Radio in Transition: Current Perspectives and Challenges

Abstract

Radio is experiencing the paradox that accompanies all long-lived media: the more people talk about its demise, the more evident it becomes that it is not disappearing, but changing. More than a century after the first regular broadcast, the audio signal remains one of the most trusted and widespread ways in which the public accesses information, music and social debate (Hendy, 2000; Lacey, 2018). At the same time, however, the radio that today’s listener uses differs from its analogue predecessor just as significantly as the postal service differs from instant messaging. Traditional linear broadcasting coexists with podcasts, smart speakers, voice assistants, streaming services and synthetic voices generated by artificial intelligence; radio professionals are shifting from the role of ‘guardians of the broadcast structure’ to that of curators, data analysts and educators of the audience within an audio environment that is becoming fragmented, personalised and algorithmically recommended (Newman, 2024; Sellas & Bonet, 2023). This monographic issue of the journal Textual & Visual Media therefore asks the most fundamental question: what does ‘being radio’ actually mean today, and which of its transformations remain technological, which economic, and which – perhaps most importantly – social.