MULTIMEDIA MEETS RADIO

Postmortem

Radio is sexier than TV, at least that is my highly biased spin on MMR+TV. The session on blogs and podcasts was certainly the best attended of the two days.

The focus of this year's event was cross-media and multi-platform, but the message I got was that multimedial production values and new technology were winning listeners for traditional radio. Several speakers told us that the success of podcasting, for example, was not just in the download figures, but also in the new listeners tuning into the scheduled editions of podcast programmes.

I introduced the workshop by saying that two phenomena - which I called "voice" and "choice" - were changing the way people used the radio. There was now a modicum of genuine interactivity (voice) and broadcasters were starting to listen and to take interest in what their audiences were telling them; at the same, people wanted to decide not only what they listened to, but also when (time-shifting) and where (place-shifting) they listened - the choice factor.

Blogs, along with tools like message-boards, e-mail and SMS, were giving voice to once passive listeners, while podcasting was doing for radio what TiVo had achieved for TV. That was the premise and the reason for bundling blogs and podcasts together in the workshop.

But not everyone agrees with me. One criticism is that the word "radio" was only heard once or twice during the entire podcasting session - my memory must be playing tricks because I remember it differently. Another criiticim is that blogging has nothing to do with either radio or TV.

On a more positive note, several people have written to say how much they enjoyed our opening session on cross-media productions. Radio Members have singled out YLE's Sibelius project and France5's C.U.L.T. as two of the highlights of the conference, perhaps surprisingly since the latter involved no radio.

By a similar token, one of the most popular TV sessions involved a presentation on videoblogging by Tuija Aalto of YLE Radio.

The internet radio presentations were another favourite, while one senior editor told me that the marvellous things that the Czechs, Hungarians, Romanians and Swedes had achieved on shoestring budgets (Friday afternoon session) had filled him with ideas for his company's website.

(The screenshot is from Tuija's photos from MMR. You will find them on Flickr, tagged MMR).   

Synergies and secrets of cross-media strategies

The opening session of MMR has provided recipes for successful cross-media strategies from Finland and France (please insert your own jokes about President Chirac's views on the merits of Finnish cooking). It has been a very musical morning, ranging from the Eurovsion Song Contest, in the opening remarks of the Head of EBU TV, Bjoern Erichsen, to the sublime compositions of Mozart and Sibelius.

In the 250th anniversary year of Mozart's birth, it was good to hear that Danish Radio podcast nine of his symphonies and that there were 300,000 downloads. Interestingly, three quarters of the downloads came from outside Denmark and blogs like digg.com played a key part in spreading the word. Blogs and podcasts will be the focus of a radio workshop on Friday morning.

Rappin' with Sibelius

A new star is burning in the firmament of classical music with the crowning of Germany’s Alina Pogostkin as the winner of the 9th International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition. Finland’s public service broadcaster, YLE, has also turned in a virtuoso performance with a powerful lesson in how cross-media productions can attract young demographics to a 40-year-old music festival.

The challenge, said producer Anna-Kaarina Kiviniemi, is to exploit fully the potential of all the different media: "It requires adaptation of material to different media platforms wisely, so that the same brand - logo, jingle, graphics on radio, TV and the internet - is recognisable."

Other essential ingredients are the ability to learn and a certain degree of flexibility. "It requires stepping out of your job description,"  said Anna-Kaarina. "It has taught us to be bold, humble, curious, sensible and creative in trying to solve the questions of the production."

The YLE production team made it a key objective from the outset to attract a younger audience and ensure the future success of the Sibelius media event. To this end, YLE distributed a flyer with a specially composed Sibelius rap - Anna-Kaarina called it "reaching new audiences on their own terms."

A large dose of interactivity will make the ingredients bind. A Sibelius website offered a host of exclusive material, including articles, blogs, the opportunity to send messages and vote for favourite performers, as well as to hear music from the competition on-demand.

In addition, there was an an array of services for mobile phones, including daily news, performer profiles, programme schedules, on-demand audio and video, interviews and results.

Users could send SMS questions about the competition and violin music, or buy ring tones composed by Pekka Kuusisto, the winner of the 1995 Sibelius competion. YLE believes that the success of the mobile phone content and a healthy flow of traffic to the Siblius website helped to boost radio and TV audiences: "It has proved the snowball effect to be true, " said Anna-Kaarina.

The only blot on YLE's copybook was that problems over rights meant that the final evening could not be streamed on the internet.

Creating a C.U.L.T.

Another broadcaster aiming to reach a 15-35 demographic was France 5 TV. Although apparently playing on safer ground, with a programme about urban culture and youth issues, France 5 gave the show's Paris-based producers, Streampower,

Interactivity is often synonymous with raising revenue, usually through SMS or phone charges, but Streampower's task was to enahnce and add meaning to the show's content by empowering the audience.  The result was C.U.L.T. (C'est Unique à la Télé), a daily live show fronted by a the veteran MTV V-J, Ray Cokes.

Streampower also created a website with exclusive video and audio content not available on the TV as part of a strategy to build a loyal community of viewers.  Echoing many of the lessons learnt by YLE, Streampower's Dominique Delport identified the "eight commandments of cross-media."

Dominique said the other golden rules were to empower the audience;  to produce exclusive content for the website; to continue the show on the web; to increase user loyalty; to boost user "stickiness" by extending the shelf life of the show; to enhance the watching experience; to promote the show and make it the topic of conversations; and to increase revenues.

The lessons

Both the Finnish and French speakers have drawn similar conclusions from their experience of cross-media production. They stress the importance of flexible thinking, a willingness to learn, the need for interactivity and teamwork in order to play to the strengths of each of the component media parts.

YLE's Marjaana Nambiar also highlighted the motivational aspects and the potential for team-building across departments: "The Sibelius project has connected different working cultures," she said.

A look ahead

This year's Multimedia Meets Radio event will highlight the opportunities and challenges facing broadcasters as radio moves firmly into the age of interactivity and choice. EBU members who have embraced technologies such as podcasting, weblogs and internet radio players will share their experiences and present their vision of the future.

The legendary founder of the BBC, Lord Reith, famously defined the mission of public service broadcasters as to inform, educate and entertain. This has not changed, but now the era of "auntie knows best" is over and broadcasters are also expected to listen.

Even in Reith's day, the success of the media depended on its ability to create a conversation among a community of listeners. Broadcasting is still about creating conversations, except that broadcasters have become part of the process: fully-fledged interlocutors rather than benign observers. In large part, this is because phenomena like weblogs and podcasting empower audiences by giving them a direct channel to the programme-makers.

While it is premature to dismiss schedules as a thing of the past, as some commentators have suggested, the fact remains that consumers finally have some say in how, when and where they listen. But this is just a beginning as broadcasters look for ways to overcome hurdles, such as rights issues, in order to broaden the range of programmes they can make available on demand.

These and other concerns will be the focus of a weblogs and podcasting workshop on Friday 24th March. Speakers will include the BBC's Kevin Anderson, Holger Hank of DW-World, Judy McAlpine of CBC and Jonathan Marks of Critical Distance.

MMR kicks off (this is a World Cup year) with a joint radio-TV session on the synergies of cross-media productions. It will look at the strategies and tools that broadcasters are using to harness the complementary strengths of radio, television and the internet in order to bring added value to their customers.

The radio only session on Thursday afternoon will take in two very different topics: radio in post-tsunami Asia and the technology of internet radio players. On Friday afternoon, delegates will find out how some broadcasters have combined the Reithian tenets of informing, educating and entertaining in a single production.

Among the many highlights are a website that crosses a Big Brother-style format with a documentary about apes, a multimedia encyclopaedia and a game to make young people aware of gender issues. MMR 2006 promises all this and more.