The Radio Experience

Most often, radio is not the primary focus of your listening experience.

Good news: the radio listener has a choice — to listen or not to listen. The radio does not require primary focus — it can offer primary or secondary context, in the background, while other facets of life continue.

Most often, radio is not the primary focus of your listening experience. Rather, it’s a part of your environment, while you do other things, and it adds to your experience of the world rather than serving as an origin. You can also vote to turn away from that experience and substitute it with something else, or nothing, at the touch of a switch. There’s no obligation in your choices as a radio listener, other than your own.

The power of radio means there’s no need to shut out other experiences while you engage with it. While travelling, swimming, being at home, or doing just about anything else, radio can entertain, inform, inspire and illuminate.

In this way, there’s a contrast with other social media platforms. These channels often demand your complete focus, and therefore bring isolation from your immediate surroundings and your engagement with something else. No problem? Well perhaps, but I agree with those who say that the social media phenomenon has a powerfully isolating effect, distancing individuals from their communities and, in some cases, from the real world around them. There are alternatives, and through radio we make room for those alternatives, facilitating choice.

Radio, and the power of voice, can sit alongside these other social media platforms as an additional channel through which human interaction can occur, and individuals can engage with their surroundings and communities. A democratic form of radio would enhance this experience even more, especially if the content was rich, authentic, relevant and accessible to the listener, who has matching interests and preferences.

Now that’s an interesting idea.