Beyond Media ‘Platforms’? Talkback, Radio, Technolgy and Audience

Abstract

Technology has had an important influence on the constitution and participation of the commercial metropolitan radio audience. The introduction of ‘open-line’ radio from the 1960s was heralded as a novelty for audience participation in radio programming, but was hindered by technical impediments to the quality of telephone and radio recording technologies. In the 1990s, the advent of mobile telephony liberated talkback listeners from their anchoring in the domestic sphere. This article examines how successive media technologies have influenced the experience of commercial radio audiences from the 1960s through to the present. Acknowledging the increasing convergence between traditional media platforms and content, it considers whether newer technologies such as the internet are fundamentally altering the shape and function of listener participation in commercial metropolitan radio programs.

The Final Word on sports podcasts: Audience perceptions of media engagement and news consumption

“…In this study, there is a smaller number of listeners who subscribe to magazinesaround 20%but the remainder receive at least some of their news and cricket-related information from a podcast that has elements of a magazine format, with its inclusion of results, interviews, commentary, and analysis (see Gingell, 2020Gingell, , 2021. As a result, it is combining the strengths of radiothe most popular medium for consuming cricket content in the surveywith digital journalism (see Gould, 2009;Ofcom, 2019), and helping to expand the sports media field. In cricket, The Final Word podcast applies traditional media approaches in a contemporary format, offering listeners a radiodigital-magazine-style in a podcast…”

“…Podcasting as a medium is considered to have started in 2004, but was still growing quickly in the 2010s (Berry, 2016; McHugh, 2016; Ratts and Benedek, 2021). In Australia, Radio National started trialling podcasts in 2005 before they were expanded across the Australia Broadcasting Corporation, and then adopted by commercial radio in the following years (Gould, 2009; Griffen-Foley, 2006). By the mid-2010s podcasts were considered, as Berry (2016) notes, part of the media establishment.…”

“…As McHugh (2016) states, podcasting is not only delivering audio content, but also focusing on the production and consumption of content. In this way, it provides a combination of the strengths of radio, such as storytelling, interviewing, and discussion across a range of genres (see Ofcom, 2019), with the benefits of digital journalism, with episodes available to be downloaded online and consumed at any time (see Gould, 2009).…”

Broadcast Journalism of Private Radio in Cirebon, Indonesia, in the Convergence Era

“…Within the radio industry, the expansion has been seen in different parts of the world in various styles and ways. The expansion of the radio broadcasting industry due to technology has been shown, among others, by the development of transmedia radio storytelling content and the Hackney Hear iPhone application in the United States, Canada, and Australia (Edmond, 2015); development of talkback programming in Australia in the 1990s via on-site, audio streaming services with web-cam images (Gould, 2009); development of digital radio in Australia and America through L-band transmission (Berryman, 1999); development of streaming or podcasting services on the web as well as iOS applications to listen to traditional North American music radio broadcast content (Cwynar, 2017); development of the iPod as a new method to distribute the conventional radio broadcast (Berry, 2006); independent audio podcasting development (Markman, 2012), and others.…”