This year Radio is 100 years old. But most radios have a terrible user interface - a dial with numbers which don't tell you anything about the content behind it.
Radio will fade away, because producers won't put enough money into good programmes and the delivery mechanisms of DAB and DRM are hopeless out of date. Great programme makers will migrate to other platforms
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Radio will team up with Google and give us both great live programmes (surprising me) and offering on-demand audio, briefing me when I want it. Radio will become an important subset in the growing audio universe. DMB and DAB-IP technologies will ultimately replace analogue AM and FM
19 comment(s) so far
SacredVerminthinks: Radio will always be around. There will always be sections of the world that can't catch up with modernity as quickly as everyone else, and for them it's still a viable news and entertainment source. It may be outdated, but there's a thousand UI's for it and most importantly, it's cheap. There will always be program makers on the radio. As for the phasing out of analog... Well, I work with people who still have and use 5" floppy drives in their work environment. Don't ever expect something to truly fade from the masses.
rollotheredthinks: Radio is modern for goodness sake and has never been more popular than it is today - infinitely more users than the web lol. It works anywhere, it does not need a UI, it is cheap, it can be listened to while you work or cook or just laze around, no need to be literate, have vision ... It crosses all kinds of borders literal and those of mind and language. You can even get wind-up radios. The internet is liberating radio. Radios plugged into ADSL fixed and mobile and iPod are more use, informative/entertaining, than content poor pretty web pages. Never forget though that DAB, MP3 et al give a massive decrease in audio quality compared to FM analogue! Do people really need a digital UI - billions have managed to turn a dial since 1921.
Techy23thinks: With the advent of HD and satellite radio, radio as we know it will be transformed into a medium to be used for cellphones and other low bandwidth devices. As methods of tranfering media evolve, outdated technologies will simply be used for less advanced mechanisms. Simply put, radio won't be disappearing anytime soon.
PapaDOCthinks: Can u watch TV or go on gogole while draving a car? No! Well maybe when car will be automatic but since there is no such car yet, radio is the only media which u can "handle" while driving.
Radio will be always present in our life ,it just going to be updated or it will get more "high tech".
I think (i hope) moderen radio waves will carry more information such as "next song, play list of songs" or maybe evan "pictures " a.k.a it will get more interactive for the end-user.
trickyskillsthinks: 'Radio' is a bit of a redunant term now. There has been so much convergence with the digital world. I'm listening to a live show from the other side of the world as I type this, and later I'll no doubt listen to a Podcast whilst I'm out. Radio fits the digital world perfectly and I've been impressed with the development of the industry to date.
james007thinks: Live, streaming, radio is hopelessly screwed. In an age of video-on-demand, Last FM and iPods, why listen to someone else's choice of music when you can get a choice specifically produced for your own tastes?
On-demand radio is similarly screwed: not through want of trying of the broadcasters, but the record companies have forgotten who made their business in the first place, and are now greedily wishing to extract more money from the radio business, blindly unaware that on-demand audio will be the future.
The greed of the record companies, and sheer unimaginitiveness of the old guard within radio, will kill the medium stone dead: at least, for music content. This is possibly a good thing.
MDTthinks: Radio will evolve just like everything else. There will always be that need to discover new music. So far, radio has been the best way to do that. As long as I could listen to my music mix as well as be introduced to new music similar to my favorites, I would be happy.
loujosephsthinks: HD Radio is like AM stereo it's DOA, no one wants it and more importantly no one can figure out how to program the stations on the sub channels. It is not the savior of radio as we know it.
Streaming is tied up in knots over copyright issues, the recording industry has made it next to impossible to stream popular music without paying the artists (again) which to me really doesn't make any sense as most radio stations have to pay to play the music on air and then get hit again with a fee to stream it online. Too many hands in my pocket thank you very much.
As for DAB, this too may be still born as you still can't find an affordable device to get the content.
At the end of the day I think we missed the boat what the device is that will catch the content.
Podcasts are nice but it may just be a fad.
Time shifiting could be the way but it depends on how fast the next generation of telephone products will get rolled out. Could you stream with good quality to a phone headset, the answer is yet if the telephone network supports the bandwdith and in the US most of the major carriers can do it. The Treo and the Windows version of the Treo and even the slimline broadband phone from Motorola could be the way we find out about what's going on in the world. I think we are going to see content platforms we haven't even thought about yet.
But I cannot conceive a radioless world though. The cheapest portabe gadget will not disappear, no matters how much it evolves.
One of the scenes I will always keep in mind is that of supporters in a stadium during football matches holding a small radio and listening to the game!
radioMIKEthinks: Yes, radio is marvellous and the future is multi-platform, but please let's not take anything for granted. Millions of South Koreans listen to their mobile TVs while driving to work and I am starting to hear about the same thing in London. Radio is only as good as its content - if there is nothing relevant or interesting on, the man on the Clapham omnibus will listen to his iPod instead.
