Radio Summit Top executives Travis Baxter, Cilla Benkö, Kieran McGeary
and Jurre Bosman talk through the challenges and opportunities facing
them in each of their marketplaces.
John Myers from the UK walked delegates through this excellent
session. Never before has a group of senior people been so open...
Travis Baxter (Content and External Affairs Director, Bauer Media, UK)
spoke of the need to let go of everything that we’ve learnt over the
last 100 years. "Radio has changed and we’re living in a very
different landscape, especially when it comes to the way radio is
consumed". Money is tight in radio and Travis wants to ensure that it
is spent in the right places. "Now we've expanded the audio sector...
we need to put our resources in the right place"
As Cilla Benkö (DG, Swedish Radio) said, we’re now competing with
international giants with lots more money than we have. How do we
compete? Well, Cilla believes that content is still king, and we need
to deliver high quality stuff that opens up our audiences eyes. ‘We
don’t tell people what they should think, we give them knowledge’.
Cilla thinks we need to be more live, do more outside broadcasts and
make sure we are where the audience is. 'No more big studios for us'!
Kieran McGeary (CEO of Cork's 96FM and C103 at Wireless Group Ireland)
talked through some of the issues with digital platform management.
‘DAB isn’t on the agenda in Ireland, listeners are happy with FM’. But
should Ireland remain an analogue island in a digital world?
Jurre Bosman (Head of Radio, NPO, the Netherlands) enlightened the
audience with some of the conversations in Holland about trends. ‘We
need to convince the listener that radio is cooler than streaming’ and
we need to learn from our audiences. ‘Instant feedback is a great
thing of our times', so now we have the data we have to utilise it.
‘We need to convince the listener that radio is cooler than streaming’ says @jurrebosman #RDE17 pic.twitter.com/rcbuiAv0JG
— Radiodays Europe (@RadiodaysEurope) March 20, 2017