Radio: The resilient medium in today’s increasingly diverse multiplatform media environment.

Radio is a resilient medium. As in different countries around the world celebrations are being planned to mark the 100th anniversaries of the first regular domestic radio services, early predictions of its demise have so far been proven wrong. Radio transmission remains overwhelmingly analogue in a world where digital switchover of television currently preoccupies many governments and audiences alike

The Quiet Revolution: DAB and the Switchover to Digital Radio in the United Kingdom

If the development of digital radio is a revolution in audiences¿ consumption of the medium led by relatively recent advances in distribution technology, it is a limited one. Yet, in the United Kingdom the impact of Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) has far outstripped that elsewhere in the developed world. Behind dramatic recent growth in receiver sales and listening hours lie concerted public and private sector investment, massive falls in unit pricing and a broadening of choice through the provision of additional, as opposed to simulcast, services. DAB is not having an easy ride, though, and competition from other digital media as well as doubts about the technology mean the revolution could still falter, as the commercial sector in particular struggles to maintain its investment and new services close. A brief flirtation with mobile television, once promising instant returns on that investment, ended abruptly this year, but television may again come to the rescue.The coming year will be decisive in determining whether in the UK radio does indeed have its own digital switchover.; El desarrollo de la radio digital es una revolución en el consumo del medio por parte de su audiencia de resultas de avances en la tecnología distributiva, pero es muy limitada. Sin embargo en el Reino Unido el impacto del sistema DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) es el más avanzado en el mundo desarrollado. Crecimientos grandes en las ventas de receptores y en las horas de escucha, han venido de las manos de una inversión concertada de los sectores públicos y privados, reducciones en los precios de las unidades y una gran expansión en la diversidad de canales, en lugar de retransmitir simultáneamente servicios analógicos existentes. Aunque el sistema DAB tiene un futuro incierto, y la concurrencia de los otros medios digitales, con dudas sobre la tecnología, amenazan la revolución numérica, mientras el sector privado se esfuerza en mantener su inversión y se cierren nuevos canales. Un flirteo breve con la televisión móvil, que a la vez parecía ofrecer rendimientos inmediatos de esta inversión, se ha paralizado repentinamente este año, pero con todo la televisión puede ir al socorro de la radio.El año que viene será decisivo si de verdad la radio tendrá su propio revolución digital.; Irrati digitalaren garapena entzulegoak egiten duen hedabidearen kontsumoan iraultza bat da. Teknologia distributiboan egin diren aurrerapenak oso garrantzitsua izan dira, baina haien zabalkundea oso mugatua izan da, Erresuma Batuan izan ezik, non DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) sistemaren eragina munduko handiena izan den. Saldutako hargailuen kopurua eta entzuleen ordu kopuruen gorakada sektore publiko eta pribatuek adostutako inbertsioen eskutik etorri da, baina baita ere unitateen merketzeari eta kanalen ugaritzeari esker. DAB sistemak etorkizun zalantzagarri bat izan eta gainerako hedabide digitalen etorrerak iraultza numerikoa ezbaian jartzen duen arren, sektore pribatua egin dituen inbertsioak babesten saiatzen ari da. Telebista mugikorarrekin izan zen elkarlan laburra, berehalako etekinak emango zituela zirudiena, aurten bat-batean amaitu da. Datorren urtea erabakiorra izango da irratiak bere iraultza digitala edukiko duen jakiteko

Multimedia journalism: A comparative study of six news web sites in China and the UK.

China and the United Kingdom are countries which differ greatly, not least in traditional and new media. This paper will consider a number of structural and content issues around the output of mainstream multimedia journalism in these two very different news markets. Through a detailed comparative textual analysis of three major news web sites in each of the two countries, it will examine ways in which contemporary information technology and recently-evolved epistemological, linguistic and aesthetic conventions in communicating news and current affairs narratives affect multimedia reporting on mainstream online news websites. The paper presents the latest results of a detailed content analysis of interactive multimedia reporting in China and the UK on three randomly-chosen days over a period of two months. The data set was derived from a range of different media organisations exhibiting sufficient commonalities of objective and perspective to allow relevant comparisons to be made between practices in multimedia news journalism in the two countries. In China, Xinhua Wang is a state news agency whose main public presence is online, while Nandu Wang and Renming Wang are newspapers with identifiably left-leaning and right-leaning tendencies respectively in their political outlook. In the UK, the BBC is a public service broadcaster operating nonetheless at some distance from government, but which makes extensive use of its online presence to post journalistic content on domestic and international news web sites, while The Guardian and The Telegraph are both newspapers that are situated on the left and right of UK politics respectively

Consolidation in the UK commercial radio sector: the impact on newsroom practice of recent changes in regulation, ownership and the local content requirement

This article aims to explore the implications for local radio news in the UK commercial radio industry of a series of changes to the regulation of the sector since it was first established in the 1970s. A recent regulatory focus on product rather than process has enabled groups of stations to move not only programming production but also much news journalism out of the editorial areas it is intended to serve and into news ‘hubs’ intended to rationalize the process of news gathering and bulletin presentation and enable the groups to become increasingly profitable. The article considers a number of issues around the management of commercial radio groups in the United Kingdom, the development and, most recently, exploitation of the group ownership system of what mainly began as locally owned and locally operated radio stations, and the appropriateness of the current regulatory regime in the much altered media landscape of today. It uses original data derived from the ownership groups themselves to show the extent to which ‘hubs’ are routinely being used to increase profitability by making economies of scale, while also taking news journalism out of the editorial areas it is intended to cover

Radio, the Resilient Medium Papers from the Third Conference of the ECREA Radio Research Section

Radio is a resilient medium. It has evolved considerably over its hundred-year history and we have every reason to believe that evolution will continue. This book is a peer- reviewed collection of papers from the third conference of the Radio Research Section of the European Research and Education Association (ECREA), held at the London Campus of the University of Sunderland in September 2013. It represents some of the best research presented at the conference, but every chapter has been revised and edited prior to publication. The book, like the conference, is an initiative of the Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies (CRMCS), which is based in Sunderland. Published by the Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies, University of Sunderland, Sunderland, United Kingdom SR1 3SD

Balance and bias in Radio Fours Today programme, during the 1997 general election campaign.

This research considered aspects of balance and bias in radio broadcasting, focusing on\ud thirty-nine editions of the Today programme (Radio Four) during the last general\ud election campaign period. The rationale for such a selection was that during a\ud campaign, broadcasters are under the greatest obligation, both morally and legally, to\ud ensure overall 'balance' in their coverage.\ud In Chapter One, a literature survey compares different perspectives on balance and bias,\ud both professional and academic, and relates them to public controversies about political\ud coverage in the period preceding the election. In Chapter Two, the survey extends to\ud interviewing techniques and the presence of confrontation in political interviews. Both\ud chapters set Today in a wider context.\ud Chapter Three considers the research methodology. Attention is paid to the potential for\ud reflexivity in such an analysis, and the possibility of textual readings being distorted\ud through additional hermeneutic layers.\ud During the campaign period, a self-selected but coincidentally representative group of\ud listeners provided both quantitative and qualitative feedback via an original\ud questionnaire. This is reported in Chapter Four as producing some interesting\ud conclusions about audience reading of radio texts and perceptions of balance and bias.\ud These data were compared with readings by a party political monitor whose role during\ud the campaign was to analyse political coverage on Today. Chapters Five and Six present a detailed textual analysis, by both quantitative and\ud qualitative means, of the programmes themselves. Emphasis is placed on the objective\ud rather than the subjective, determining common points of reference and comparing like\ud elements.\ud Finally, a number of specific conclusions are reached, about the conduct of the\ud programme makers themselves and about more general practices in political coverage by\ud broadcasters

Public service media in the United Kingdom: A strong public sector with an uncertain future

The current popularity of both radio and television services in the United Kingdom which are run on a not-for-profit basis, be they operated by the BBC or to a much lesser extent by the state-owned Channel 4, attests to the strength of public service broadcasting there. Largely – as this article seeks to explain – the strengths of the BBC and the influence of the public service ethos even in the way mainstream private-sector broadcasting, especially television, is regulated, can be attributed to the importance placed upon public service media right from the 1920s. Even in this pluralistic, multi-platform, age of media proliferation, the effects can be seen of the early establishment of clear objectives and standards for the sector by its founders, which have been largely maintained by their successors. There have been many pressures on the BBC and its supporters in public life to cede territory to the commercial sector, but although change has in some respects been inevitable, the corporation’s funding model and constitution have served the population well in bolstering the BBC against such attacks on its ability to function as an important bulwark of quality broadcasting and freedom of expression in democratic society. This is not merely a matter of territory, though, of spectrum allocation and the distribution of resources. It is also about public perceptions of the BBC and its output, the trust it enjoys among its audiences and the resultant brand loyalty upon which it ultimately depends and which is firmly rooted in quality and inclusiveness. This public sector ethos has, however, almost inevitably been weakened since the 1920s, as increasingly strident voices have lobbied for greater opportunities for the private sector to generate as much profit as possible from broadcasting have gained greater traction at certain critical points in the history of broadcasting, as is now also the case in 2016