Radio — The Forgotten Medium

I got a task for you: Think about “the media” and write down the first words you can think of. Done? Great. Did you by any chance just note down the words television and newspapers? If so, you are not alone. I thought of these two words as well and many others probably did the same. But aren’t we forgetting about something? A medium that most of us still use? If you read the title, you already know what I am talking about — the radio.

Radio is often ignored if we talk about modern media which is quite strange as radio still is a mass medium. Even though it has often been predicted to die out, it survived the TV and even the Internet without losing much of its influence. In fact, the opposite is the case. In Germany, people listened on average 167 minutes of radio each day in 1995. In 2016 it is even more, namely 178 minutes.

However, this is not the only impressive number. According to a media analysis in 2016 about 78% of the German population, which is equivalent to 56 million people, listens to radio on workdays. So how is it even possible that we tend to forget about it if we talk about media? In my opinion, the reason therefore is that we usually do not focus on listening to the radio. Often, the radio simply is turned on while doing something else and we perceive it unconsciously. This may not be true for you, but it certainly is for me.

Last but not least, I think it is great that radio, as the oldest electronic broadcasting medium, is still of importance in a world that is mostly about print and especially online media. I’m tempted to say “make radio great again”, but this would imply that it is not great any more which surely is not the case…