Radio from the printing press

Audio used to be the property of radio. But these times are gone. Newspapers are crossing the borders. Francesca Panetta (The Guardian), head of audio, has been a radio maker for a long time, before she went to the Guardian five years ago. Today she and her team produce 30 minutes podcasts ("intelligent high quality audio") of all kinds, including documentaries. Successfully: The Guardian website counts 375.000 listeners a week.

Usually the print journalists come up with the ideas and topics, whereas the radio journalists do the audio and video programmes. Multimedia is a growing part of the company (costs: £ 3M/year), Panetta says, and their task is to implement the Guardian's "Digital First" strategy. Multimedia projects, audio slides, an IP TV channel, long format TV - "the Guardian, 190 years old, is a very agile company", as Panetta puts it. "They are not afraid of failures. When I came there was just a newspaper website. 'Launch something else', they said to me. And we do. It's a really exciting place to be."

Nutshell: John Theocharis

“What a nice coincidence that your ‘digital’ discussion in Leipzig takes place exactly 75 years since a British scientist, Alec Reeves, filed the first patent describing Pulse-Code Modulation in 1937. Within five years, in 1943, his invention had led to the first Digital Scrambled Speech Tx System, and by 1985 to the first 12-track mixer-recorder. And the rest, as they say, is History, and very exciting too!

I am pleased to say that by and large I agree with the views, the challenges and the reservations already expressed. I was lucky enough to experience the great advantages of digital recording and editing in the early nineties, and I certainly taste the offers of the likes of Radio Player, BBC iplayer etc...

Nothing perfect under the sun, and, like any other relatively new departure, the spread of Digital offers excitements along with some worries as has already been noted. I see no need to go over known ground, but I certainly hope that the marvellous facilities in recording, editing and compiling Radio Features, for instance, of exceptional sound quality won’t compromise the essential quality of content and production. I’m sure none of us would be interested in the radio equivalent of ‘fast food’, thank you very much! The customer we serve, the good, serious radio listener, deserves better.

I firmly believe that ideally in radio drama and Features 1+1=3; that, if you like, 2+2=5, or even 6! The structure, the juxtaposition of elements can create fleeting yet almost solid entities on the listener’s inner screen, and give him or her a rare insight or satisfaction. So, let’s be positive, try to solve practical questions of Rights, of length of time allotted to recording, production, editing etc. And, above all, let’s always do our personal best for the sake of our fellow-worker, the listener.

Sorry about the size of this Coconut, but do allow me to conclude with a few lines from something I wrote for another radio occasion.

The listener’s Computer-Brain,
- The world’s most wonderful machine -,
Enables him to bring to life
What’s only heard and never seen.
At its most brilliant, Radio is
A perfect form of Television;
It gives us sounds, silence and words,
And we ourselves supply our Vision.
Yes! Genuine Radio is at heart
A Visual Craft that’s life-enhancing.
A crafted piece of Radio
Can take a man or woman
To the essence, to the very heart
Of being alive, human."

John Theocharis, freelancer, United Kingdom

Is the screen a space for features?

Radio feature makers are storytellers. The recent death of Kodak is a great story, Simon Elmes (BBC, radio documentary/creative director) says. Kodak has been obliterated by the "creative destruction" of the digital age. In short: Kodak was slow, conservative, and became obsolete. How about the radio documentary?

The good news first, according to Simon Elmes:

• Classic radio doc is in good health.
• Features and feature-type programmes are still plentiful.
• Craft standards have risen.
• In recent cuts, speech radio largely escaped unscathed.
• Production time has been protected.
• Audiences are rising.

But as to the audiences, there are challenges.

• shortening attention-span
• permanent multi-tasking
• impatience with programmes that "don't deliver quickly"
• loss of "radio culture" amongst key future demographics (15-35 year-olds)
• many of this group don't own a radio, or even a DAB set
• absence of radio devices smartphones

In a noisy marketplace and in times of poor funding, the quiet seriousness of sustained feature-making of up to one hour in length is necessarily going to be a luxury that fewer people will consume. The responses: short forms, packages, magazine programmes. The dangers: a loss of culture, de-skilling.

As a possible response Elmes presents an experiment called "Don't log off", a BBC project meant to be a source for feature material. Fans of the "Don't log off" Facebook page were interviewed via Skype and told their personal, touching stories which were recorded, combined to narratives of life and loss, and broadcast. The "Don't log off" Facebook community lives on, its members keep communicating with one another. "A kind of real life reality soap", Elmes says.

"The web throws the basic parameters of professional feature-making into question", Elmes concludes. "Anyone can assemble and disseminate. Everyone talks about personalisation - what form does a personalised feature take?" The big questions remain: Is the screen an art space? How do we fill it for features? visualisation? slide shows? complementary feature content? do-it-yourself content?

But change you must

Andy Parfitt (formerly head of BBC 1, now Saatchi & Saatchi Fallon, executive director of talent EMEA) starts by looking back to the times when radio feature making basically meant cutting audio tapes. Sitting there with all the material, the core of the editing process was exactly the same as it is today: to bring clarity and simplicity to the stories to be told.

"Public broadcasters tend to be afraid of young audiences. They fear not to understand them", Parfitt says. Yet, catching young audiences are the true challenge. How bridge the gap? "Brand thinking is very relevant to feature making in the Facebook age", Parfitt says. A brand is a promise, an experience, and a memory. So if a radio station thinks about using other ways of distribution such as the web or social media, brand values become even more important. Parfitt's lessons learnt:

• Consistent values and content
• Success makes change hard, but change you must.
• Producers are very often very unlike audiences.
• Radio people mostly have humility. Which is wrong.
• Whatever you do, make it more than broadcasting - make it as much as it can credibly be. "BBC Radio 1", Parfitt says, "is an idea, an idea about youth, about music - and everything done on air, on the web, on mobiles, is congruent."

Parfitt's "new creative agenda": event-driven participation and playfulness. The world has changed:

• Young radio listening hours (audiences younger than 35) in the UK are in decline.
• Mobile web on hi-definition screens sees exponential growth.
• Social Networks in the UK increase bei 400% in 4 years.
• Try asking for a radio in a Tokyo electronic store...
• Public radio continue continue to commission thousands of audio features.
• There's more "listening" than ever.
• Speech radio audiences commute by car (journeys are getting longer).
• Apple has sold its one-hundred millionth iPod in 2007.

There are only 13 years between the first Netscape browser and the iPhone 4 - an industrial revolution beyond imagination. Today, Parfitt concludes, the opportunities for innovation are plenty.

Nutshell: Connor Walsh

“Radio features are pure humanity, yet are grounded in technology. That foundation has evolved – field recording, to stereo, to digital broadcast and now on-demand.

Evolution, to us non-scientists, means survival of the fittest, and extinction of the laggards.

There's a feature producer at Radio New Zealand who had the choice of retiring along with the tape machines, or of facing up to learning a digital editing system. He chose to stay working, and a few years later his cubical wall was adorned with love poems to someone called "Sadie".

He chose not to retire, because of financial necessity.

This may ring familiar: the human fight amidst the machines.

Radio features makers are curious and egotistical people, so we should enjoy digging into new ways of being heard, no?"

Connor Walsh, In The Dark Radio, manager, United Kingdom

Nutshell: Francesca Panetta

“I moved from traditional broadcasting to the world of online audio five years ago and it has been a joy. The constraints of fixed broadcast durations were removed along with the expected treatments and formats. Suddenly I could play! And I believe that our audiences are listening differently - with heightened attention, downloading works to listen to consciously at the time that suits them and usually on headphones in true stero rather than the mono kitchen speakers that most radio programmes are head through.

Online audio has proved it doesn't have to be second rate audio but it does need two things: 1) a financial model which sustains the kind of serious journalism and craft that goes in to many of the radio documentaries that are being produced in Europe and 2) an easy way of consuming the pieces so listening is as easy as turning on your fm radio. Technology will in time take care of the second but unlike the music industry, speech radio still has to find a way of funding itself in the world of the internet. That is our challenge."

Francesca Panetta, The Guardian, head of audio, United Kingdom

Nutshell: Simon Elmes

“First the good news. Classic radio documentary is in generally good health in the BBC. Features and feature-type programmes are still plentiful and craft standards have risen in recent years. In the severe cuts announced in October 2011, serious speech radio (including documentaries and drama) escaped significant reductions. Time for producers to make programmes has traditionally been less than in other countries (especially Scandinavia) but is being protected and not reduced. Audiences are rising.

The big challenge stems from the audience: shortening attention span, multi-tasking, impatience with programmes that 'don't deliver quickly' and the loss of 'radio culture' amongst key future demographics (15-35 year-olds) threaten future health. Many of this group simply don't own a radio, even a DAB set. The absence of radio devices on certain platforms (especially smartphones) is a serious threat. Despite the advantages of podcasts - and they are in the ascendant - in a noisy marketplace, the quiet seriousness of sustained feature-making of up to one hour in length is necessarily going to be a luxury that fewer people will wish to enjoy. We need to find forms and approaches to both editorial and technological challenges that respond to those needs."

Simon Elmes, BBC, radio documentary/creative director, United Kingdom

Nutshell: James Cridland

“When I started in radio, the only way to record audio was a large bulky reel-to-reel tape recorder, which I lugged from the studios to interviews in factories, pubs and hotels. The only way to edit audio was to deftly use a razor-blade, a chinagraph pencil and some splicing tape in large, purpose-built studios. The only way for listeners to hear to that audio was through a carefully-edited AM or FM broadcast; and the only way to listen was live. And for a listener who wished to take part, they could do so by writing a postcard, or calling from their home telephone. In 2012, I can record audio, edit it and make it available directly from my mobile phone. On their computer or phone, listeners can listen whenever they like, wherever they are; and share audio every bit as technically good as our own. Radio - and the media - has changed. Are we changing with it?"

James Cridland, Media UK, managing director, radio futurologist, United Kingdom

Nutshell: Simon Elmes

“The radio feature is the highest form of art-concealing-art the medium proposes. Programme makers construct their reversion of reality that artfully finds compelling stories in the banal, the everyday, the 'normal'. The people are the story and the tellers of the story, and the artistry of the maker conspires to offer articulacy to the inarticulate, to discover beauty in the trashcan, to build a story that will stir hearts and challenge minds. It's making Hamlet from Tower Hamlets, The Seagull from Southampton docks… Yet now it finds its artistry challenged by a medium whose day-to-day idiom is the readymade, the transient, the baggy, the brief, the haphazard… Does the feature-maker undo his / her artistry, unmake the perfection? …create the Artfully Artless? Ponder on."

Simon Elmes, BBC, radio documentary, creative director, United Kingdom