007 do State of the News Media, a rádio do Washington Post, WTOP, estará ainda mais à frente:

«Washington-based WTOP represents an entirely different look at radio online, one which is simultaneously local and national in scope. The homepage features an obvious lead story; an invitation to visitors to listen to WTOP radio news; weather and traffic information for the day; and a prominently featured local news section. Advertisements also have a heavy presence. WTOP.com ranks in the top tier for offering customizable options. Users can subscribe to both RSS feeds and podcasts, and its RSS feeds are relatively varied (totaling 12 different feeds, all of which are different categories of news). WTOP also goes further than NPR in providing on-demand listening options: visitors can sign up for content delivery (headlines, weather, traffic and breaking news) to their mobile phones. WTOP.com is still largely about narrative text (it makes up close to three-quarters of the content with still photos the second-most common form). Still, it did make some effort at multimedia forms (falling in the mid-level range of all sites studied) with some presence of video stories, slideshows, interactive graphics and yes, live streaming audio. Listening makes up only a small though prominent part of the Web site’s homepage with a section called “ Audio Center” that is devoted to live streaming of the WTOP radio station content.The site puts less emphasis on its own original branded content, relying mostly on the A.P. The heavy use on wires reflects the larger reality of radio today — even in Washington, D.C., national and international news comes heavily from sources other than the station itself. And even for local stories, only some had WTOP staff bylines; most came from the A.P., along with a few contributions from the Washington Post. Economically, WTOP seems to emphasize revenue streams from its Web site, as opposed to simply leaning on its radio station for cash-flow. It averaged close to 20 different ads on its home page, only one of which was self-promotional. Ad eyeballs, it seems, are the way users pay for use of the site. All the content is free and there no registration is necessary»

Para uma compreensão d(o que é)a «geração iPod»

Não há uma uniformização das classificações etárias.

Uma é esta: Kids - 8-12 anos; tweens: 9-14; teen(ager)s: 12-17

Outra (usada no State of the News Media 2007): teenagers: 12-17; young adults: 18-34

Outra (arbitron): kids (6-8) e tweens (9-11).

 

Rádio no telemóvel

«Mobile Radio: Finally, if one can put radio content on an iPod, one can also download it onto other digital devices, including cell phones and PDA’s like BlackBerries and Palm Pilots. In September of 2006, Clear Channel announced its plan to stream radio content to cell phones with service provided by Cingular Wireless. The mobile radio program began streaming content out of New York’s station WHTZ-FM Z100, and includes live radio and news features, as well as on-demand podcasts. The service is called Z100 Mobile, and requires a subscription fee of $2.99 a month. Subscribers to the service can also request songs and locate the titles and artists of recently played songs via text messages on their cell phones. Clear Channel reported in its September press release that it expected to expand the service to 100 stations by the end of 2007» (the state of the news media 2007)

A demografia dos novos suportes

«For now, the new digital forms of audio are not only expanding the potential for listening beyond that of traditional radio, they are also attracting a different audience. Some of these differences are to be expected, but others are more surprising and subtle.  To begin with, contrary to popular conception, teenagers are not necessarily the most avid consumers of new technology, at least not with new audio devices. Young adults, for instance, those between age 18 and 34, are the most likely to listen to Internet radio. Nearly 1 in 5 does so at least once a week, compared with closer to 1 in 10 of 12-to-17-year-olds.³⁵ Teenagers, though, are more likely to listen to podcasts — 21% of people under 18 report doing so — but listening to podcasts is equally as popular with 35-to-44-year-olds, followed closely by people 25 to 34, at 20%, and 45 to 54, at 17%.³⁶ The listening device that reigns supreme with youth is the MP3 player. A majority of U.S. teenagers (51%) now report that they own an iPod or some other brand of portable digital music player, according to Arbitron.³⁷

Of the new audio formats, satellite radio attracts the “oldest” crowd, though it isn’t really old at all: those between 35 and 44 are most likely to listen to satellite radio. Of those surveyed in that age group, 24% said they listened to satellite radio, followed by 20% in the 25-to-34 age range and only 6% of those 18 to 24.³⁸

Weekly Use of Digital Audio, by Age

2005

Source: Arbitron, “The Infinite Dial: Radio’s Digital Platform”, April 13, 2006» (The State of the news media 2007)

Para que servem os LAD e os telemóveis? Para música...

«If news continues to be such a big part of traditional commercial radio’s appeal, does it hold the same sway in the new audio formats? That is harder to answer. For now, the data on newer audio formats — satellite radio, Internet radio and podcasts — do not specify the type of content people tune in to. The total number of people and the time they spend listening to news is expected to become measurable with Arbitron’s Portable People Meter starting in 2007. But a survey released by the Pew Center for the People and the Press does provide some insight into how many people are using the new audio devices to access news content, and how frequently. The data suggest that the devices are not being widely used for consumption of news, not yet anyway. Only 12% of the Internet population has ever downloaded any kind of podcast on an MP3 player, and only 2%⁹ has done it for a news podcast, according to Pew data.

News on Mobile Devices

Mobile News Demographics	% of MP3 Owners	% of Cell Phone Owners	% of PDA Owners
Total	8%	6%	18.3%
Male	9.6	7.8	23.8
Female	6	4.3	9.7
Every day	2.1	2.2	7.4
A few times/week	2.7	1.3	3.8
Less often	3.2	2.4	7.3

Source: Pew Research Center for the People and the Press’ biennial consumption survey, “Online Papers Modestly Boost Newspaper Readership,” July 30, 2006

But of MP3/iPod owners (25.5% of the population), 8% say they download news podcasts to their MP3 players.¹⁰ Though that is a small percentage, Pew survey data show that about a quarter of the news podcast downloaders report doing so daily»

fonte: The State of the news media 2007

Mais uma opinião sobre o impacto das novas tecnologias

«The use of iPods, portable podcasting, satellite signals, digital HD radio, Internet streaming, and even phones as music-listening devices all grew. There were further signs that the new technologies were beginning to have an impact on traditional radio, from audience behavior and economics to transforming the ownership and strategy of the industry and altering the projections for the future. For now, the size of traditional radio’s audience remains fairly stable. But the amount of time people spend with it is beginning to ebb. (...) The only notion that seems clear is that the first major new communication technology of the 20th century — radio — is changing rapidly and appears likely to survive the early years of the21 st. The form or forms the medium will take, however, are still shifting.»

fonte:  The State of the news Media 2007

Ter 17 anos em Portugal, a 5 de Março de 2007

Duas ideias essenciais neste contexto: a ligação à tecnologia e a capacidade de fazer diversas coisas ao mesmo tempo.

«(...) olhem para eles agora: de umbigo ao léu nos cinco festivais de Verão, a encomendar malas de Hong Kong com o cartão de crédito dos pais, 228 amigos no Hi5 (e a contagem continua) do Texas ao Perú, 50 canais na TV em vez de dois, zap-zap, qual zip-zip qual quê.
Têm 17 anos em 2007 - e isso não é o mesmo que há 17 anos. "Um adolescente com um computador pessoal e um telemóvel era algo quase de ficção científica há duas décadas. Mas também a televisão com várias opções...", lembra Margarida Gaspar de Matos, psicóloga e investigadora da Faculdade de Motricidade Humana que coordenou um inquérito recente sobre a saúde dos adolescentes portugueses.
Um adolescente sem computador pessoal e sem telemóvel seria quase ficção científica hoje. (...) Ter 17 anos hoje é ter sido a primeira geração a crescer com a Internet. Geração net, geração arroba, geração My, You, I - os sites e gadgets dizem "eu", "meu", "tu" e não têm vergonha. Partilha as tuas músicas preferidas, os teus filmes favoritos, os teus heróis, a tua orientação sexual, o teu diário privado - queremos que saibas que és especial. 
(...) Adeus, querido diário secreto, olá querido diário indiscreto - e vivo. "Comentamos os diários umas das outras. Se eu quiser saber como é a vida na América , tenho amigas no Texas, em Nova Iorque, em Southampton." (...) Não lhes peçam para fazer uma coisa quando eles podem fazer várias: ouvir música ou ter a TV ligada, trocar uma dúzia de frases no messenger sobre nada, deixar um comentário na página Hi5 de um amigo ("AkelaKamaOseuAmorzinhu says: lindu ninu...bjoka"), atender o telemóvel, ver o que o Google retribui numa pesquisa sobre Os Maias - tudo ao mesmo tempo. Um recente estudo americano revelou que quando os estudantes estão frente ao computador "a estudar" também estão a fazer outra coisa 65 por cento do tempo. (...) A tecnologia, nota Machado Pais [José Machado Pais, investigador do Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa que já coordenou vários projectos sobre a juventude], tornou-se "um meio de afirmação de identidade e de transmissão de gostos pessoais: a sonoridade do toque do telemóvel, o tipo de música que passa no MP3, as performances exibidas nos fóruns do ciberespaço". (...) Muitos jovens vivem hoje ao abrigo de um verdadeiro sistema de protecção familiar - a welfare family", nota Machado Pais. "Economicamente dependentes dos pais, usufruem, porém, de autonomia existencial. Decoram o quarto a seu gosto, escolhem as suas roupas, decidem sobre os usos do tempo e sobre as companhias com quem andam."»

fonte: «17 anos, a melhor juventude... lol», Kathleen Gomes, Público/P2, 5/03/07, pág. 4-7

Os jovens, a rádio e os meios asociais...

«Radio, in other words, is being used by teenagers as an escape route from family life and into what is described as the 'privatism' being sought for at a particular moment in their psychological and social development. This chimes with the observation by Barnett and Morrison that for all of us: «Television has become the 'social' medium, allowing the family to share a leisure activity in its own living room; radio, on the other hand, has become 'asocial' - a solo medium which is isolationist rather than communal. (1989: I). There are two important caveats to this casting of radio listening as somehow more 'private' or 'asocial' than watching television: first, it underplays the changing relationship between the way we use various media in the home, and secondly, it underplays the sociable dimensions of radio listening itself... First, then, the question of competing media in the home. In the years since Barnett and Morrison made their observation the number of television sets per household has risen considerably throughout the western world. Specifically, many teenagers are now just as likely to have a TV set in their bedrooms as a radio. (...) At the same time teenagers are no longer quite so dependent as they once were on the transistor radio as their means of withdrawal from the family: the better off among them are now likely to have their own CD players, computer games, even Internet access. These offer entry to a whole range of 'asocial' activities other than radio, and their presence in households appears to be making teenagers more discriminating - sceptical even - about the radio output on offer (Carroll et al. 1993)» (Hendy, 200: 127-1289)  

Quando a internet ainda não era uma ameaça (e só havia a internet)

Do livro de 2000 de David Hendy (e a demonstrar que quando se fala do futuro - e do mesmo do presente - as analises devem ser muito cuidadosas):

«(...) not only is the fall in radio use among the young very small, but greater use of the Internet may itself help cushion any future drop. Research on the use of the Internet in British homes in 1999, for instance, suggested at while more than a third of people spend less time watching television and a quarter spend less time reading magazines since they are gone 'online', a quarter claim to spend more time listening  the radio (The Times 26 February 1999). In a similar survey in he USA, radio listening was actually down slightly in households which were online, though television watching was hit more severely (Arbitron 1999). Radio, in other words, is the medium which is most complementary to one of the fastest-growing leisure activities, namely surfing the net. This should not, of course, be surprising given radio's use as a secondary medium, listened to in the background, and precisely because it is eminently 'consumable' while doing other things. (Hendy, 2000: 128)

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)

 

Previsões (em 2006) para o futuro

«The next step will be content designed and delivered to mobile phones, hand-held personal devices (PDAs), games consoles or connected media players, potentially using the – newer – smaller and higher quality MP4 or AAC format (the format used in iPod offering improved quality over MP3). The current ‘next generation’ or ‘3G’ mobile phones do offer the capacity to access the web with speeds capable of sustaining audio streaming, and downloadable applications already exist to run Podcasting clients on ‘smartphones’. This could be a step forward, bypassing the computer altogether andcapturing content on the playback device. (...)  It is likely that with the increased choice, digital content (whether via DAB, satellite, webcasting or Podcasting) that is ‘in tune’ with audiences, using formats and styles other than mainstream music, will develop. Linked to this, a role for speech-led content may develop (Berry, 2004).» (Berry, 157-158)

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)

 

A McDonaldização da rádio (as clássicas queixas)

«Historically, commercial radio programming is safe, inoffensive and mass market to maintain advertisers and to build and maintain the largest possible audience. To programmers this is consistency, whereas to audiences it is predictability. MacFarland [MacFarland, D.T. (1997) Future Radio Programming Strategies. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates] describes this philosophy as the McDonaldization of radio with predictability and familiarity being guiding factors in programming strategy. It could be argued (and evidence of student listening bears this out) that it is predictability in commercial radio that has created the fall in listening by the ‘wirefree’ generation and the movement of audiences (in the UK) from commercial radio to BBC

national radio or to streaming web stations and Podcasts» (Berry, 149)

A culpa é (também) da programação:

«If radio serves to meet basic human needs at a variety of different levels [«All five of Maslow’s basic human needs can be fulfilled through the act of radio listening, the level of need being dependent upon the individual’s hierarchical position at any given moment in time.  Radio meets physiological, safety, belongingness and love, esteem and self-actualization needs in a variety of different ways and listeners can engage fulfilment simply by selecting the format type that meets their requirements at any specified period of time»], then it is important that radio provides the necessary variety of programming to fulfil the needs of all listeners.» (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)

«McDonaldization of radio» será uma derivação da expressão McJob, sinónimo de trabalho sem qualificação na indústria do fast food, popularizada no livro «Generation X» de Douglas Coupland, de 1991. 

Crescer sem ter o hábito de ouvir rádio

«The other big audience challenge is youth. Most of my generation grew up with radio. Memories of that first car, that first cigarette, that first pint of heavy, are for many of us inextricably bound up with particular pieces of music, particular radio programmes or DJs. Today, while television can still capture children up to their early teens and the challenge is simply getting them back in their twenties, for radio, is there a generation growing up who are simply not introduced to the habit and may thus not get the point as they mature. Two thirds of today’s young mobile users have their phones on and within easy reach for between 21 and 24 hours a day. I earnestly hope that radio- possibly using the mobile as delivery medium - can capture at least some of that time.»

fonte: The Radio Festival - Certainty or Security? The Path to Digital, Stephen A Carter, Chief Executive, Ofcom, 4/07/05

A capacidade da rádio resistir (resilência)

«The development of downloads of audio content in MP3 formats may be seen as the web’s equivalent of the cassette recorder or the portable radio. Both changed the way listeners consume radio. The MP3 player, like the transistor, frees the listener from a large box wired to the wall and, like the cassette recorder, it allows programmes to be time-shifted. This demonstrates the virus-like nature of radio as a medium. Radio has found its way into all parts of homes and outdoors, into transport systems, into the internet and now into our MP3 players, an environment which is entirely suitable for radiogenic content. Like a virus, radio is also very resilient, fighting off attacks from television, compact disc and the increasingly visual world we live in. So for radiogenic content to find its way through the web to portable audio devices should not come as much of a surprise. After all, many people have taped radio programmes at home to listen to at a later point – even if it was just the weekly Top 40 countdown»

fonte: Will the iPod Kill the Radio Star?, Richard Berry, Convergence 2006; 12; 148