Abstract
Since its early days radio has reached people in ways other media could not reach. It’s still the case today, argue a host of industry experts
CREDIT: Lisess/iStock
The Voice of Refugees
Germany has welcomed thousands of refugees over the last few years, but their voices have been largely absent from the public sphere. Larry Moore Macaulay addressed this by founding Refugee Radio Network, where he is editor-in-chief and head of production.
“Radio, for us, is the easiest, most accessible medium of communication,” he told Index. “It allows newcomers, people who are new in the community, to express themselves, share stories and engage in discussions live on air with the wider community.”
Based in Hamburg, RRN broadcasts 24 hours a day online, with shows in various languages and partnerships with radio stations across Germany and in Austria, Italy, France and Greece. It is run by journalists and activists from countries including Syria and Somalia. It has become a vital network for people scattered around the continent.
“We receive videos and audiotapes which we share, and we are acting as citizen journalists,” Macaulay said. “We let the people talk about issues that affect them. Different stories come up in each city, but they are always similar in nature.”
Macaulay was speaking from southern Italy, where he has been reaching out to new arrivals. He said the station provided meaningful work for those who might be vulnerable.
“We’ve been able to deradicalise young people who are vulnerable and use the radio to keep them engaged. We’ve been able to talk [to] people who are sitting down in a refugee camp for two years, doing nothing, and they are a target for radical elements online or on the ground to recruit people. We can give them meaningful engagement.”
Although RRN hasn’t faced direct censorship, Macaulay said the station regularly received hateful emails and messages, but refuses to be deterred.
The Sound of the Underground
Pirate radio has long been a vital launchpad for UK music. In the 1960s, stations based in international waters introduced pop music to the UK’s airwaves, exploiting a legal loophole that closed in 1967. Still, free of the agendas of BBC or commercial radio, from the 1980s through to the 2000s DIY aerials taped to the top of tower blocks launched raw underground music genres such as jungle, drum and bass, garage and, most recently, grime. DJ Allan Brando, head of pirate station Buzz Radio 103.8FM, told Index he loves the freedom of illegal broadcasting.
“We take the talent from out of the ghettos, the estates, the community areas, and make them stars because the legal stations won’t do it,” he said. “We have the opportunity to hear a song and say ‘You know what? We’re going to play that on the radio tomorrow.’ You couldn’t expect a legal station to do that.”
For decades, illegal radio was the only outlet for marginalised artists, especially grime MCs, who frequently saw their gigs shut down by police. This year, in a documentary produced by the UK’s Channel 4, rapper Frisco reflected on how broadcasting live sets from boarded-up flats and hastily packing up to evade police raids became an integral part of underground music culture.
In recent years, the importance of pirate radio has been undermined by online platforms such as Soundcloud and YouTube. Young artists, including award-winning rapper Stormzy, are able to launch their careers with viral videos, though Brando believes that radio still has a unique reach.
“As long as FM [radio] is about, it’s always going to be the biggest form of listenership. People play it in cars, in their shops. You’re never going to beat that until FM goes completely out. You get a more real connection to the people.”
Station Debates the Future
“We covered the Umbrella Movement all the time. We’ve had people saying the Beijing government are a group of gangsters. We are as free as anywhere you know in the world to talk about sensitive issues,” claimed Hugh Chiverton, head of English programmes at RTHK, Hong Kong’s official radio and TV broadcaster.
RTHK, which operates primarily in Cantonese, Mandarin and English, exists in a precarious media landscape. Conditions for press freedom in the semi-autonomous city have been deteriorating rapidly in recent years. In August it was announced RTHK will drop a lot of its BBC feed in favour of China National Radio.
But Chiverton said while “there will be less BBC relayed than before”, there will not be “none” and that the station aims for “overall balanced coverage”.
“We don’t have a stance on things and we’ll encourage debate. We’ll balance panels and, as a host, I will try to seek a fair representation of views … Neutrality for RTHK is not dictated by the People’s Republic of China,” he claimed.
“In all the time I’ve been at RTHK, we’ve never had any orders, either explicit or even implicit, to tone down stories.”
Chiverton believes RTHK has been spared because it is a public broadcaster, immune to the commercial pressures Hong Kong’s privately-owned media face, many of which have backers with political and business ties to China.
Listener stats across the RTHK stations come in at around three million a week, according to Chiverton, not bad in a city of seven million.
As a result, RTHK impacts the political landscape, with leading political figures going on air to be “moderately grilled by our presenters and phonein sessions, too”.
“Hong Kong is quite a small place and it’s a bit of a pressure cooker. People are gossipy and very engaged in current affairs,” he said.
And the media “makes a lot of fuss if some restrictions are imposed”. Radio, which he believes is “freer than other media in Hong Kong”, then sits at the centre of this fuss.
Globally Connected
“In the last year in particular, the news landscape has been so dramatic globally, particularly in the USA, that speech radio has really been thriving as people have a real hunger to know and understand what is going on,” said Mary Hockaday, controller of BBC World Service English, when asked about rising listener figures worldwide.
Hockaday sees radio as a place where ideas can be debated by a wide range of people. At its base it is “people talking and people talking to each other and the sharing of ideas and stories. It’s a wonderful medium for airing ideas”. It is a “really effective and powerful medium”.
One reason that radio is a vital news pipeline in many parts of the world, in Hockaday’s view, is that it’s “a platform that can cross borders and go above heads of state”. Shortwave radio continues to be used, particularly in places that are remote and hard to reach and where other media is not available. While governments can take measures to block stations, people can often find ways and means to get around this.
In its biggest expansion since the 1940s, the BBC World Service is adding new language services for regions struggling for well researched news with 11 new languages, including Serbian and Oromo, recently announced.
Radio’s strength is that “it’s cheap and flexible technology”, said Hockaday. People who have the inclination can make their own audio with little more than a smartphone, she said. “You can record yourself or someone else, or content of some kind. You can post it and pretty instantaneously start distributing the audio … It’s all possible at an incredibly low cost.
“If you make good content that serves people’s needs, there’s a real appetite for knowing what’s going on around the world, understanding it and making connections.”
Bringing News to the People
Shu Choudhary, founder of CGnet Swara, an innovative radio service in central India, believes that radio could be immensely important in the country, but it is being held back by national legislation.
Former Index award-winner Choudhary said: “You have heard of the Third World? There is a Fourth World where radio is very important; 100 million people have very little access to media. Those people are dependent on audio communication.”
Choudhary runs a radiolike service using non-smart-phones, which are widely available for poorer communities in the Gondwana region, and allows people to phone in to listen to the news and to exchange stories on Bluetooth. But he said: “It’s not ideal. It’s not the easiest or the cheapest thing to do.”
While Indian newspapers and television have been freed from tight state regulation, news radio has not, despite indications, going back to 2004, that they would. “That’s when the government was going to open up radio. After 13 years nothing has changed.”
He believes good news radio could make a massive difference in a country that has high levels of illiteracy.“Radio could be so important for the large number of poor people in India [but] it’s still out of bounds.”
His project receives about 1,000 calls a day but he is not able to quantify listenership because people share phones and listen in different ways. “We know that lots of people are listening in their own languages, talking about issues that they care about,” he said.
While only up to 20% of Indians have access to the internet, there is room to create a “voicebook” by linking radio with it and creating an Indian social media that many could access, argues Choudhary. “A transmitter can reach millions.”
It’s Good to Talk
Science radio show presenter Robin Ince believes that the strength of radio is that “there’s something about the fact that you are in the room and having a conversation with someone”.
Ince, who co-presents BBC Radio 4’s The Infinite Monkey Cage, said one of the strengths of radio shows is that they can have a long discussion and get into a lot of depth. “It’s easy to find three scientists and get them talking and countering a lot of misinformation,” he said.
But he believes radio should move away from the head-to-head micro-debate where one person takes a position and someone argues the opposite. He said: “We need to get rid of the idea that everything needs to be an argument.”
He also believes one of the joys of radio is that you don’t have to worry about finding stunning pictures to go with a programme to make it work.
“Everything doesn’t have to be a spectacle. It allows you to have a longer conversation,” he said.
Ince argues that there is a real thirst for going into a subject in real depth, and that radio is a great format for that. He believes that some of radio’s late-night shows deliver with thoughtful, interesting debate.
As a listener, you feel “you are not alone”, he argues, citing a late-night show with presenter Iain Lee as an example of how radio can make a big difference.
Lee spoke about his struggles with depression, and Ince feels it opened up the subject to a wider audience.
While radio feels active and involved, television “feels passive”, he believes, and radio is a global medium, with some programmes being tuned into around the world.
“You can manage the boundaries with greater ease,” he said.