From its first tentative experiments and the early days of wireless, radio has expanded into a universal medium of communication. It leaps around the world on short waves linking capitals in a fraction of a second. It jumps to high satellites to put its footprint across a continent, and it streams through the Internet to reach every digital device around the globe. It brings that world to those who cannot read and helps maintain a contact for those who cannot see.
It is used by armies in war and by radio hams for fun. It controls air traffic, directs the taxi, and is essential for fire brigades and police. It is the enabler of business and commerce, and as WiFi feeds the smartphone, iPad and countless other devices, broadcasters pour out millions of words every minute in an effort to inform, educate and entertain, propagandise and persuade; music fills the air. Community radio makes broadcasters out of listeners and the Citizen Band gives transmitter power to the individual.
Whatever else can be said of the medium, it is plentiful. It has lost the sense of awe which attended its early years, becoming instead a very ordinary and ‘unspecial’ method of communication. To use it well we have to adapt the formal ‘written’ language that we learnt at school and rediscover our oral traditions.
To succeed in a highly competitive marketplace where television, a huge range of social media, Internet websites, lifestyle magazines, newspapers, cinema, theatre, DVDs, CDs and apps jostle for the attention of a media-conscious public, the radio student and professional programme makers must first understand the strengths and weaknesses of radio in order to decide how best to use it in their own context.
It is a blind medium but one that can stimulate the imagination so that as soon as a voice is heard, the listener attempts to visualise the source of the sound and to create in the mind’s eye the owner of the voice. What pictures are created when the voice carries an emotional content – interviews with witnesses of a bomb blast – the breathless joy of a victorious sports team.
Unlike television, where the pictures are limited by the size of the screen, radio’s pictures are any size you care to make them. For the writer of radio drama it is easy to involve us in a battle between goblins and giants, or to have our spaceship land on a strange and distant planet. Created by appropriate sound effects and supported by the right music, virtually any situation can be brought to us. As the schoolboy said when asked about television drama, ‘I prefer radio, the scenery is so much better.’
But is it more accurate? In reporting news, there is much to be said for seeing video of, say, a public demonstration rather than leaving it to our imagination. Both sound and vision are susceptible to the distortions of selectivity, and in reporting an event it is up to the integrity of the individual on the spot to produce as fair, honest and factual an account as possible. In the case of radio, its great strength of appealing directly to the imagination must not become the weakness of allowing individual interpretation of a factual event, let alone the deliberate exaggeration of that event by the broadcaster. The radio writer and commentator choose words with precision so that they create appropriate pictures in the listener’s mind, making the subject understood and its occasion memorable.
Radio is one of the mass media. The very term ‘broadcasting’ indicates a wide scattering of the output covering every home, village, town, city and country within the range of the transmitter – and wider still when its output is streamed on a nearly universal Internet so that even a local station has a worldwide reach. A local station is now reaching its expatriate target audience – still interested in what is happening ‘at home’, especially the sports results – but broadcasters should remember that their words and meanings can now be heard in a very different culture from their local target audience.
Its potential for communication, therefore, is very great but the actual effect might be quite small. The difference between potential and actual will depend on matters to which this book is dedicated – programme relevance, editorial excellence and creativity, qualities of ‘likeability’ and persuasiveness, operational competence, technical reliability and consistency of the received signal. It will also be affected by the size and strength of the competition in its many forms. Broadcasters sometimes forget that people have other things to do – life is not all about listening to radio and watching television.
Audience researchers talk about share and reach. Audience share is the amount of time spent listening to a particular station, expressed as a percentage of the total radio listening in its area. Audience reach is the number of people who do listen to something from the station over the period of a day or week, expressed as a percentage of the total population who could listen. Both figures are significant. A station in a highly competitive environment might have quite a small share of the total listening, but if it manages to build a substantial following to even one of its programmes, let alone the aggregate of several minorities, it will enjoy a large reach. The mass media should always be interested in reach.
Radio speaks to the individual
Unlike television, where the viewer is observing something coming out of a box ‘over there’, the sights and sounds of radio are created within us, and can have greater impact and involvement. Radio on headphones happens literally inside your head. Here is a quote from some Ofcom research: ‘With radio, you’re walking down the street and just having a laugh to yourself – and nobody else knows what you’re laughing at – it gives me a lift.’
Television is, in general, watched by small groups of people and the reaction to a programme is often affected by the reaction between individuals. Radio is much more a personal thing, coming direct to the listener. There are obvious exceptions: communal listening happens in clubs, bars, workshops, canteens and shops, and in the rural areas of less developed countries a whole village may gather round the set. However, even here, a radio is an everyday personal item.
The broadcaster should not abuse this directness of the medium by regarding the microphone as an input to a public address system, but rather a means of talking directly to the individual – multiplied perhaps millions of times.
Radio is often private, heard behind closed doors or alone in the car. It can, therefore, offer help, support and advice to people who have nowhere else to turn. In many countries the so-called ‘shameful subjects’, especially those affecting women, can only be dealt with in this way. Forced marriage, female genital mutilation, domestic violence, child abuse, trafficking and slavery, the abortion of female foetuses, AIDS and HIV are real issues which, heard on radio in private, demonstrate that they can be talked about, dispelling rumours and myths and opening up the possibility of being able to initiate action – something that has actually been shown to save lives.
The ancient Greeks would listen to the messenger who could run the fastest – who brought the news first. Technically uncumbersome, the medium is enormously flexible and is often at its best in the totally immediate ‘live’ situation. No waiting for the presses or the physical distribution of newspapers or magazines. A crisis report from a correspondent overseas, a listener talking on the phone, a sports result from the local stadium, a concert from the capital, radio is immediate. The recorded programme introduces a timeshift and, like a newspaper, may quickly become out of date, but the medium itself is essentially live and ‘now’.
The ability to move about geographically generates its own excitement. Long since regarded as a commonplace, both for television and radio, pictures and sounds are sent electronically around the world, bringing any event anywhere to our immediate attention. Radio speeds up the dissemination of information so that everyone – the leaders and the led – knows of the same news event, the same political idea, declaration or threat. If knowledge is power, radio gives power to us all whether we exercise authority or not.
Books and magazines can be stopped at national frontiers but radio is no respecter of territorial limits. Its signals clear mountain barriers and cross ocean deeps. Radio can bring together those separated by geography or nationality – it can help to close other distances of culture, learning or status. The programmes of political propagandists or of Christian missionaries can be sent in one country and heard in any other. Sometimes met with hostile jamming, sometimes welcomed as a life-sustaining truth, programmes have a liberty independent of lines on a map, obeying only the rules of transmitter power, sunspot activity, channel interference, or receiver sensitivity. Furthermore, laptop, tablet and smartphone ownership makes us independent even of these constraints so that any studio can have an almost worldwide reach. Refugees fleeing from their homeland out of range of their own transmitters can still hear their radio via the Internet. Crossing political boundaries, radio can bring freedoms to the oppressed and enlightenment to those in darkness.
Figure 1.1 Radios for receiving conventional transmissions and via the Internet. Some are DAB compatible
It is, in general, a very ephemeral medium and if the listener is not in time for the news bulletin, it is gone and it’s necessary to wait for the next. Unlike the newspaper that a reader can put down, come back to, or pass round, broadcasting mostly imposes a strict discipline of having to be there at the right time. The radio producer must recognise that while it’s possible to store programmes in the archives, they are only short-lived for the listener. This is not to say that they may not be memorable, but memory is fallible and without a written record it is easy to be misquoted or taken out of context. For this reason it is often advisable for the broadcaster to have some form of audio or written log as a check on what was said, and by whom. In some cases this may be a statutory requirement of a radio station as part of its public accountability. Where this is not so, lawyers have been known to argue that it is better to have no record of what was said – for example, in a public phone-in. Practice would suggest, however, that the keeping of a recording of the transmission is a useful safeguard against allegations of malpractice, particularly from complainants who missed the broadcast and who heard about it at second-hand.
The transitory nature of the medium means that the radio listener must not only hear the programme at the time of its broadcast, but must also understand it then. The impact and intelligibility of the spoken word should occur on hearing it – there is seldom a second chance. The producer must, therefore, strive for the utmost logic and order in the presentation of ideas, and the use of clearly understood language.
However, there are other more lasting ways of listening.
Radio streamed on the Internet has the very great advantage of not only being available live and ‘now’, but of extending the life of previous programmes, news bulletins and features so they can be recalled on demand. By offering audio files of earlier material as ‘podcasts’, the station website overcomes the essentially ephemeral nature of broadcasting in that it provides specific listening when the listener wants it, not simply when it happens to be broadcast. Internet use of radio in this way radically changes the medium, transferring the scheduling power from the station to the listener. Once downloaded, programmes can be kept permanently, unless they are designed to expire after a given time.
Radio allows a more flexible link with its user than that insisted upon by television or print. The medium is less demanding in that it permits us to do other things at the same time – programmes become an accompaniment to something else. We read with music on, eat to a news magazine, or hang wallpaper while listening to a play. Radio suffers from its own generosity – it is easily interruptible. Television is more complete, taking our whole attention, ‘spoon-feeding’ without demanding effort or response, and tending to be compulsive at a far lower level of interest than radio requires of its audience.
Because radio is so often used as background, it frequently results in a low level of commitment on the part of the listener. If the broadcaster really wants the listener to do something – to act – then radio should be used in conjunction with another medium such as follow-up texts or email. Educational broadcasting, for example, needs an accompanying website, printed fact-sheets, booklet material, and tutor hotlines involving schools or universities. Radio evangelism has to be linked with follow-up correspondence and involve local churches or on-the-ground missionaries. Advertising requires appropriate recall and point of sale material. While radio can claim some spectacular individual action results, in general, producers have to work very hard to retain their part-share of the listener’s attention.
There is a different kind of responsibility on the broadcaster from that of the newspaper editor in that the radio producer selects exactly what is to be received by the consumer. In print, a large number of news stories, articles and other features are set out across several pages. Each one is headlined or identified in some way to make for easy selection. The reader scans the pages choosing to read those items of particular interest – using his or her own judgement. With radio this is not possible. The selection process takes place in the studio and the listener is presented with a single thread of material – it is a linear medium. Here are some more comments from the Ofcom research:
‘Radio – you can’t always have what you want.’
‘I have lots of tracks on my tablet so that if I’m working, I can press the shuffle button and that’s like having your own radio station.’
So radio choice for the listener exists only in the mental switching-off which occurs during an item which fails to maintain interest, or by tuning to another station. It is possible for the listener to scan the channels or search ‘on demand’ sources to find a missed item, but in general any one channel of radio or television is rather more autocratic than a newspaper.
A newspaper might carry 30 or 40 columns of news copy – a 10-minute radio bulletin is equivalent to a mere column and a half. Again, the selection and shaping of the spoken material has to be tighter and more logical. Papers can devote large amounts of space to advertisements, particularly to the ‘small ads’, and personal announcements such as births, deaths and marriages. This is ideal scanning material and it is not possible to provide such detailed coverage in a radio programme.
A newspaper is able to give an important item additional impact simply by using more space. The big story is run using large headlines and bold type – the picture is blown up and splashed across the front page. The equivalent in a radio bulletin is to lead with the story and to illustrate it with a voice report or interview. There is a tendency for everything in radio – including advertisements – to come out of the set the same size. An item might be run longer but this is not necessarily the same as ‘bigger’. Coverage described as ‘in depth’ might only be ‘at length’. There is limited scope for indicating the differing importance of an economic crisis, a show-business item, a murder, the arrival of a pop group, the market prices and the weather forecast. It could be argued that the press is more likely to use this ability to emphasise certain stories to impose its own value judgements on the consumer – known perhaps as bias? This naturally depends on the policy of the individual newspaper editor. The radio producer is denied the same freedom of manoeuvre and this can lead to the feeling that all subjects are treated in the same way, a criticism of bland superficiality not infrequently heard. On the other hand, this characteristic of radio perhaps restores the balance of democracy, imposing less on the listener and allowing greater freedom of judgement as to what is important.
A great advantage of an aural medium over print lies in the sound of the human voice – the warmth, the compassion, the anger, the pain and the laughter. A voice is capable of conveying much more than reported speech. It has inflection and accent, hesitation and pause, a variety of emphasis, lightness and speed. The information that a speaker imparts is to do with the style of presentation as much as the content of what is said. The vitality of radio depends on the diversity of voices that it uses and the extent to which it allows the colourful turn of phrase and the local idiom.
This is borne out by the Ofcom research:
‘Radio provides company in a way that music alone can’t.’
‘Human voices are entertaining, comforting and give you a sense of security.’
It is important that all kinds of voices are heard and not just those of professional broadcasters, power holders and articulate spokesmen. The technicalities of the medium must not deter people in all walks of life from expressing themselves with a naturalness and sincerity that reflects their true personalities. Here radio, uncluttered by the pictures that accompany the talk of television, is capable of great sensitivity, and of engendering great trust.
The basic unit comprises one person with a handheld recorder rather than even a small TV crew. This encourages greater mobility and also makes it easier for the non-professional to take part, thereby enlarging the possibilities for public access to the medium. In any case, sound is better understood than vision, with online radio, recorders, playback and stereo equipment found in most schools and homes. While the amateur video diary is an accepted format, far more complex programme ideas can be well executed by part-timers in radio. It is also probably true that whereas with television or print any loss of technical standards becomes immediately obvious and unacceptable, with radio there is a recognisable margin between the excellent and the adequate. Of course one should strive for the highest possible radio standards, but sound alone is easier to work with for the non-specialist. Hence, the growth in onlookers to a news incident filing their own reports – ‘citizen journalism’.
For the broadcaster, radio’s comparative simplicity means a flexibility in its scheduling. Items within programmes, or even whole programmes, can be dropped to be replaced at short notice by something more urgent.
Relative to the other media, both its capital cost and its running expenses are small. As broadcasters round the world have discovered, the main difficulty in setting up a station is often not financial but lies in obtaining a transmission frequency. Such frequencies are safeguarded by governments as signatories to international agreements, they are finite, a limited resource, and are not easily assigned. A free-for-all would lead to chaos on the air.
However, because the medium is cheap to use and can attract a substantial audience, the cost per hour – or more significantly the cost per listener hour – is low. Such figures have to be provided for advertisers, sponsors, supporters and accountants. But it is also important for the producer as well as the executive manager to know what a programme costs relative to its audience. This is not to say that cost-effectiveness is the only measure of worth – it most certainly is not – but it is one of the factors that inform scheduling decisions.
The relatively low cost once again means that the medium is ideal for use by the non-professional. Because time is not so expensive or so rare, radio stations – unlike their television counterparts – are encouraged to take a few gambles in programming. Radio is a commodity that cannot be hoarded, neither is it so special that it cannot be used by anyone with something interesting to say. Through all sorts of methods of listener participation, the medium is capable of offering a role as a two-way communicator, particularly in the area of community broadcasting.
Radio can reduce its costs still further by using an automated playout system whereby the station provides a full output schedule without anyone being present to oversee the transmission. This is particularly useful for regular half-hour blocks of programming, or to cover the night hours.
Figure 1.2 A small wind-up radio for use where batteries are expensive or unobtainable. It also has a torch light and will charge a cell phone
Radio is also cheap for the listener. Solid state technology allows sets to be mass produced at a cost which enables their virtual total distribution. Where batteries are expensive, a set may operate with a wind-up clockwork motor or built-in solar panel. More affordable than a set of books, good radio brings its own ‘library’ which is of especial value to those who, for whatever reason, are deprived of literature in their own language. Because of its relatively low cost, radio can serve a small community not only in its mother tongue, but in the local dialect. The broadcaster should never forget that while it’s easy to regard the technical installations (studios, transmitters, etc.) as expensive, the greater part of the total capital cost of any broadcasting system is borne directly by the public in buying receivers.
Because of its low cost and because it does not require the education level of literacy, radio is particularly well suited to meet the needs of the poor and disadvantaged. The UK Government’s Department for International Development sets special store in using radio. Their booklet, Media and Good Governance, says
‘The news media can be used to convince the poor of the benefits of having and realizing rights – and can help them assert these rights in practice. In many countries this is best achieved through radio which reaches a wide audience, rather than television which may be accessible to only a small minority.’
Radio works particularly well in the world of ideas. As a medium of education it excels with concepts as well as facts. From dramatically illustrating an event in history to pursuing current political thought it has a capability with any subject that can be discussed, taking the learner at a predetermined pace through a given body of knowledge. With musical appreciation and language teaching it is totally at home. Of course it lacks television’s ability to demonstrate and show, it does not have charts, maps and graphs – as a medium it is more literate than numerate – but backed up by a website with teacher’s notes even these limitations can be overcome, and a booklet helps to give memory to the understanding. Add a texting or correspondence element and you have the two-way questioning process which is at the heart of all personal learning.
Figure 1.3 Her prized possession. A listener in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Photo: Roger Stoll)
From Australia’s School of the Air to the UK’s Open University and Africa’s many educational programmes, radio effectively reaches out to meet the formal and informal learning needs of people who want to grow.
Here are the Beethoven symphonies, the Top 40, tunes of our childhood, jazz, opera, rock and favourite shows. From the best on CD or download to a quite passable local church organist, radio provides the pleasantness of an unobtrusive background or the focus of our total absorption. It relaxes and stimulates, inducing pleasure, nostalgia, excitement or curiosity. The range of music is wider than the coverage of the most comprehensive record library and can therefore give the listener a chance to discover new or unfamiliar forms of music.
DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) and RDS (Radio Data System) enhance the experience by supplying a range of additional information such as station name, music title, artist and any special messages the station wants to send. DAB stations’ content is also deliverable through a digital TV, tablet or laptop, so multiplying the outlets for a programme. This also has the advantage of the easy recording of radio using an associated digital recorder.
Unlike the music we download, the CD we choose to play, or the book we pick up at home, selected to match our taste and feelings of the moment, music and speech on radio is chosen for us and may, if we let it, change our mood and take us out of ourselves. We can be presented with something new and enjoy a chance encounter with the unexpected. Radio should surprise – make us laugh. Here is a quote, again from the Ofcom research: ‘I love interesting speech and classic comedy. Radio has the capacity to surprise.’
Broadcasters are tempted to think in terms of format radio where the content lies precisely between narrowly defined limits. This gives consistency and enables the listener to hear what is expected, which is probably why the radio is switched on in the first place. But radio can also provide the opportunity for innovation and experiment – a risk that producers must take if the medium is to surprise us in a way that is both creative and stimulating.
Radio can suffer from interference
While a newspaper or magazine is normally received in exactly the form in which it was published, radio has no such automatic guarantee. Short-wave transmission is frequently subject to deep fading and co-channel interference. Medium wave too, especially at night, may suffer from the intrusion of other stations. The quality of the sound received is likely to be very different in its dynamic or frequency range from the carefully produced balance heard in the studio. Even FM can be temperamental – liable to a range of distortions, from the flutter caused by a passing aircraft, to ignition interference from cars and other electrical equipment. Web listening can be subject to gaps and extraneous noises with a poor or slow Internet connection, or where the electricity supply is intermittent. Reception in a moving vehicle can also be difficult as the signal strength varies.
Digital transmission – DAB, or HD in the United States – and direct broadcasting by satellite overcome most of these problems – at a cost – but it is as well for the producer to remember that what leaves the studio is not necessarily what is heard in the possibly noisy environment of the listener. Difficult reception conditions require compelling programmes in order to retain a faithful audience.
Given these basic characteristics of the medium – 19 of them – how is radio to be used? What are its possibilities? Details vary across the world but broadly it functions in two main ways – it serves the individual, and operates on behalf of society as a whole.
• It diverts people from their problems and anxieties, providing relaxation and entertainment. It reduces feelings of loneliness, creating a sense of companionship.
• It is the supplier or confirmer of local, national or international news, and establishes for us a current agenda of issues and events. It makes government explicit and satisfies our personal curiosity about what is going on around us.
• It offers hope and inspiration to those who feel isolated or oppressed within a restrictive environment, or where their own media are manipulated or suppressed.
• It helps to solve problems by acting as a source of information and advice. It can do this either through direct personal access to the programme or in a general way by indicating sources of further help, especially in times of crisis.
• It enlarges personal ‘experience’, stimulating interest in previously unknown topics, events or people. It promotes creativity and can point towards new personal activity. It meets individual needs for formal and informal education.
• It contributes to self-knowledge and awareness, offering security and support. It enables us to see ourselves in relation to others, and links individuals with leaders and ‘experts’.
• It guides social behaviour, setting standards and offering role models with which to identify.
• It aids personal contacts by providing topics of conversation through shared experience – ‘Did you hear the programme last night?’
• It enables individuals to exercise choice, to make decisions and act as citizens, especially in a democracy through the unbiased dissemination of news and information.
• It acts as a multiplier of change, speeding up the process of informing a population, and heightening an awareness of key issues.
• It provides information about jobs, goods and services and so helps to shape markets by providing incentives for earning and spending.
• It holds leaders to account, acting as a watchdog on power holders, providing contact between them and the public.
• It helps to develop agreed objectives and political choice, and enables social and political debate, exposing issues and options for action.
• It acts as a catalyst and focus for celebration – or mourning – enabling individuals to act together, forming a common consciousness, encouraging community uniqueness.
• It contributes to the artistic and intellectual culture, providing opportunities for new and established performers of all kinds.
• It disseminates ideas. These may be radical, leading to new beliefs and values, so promoting diversity and change – or they may reinforce traditional values, so helping to maintain social order through the status quo.
• It enables individuals and groups to speak to each other, developing an awareness of a common membership of society.
• It mobilises public and private resources for personal or community ends, particularly in an emergency.
Some of these functions are in mutual conflict, some are applicable more to a local rather than a national community, and some apply fully only in conditions of crisis. However, the programme producer should be clear about what it is he or she is trying to achieve. Lack of clarity about a programme’s purpose leads to a fuzzy, ineffective end product – it also leads to arguments in the studio over what should and should not be included. We shall return to the point, but it is not enough for the producer to want to make an excellent programme – you might as well want merely to modulate the transmitter. The question is why? What is to be its effect – on the listener, that is? Before looking at some possible personal motivations for making programmes at all, we should examine the meaning of the much-used phrase – broadcasting as a public service.
Public service broadcasting is sometimes regarded as an alternative to commercial radio. The terms are not mutually exclusive, however; it is possible to run commercial radio as a public service, especially in near-monopoly conditions or where there is little competition for the available advertising. It is a matter of where the radio managers see their first loyalty. To put this in perspective here are ten attributes of service, of being community-minded, of doing what is required and being useful, using the analogy of the perfect employee, someone servicing our car, or family helper. He or she:
• is loyal to the employer and does not try to serve other interests or use this position of trust for personal gain. Genuine helpers are people who are clear about their purpose and demonstrate this in everything they do;
• understands the culture, nuances and foibles of the people being served, and in accepting them also becomes fully accepted. A helping friend is not critical or judgemental of those he or she serves but may challenge them, advise them, or even restrain them. But the friend is not there to act as a policeman; there is no corrective mandate;
• is available when needed, and for whoever in the group needs help, the young and the old as well as the boss. It may be tempting to pay court to the power holders, to keep in with the paymaster – but it could be the sick or disadvantaged who need most attention;
• is actually useful, meeting stated requirements and anticipating needs and difficulties – ready to offer original solutions to problems, as or even before they arrive. This means looking ahead – being creative;
• is well informed, knows what is going on, offers good advice and is able to relate unpalatable truth, risking unpopularity in the process. This requires courage as well as a well-stocked mind;
• is hard working, technically expert and efficient. Does not cut corners or waste resources, but is honest and open, and if called to account for particular behaviour, responds willingly. There is nothing underhand – integrity is a key attribute;
• is witty and companionable, courteous and punctual. The radio servant inhabits our house, comes with us in the car, and is someone with whom we can have a relationship that is enjoyable as well as professional;
• has to realise that it’s not possible to do everything – to be in two places at once – there are priorities. The users of the service must understand this too;
• works smoothly alongside others and does not crave recognition or status. When the number to be served is very large, other helpers may need to be brought in. We may want more than one kind of service;
• is affordable. My helper, informer, and friend must not bankrupt me. However much I value this service, long-term cost-effectiveness is crucial.
Each of these characteristics of service has its equivalent in public service broadcasting. Its hallmarks can be drawn from our ideas of what a real helper is and does. Such a station is certainly not arrogant, setting itself up as a power in its own right. It is responsive to need, making itself available for everyone – not simply the rich and powerful; indeed its universality makes a point of including the disadvantaged. It is wide ranging in its appeal, competent and reliable, entertaining and informative. Its programmes for minorities are not to be hidden away in the small hours but are part of the diversity available at prime time. It is popular in that over a period of time it reaches a significant proportion of the population. It does not ‘import’ its programmes from ‘foreign’ sources but is culturally in tune with its audience, producing most of the output itself. It provides useful and necessary things – things of the quality asked for, but also unexpected pleasures. Above all, it is editorially free from interference by political, commercial or other interests, serving only one master to whom it remains essentially accountable – its public.
But there is an immediate dilemma – such perfection may be too expensive. As in everything else we get the level of service we pay for and it might not be possible to afford a 24 hours a day, seven days a week output catering for all needs. Live concerts, stereo drama and world news are expensive commodities, and radio managers need to make judgements about what can be provided at an acceptable price.
The concept works well for a service that is adequately paid for by its listeners – by public licence or by subscription. But if this is not the case, can a public service station do deals with third parties to raise additional revenue? Can a government, commercial or religious station be run as a genuine public service? Yes it can, but the difficulties are obvious.
First, a publicly funded service that makes arrangements with commercial interests is putting its first loyalty, its editorial integrity, at risk. Any producer making a programme as a co-production, or acting under special rules, must say so – not as part of some secret or unstated pay-off, but to meet the requirements of public service accountability.
Second, there is a strong tendency for ‘piper payers’ to want to call the tune. A government does not like to hear criticism of its policy on a station that it regards as its own. Authority in general does not wish to be challenged – as from time to time political interviewers must. Ministries and departments are highly sensitive to items which ‘in the public interest’ they would rather not have broadcast. Officials will avoid or delay ‘bad news’, however true. Similarly, a commercial station often needs to maximise its audience in order to justify the rates – certainly at peak times – so pushing sectional interests to one side to satisfy the advertisers’ desire for mass popularity. A Christian fund-raising constituency may press for the gospel it wants to hear, forgetting the need to serve people in a multiplicity of ways. The need to survive in a harsh political climate, or in a fiercely competitive one, exacerbates these pressures. The fact is that a station dedicated to public service but controlled or funded by a third party, having its own agenda and interests to consider, is almost certain to weaken in its commitment.
So what is our purpose for being in radio? Do you want to be a public servant, or is radio attractive because it has some appearance of power – able to sway public opinion and make people do things? If so, it has to be said that this is very rare and most unlikely to be achieved by this medium alone. Is it to be the protagonist mouthpiece of someone else – or are there reasons that meet my own needs?
It is as well for the producer to understand what some of these personal motivations are:
• to inform people – the role of the media journalist;
• to educate – enabling people to acquire knowledge or skill;
• to entertain – making people laugh, relax or pass the time agreeably;
• to reassure – providing supportive companionship;
• to shock – the sensation station;
• to make money – a means of earning a living;
• to enjoy oneself – a means of artistic expression;
• to create change – persuading for a new society;
• to preserve the status quo – resisting change, maintaining the established order;
• to convert to one’s own belief – proselytising a faith or political creed;
• to serve people, to present options – assisting citizenship, allowing the listener to exercise choice.
Each programme maker must ask, ‘Why do I want to be in broadcasting?’ Is it just a job? Certainly it may be in order to earn a living, but also because he or she has something to say. It may be out of a genuine desire to serve one’s fellow men and women – to allow other people to have their say, to provide options for action by opening up possibilities, entertaining people, making them better informed, or something to do with ‘truth’. Perhaps it’s a more complicated amalgam than any of these.
One’s success criteria are perhaps best summed up as a response to the question, ‘What do you want to say, to whom, and with what effect?’ The ‘to whom?’ is important for, in the end, radio is about a relationship. Much more than on television, the presenter, DJ, or newsreader can establish a sense of rapport with the listener.
The successful station is more than the sum of its programmes: it understands and values the nature of this relationship – and the role which it has for its community as both leader and servant.