Day two: another personal conclusion

Exciting two days, a fascinating round of devoted radio makers, thrilling discussions. But questions remain.

Everybody has been talking about multimedia for the past ten years. That was just the wrong discussion. It never was about multimedia. It's about media instead. About stories, thoroughly researched and artfully crafted. Stories told on all channels there are today: radio, TV, the web, games, audio guides, pods and pads, mobiles, virtually any device capable of reproducing sound.

Of course: Radio documentaries are expensive, and budgets are cut down. Yet, the audience will always be in need of good stories, and public radio managers will always be in need of good content. And: There are a number of options.

• There's inventive and participatory projects, there's user-generated content.
• There's viral marketing, social media communication, crowdfunding.
• There's radio events engaging young listeners as well as producers.
• There's new multimedia platforms minimizing the distribution costs.
• There are different backgrounds for radio docs, like classical or rock and pop channels.
• There's collaboration with other feature makers, cross-company, cross-country.
• There's cooperations with other broadcasters, with newspapers, telecom and mobile companies, universities, museums.
• There's new forms and formats, fascinating combinations of radio doc and other art forms.

And above all: There's all those original, weird, fantastic ideas making original, weird, fantastic pieces of audio art. This is what it's all about.

Paths in the legal jungle

"Copyright is very complicated", says Peter Goethals from the legal department of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). International treaties, EU-wide harmonisation attempts, national copyright laws (defining subject matter, originality, authorship, ownership, moral richts, and contract aspects) are a legal jungle. There are reproduction rights. there is the right to broadcast. There are authors, performers, CD producers, film producers, broadcasters, ISPs, and they all claim their rights. A way out might be a more efficient licensing model, Goethals says: Today's complex licensing processes lead to wasting money on administration instead of spending it on creativity. Simplified licensing is also important in the fight against online piracy.

In 2010 the EBU made a proposal ("Modern copyright for digital media") in order to achieve a modern, coherent rights clearance system for both traditional radio and TV services and proadcasting-related online services. "Its basis", Goethals says, "is to apply the law of only one country, being the law of the member state in which the broadcaster sits". The EBU also proposes a broader use of the "Extended Collective Licensising Systems", a rights clearance system successful in northern Europe that is more flexible, technologically neutral and future-proof. Another EBU proposal: a simplified music licensing for online services. "What we need is a one stop shop", as Goethals puts it: Public service broadcasters are mass-users of music (a major broadcaster uses up to 200.000 music pieces per year), and EBU members pay over 1 billion Euros every year. Today's individual licensing system does not make sense any more.

Day one: a personal conclusion

What a relief: The audience still is faithful to crafted radio. Yet, radio doc makers must look for new ways of telling their stories in the multimedia world. Mind the power of the archives: So many documentaries have been buried there to be forgotten - the Irish RTE project of daily publishing archived radio docs online is highly promising.

The web provides what radio doc makers have been dreaming of for decades: the ability of telling stories when, where and how the audience wants. "Whe have not chosen the internet", Silvain Gire (head of Arte radio, Paris) says, "the internet has chosen us". Yet knowing that the business of radio doc being sound, and knowing the internet being a powerful new means of distribution, new media can be more: an open space from which new formats can arise - thrilling new combinations of media (audio, text, photo) that have been separate so far.

Radio is special. Radio is a home rather than media; no other media eventually is as close to its audience. But linear radio consumption is in decline, and multimedia distribution is meant to compensate. On the other hand, the web is becoming more and more personal; nowadays our web browser knows more about ourselves than we do, and narrows our horizon. (Social media platforms may widen it again, allowing discoveries on the basis of our friends' preferences.)

Media making is telling stories. And nobody tells stories better than radio features do. Linear broadcasting, that fantastic discovery machine, is unreplaceable, and yet is has to be reinvented. I believe that virtually nobody can do this better than the best storytellers there are: radio doc makers.

The multi-platform future

Let's talk about technology: It is new technology that changes radio. In March 2005 the headline of the  "Wired" magazine read "The end of radio". Nothing could be more wrong. Radio appears to be at pretty good health: 90% of the audiences in the UK listen to the radio at least once a week. "Radio is massive", James Cridland (Media UK, managing director radio futurologist) says. People still discover music mainly through radio, either on AM/FM or on the web. Why could "Wired" be so wrong?

The radio world is highly fragmented; there are very few real radio brands. Broadcasting technology is fragmented as well - FM/AM, Internet, mobile phones, DAB/DAB+, DTV... "The world is getting multi-platform", Cridland says, "and radio is going multi-platform as well." Still 2/3 of the radio consumtion is by FM/AM, yet there is DAB (BBC radio 6 music), or even TV (BBC radio 1xtra).

The most important radio platform, Cridland says, is the internet. Yet, every station has got its own player and distribution technology - the only exception being the UK radio player replacing all the different players the stations had built before. (Its usage is exactly the same as it always was: When people are getting up they tune in, either on AM/FM or on the web, and they keep using the radio player the whole day long, until late at night.)

The second most important platform is the mobile, especially the iPhone, a device that has done so much better than any other mobile device. Accordingly the question should be: How can we do the same with radio? By means of crowdsourcing and user-generated content. An remarkable tool for getting the audiences' voice on air is AudioBoo.fm, a mobile app that lets people record and hand in their recordings with a single tap. The industrial revolution called internet can also change the process of radio making. Instead of of costly radio studios you just need a free software like Audacity or an iPhone/iPad/Android app to create high quality audio pieces.

Publishing programmes on the web, Cridland says, will let much more people listen to them than just by broadcasting. Cridland's conclusions:

• The future of radio is multiplatform.
• Radio needs to concentrate on the user interface and discovery.
• Media is changing from consumption to creation.
• Recognise the power of the brand.

Public service radio: Still going strong but declining

"In terms of reach and market share, public service radio broadcasting is still going strong, but on the long run it is declining", says Alexander Shulzycki, head of research, European Broadcasting Union. Even though the reach still is remarkably strong across Europe, a long term erosion has become obvious. On the other hand, Facebook, Twitter and video-sharing sites are increasing fast. On average public service Media are present on three social media platforms. Services like Spotify.com dominates the online listening with younger generations. Yet, 71% do not make their broadcasts available online due to copyright problems.

Media surveys in the U.S. shows a slow but steady growth of online radio consumption over the past eight years (Pandora.com, an algorithm-driven online music service not available in Europe, dominating online listening). U.S. audiences listen to radio via mobile phones (mostly downloaded music, also podcasts and simulcasts) and iPads.

Knowing that traditional market research can hardly predict what is ahead of us, Shulzycki's 10 to-dos for public service broadcasters are:

1. Use storytelling and dramatury in order to enhance audience interaction.
2. Split your content on different platforms.
3. Enhance on-air, online and on-site cross-media interaction.
4. Ensure your presence on the platforms where your listeners are.
5. Protect your channel brand and bring your listeners back home (to your website).
6. Personalise and create narrative content.
7. Take advantage of user-generated content (UGC) and the "collective mind" of the listeners.
8. Pay attention to on-topic posts published by listeners and fans.
9. Pay attention to the social media manager (a key success factor).
10. Make creative and experimental use of social media.

Welcome to the Think Tank Leipzig!

Welcome to the Think Tank Leipzig! Here, surrounded by the astounding architecture of the Mediencampus Leipzig and hosted by the Medienstiftung der Sparkasse Leipzig we will start our discussions on the radio feature, on cultural radio and its audience, on old and new media. We will look for new ways to go, and we will spend the next two days drawing the outlines of a better future. (And I, Thomas Weibel, will be drawing with and blogging* for you.)

* The Think Tank Leipzig blog is meant to be a kind of memorandum in the Latin sense of the word. Yet, I need your help: Join in the discussions, feel free to agree, disagree, correct, comment, and add whatever you like. The "comment" button - this blog! - is yours.

The radio documentary in the digital age

You are keen on learning about the future of radio documentaries. You believe in the power of the web, and you do know that multimedia, crossmedia and transmedia are no buzzwords but the place where future will take old media to. So welcome to the Think Tank Leipzig!

The Think Tank Leipzig will

• focus on existing strategies from across Europe,
• talk about the needed means and skills,
• look at the legal obstacles,
• analyse today's radio usage, and
• concentrate on innovative radio feature forms.

Our discussions will take place at the Leipzig Media Campus, and our host will be the Media Foundation of the Sparkasse Leipzig. Its

“commitment is the fostering of the training and continuing education of young people in the media field. This involves the presentation of scholarships (such as in the context of the Leipzig Media Award), targeted project support, and the organization of events furthering political education. The projects of the Foundation are financed by the income of the Foundation’s treasury as well as the contributions and donations of third parties."