Radio has had its death announced many times, but it has always survived, through adaptations to adversity. Today, the threat is called the Internet and once again the way radio is made will have to change, and this time the change will have to be radical.
This is the conviction of journalist and researcher João Paulo Meneses, who predicts that radio stations based solely on music have their days numbered, if they maintain the model they have used for decades.
The solution involves the production of content, making "radio with people inside", a way to combat the phenomenon of free and universal access to all types of music through the Internet and the increasingly varied ways of listening to it, with the new technologies and platforms.
The TSF journalist was this week's guest on the radio program “Impressions”, hosted by Sul Informação and by Rádio Universitária do Algarve RUA FM. A conversation that can be heard in full today, Saturday at 12 noon on 102.7 FM or on the RUA website.
João Paulo Meneses is TSF's Porto Newsroom coordinator and has also been a university professor for over 20 years, in addition to being the author of two books. In 2008 he completed his PhD in Music on Radio at the University of Vigo. A path that led him to reflect deeply on the future of Radio, a vision that he has been sharing in conferences and that brought him to Faro last week, as part of the 10th anniversary celebrations of RUA FM.
When choosing the area in which he wanted to do his doctorate, João Paulo Meneses decided to pursue a subject that, although linked to what he was doing, he did not dominate, since his desire was to «learn». “After 20 years working in journalism, I became interested in the importance of music on radio, with music radio, an area in which I had never worked before”, he revealed.
«In my thesis, I tried to assess the challenges facing radio, given the emergence of the Internet. All media are subject to terrible turmoil, brought on by something unusual. An earthquake as intense as the Internet will probably never happen. Everything changes, it got into our lives», he said.
In his study, he ended up separating «word radio from musical», since the former, he considered, is not deeply affected by the Internet, as it is made by people. «The music radio didn't, because a strong competitor appeared. For more than 50 years, radio has been a monopolist in offering music. People had records, but who had the money to buy them every week? Therefore, music was on the radio», he considered.
«Until this “Devil's thing” appeared, which is the Internet, which has much more music than what we will ever be able to hear, also for free and with a great advantage over the radio: while on the radio we listen to music that someone decided to propose, on the Internet we listen to the one we want. I stop, walk forward, pause to go to the bathroom, go back… So, as a music distributor, radio is completely outdated, unless you add something else to the music that is important, which is the added value , like what we are giving here today [in the interview]», he said.
“I had a director at TSF who told me once that, if he could, he would put a bomb on the Internet (laughs). Obviously it's something nonsense, but it was in the sense that the Internet created so much instability, it took the media out of their comfort. It totally shook us», he said.
Four years have passed since João Paulo Meneses began defending his theory indoors and outdoors, a time that "has been confirming" what he says. “Radio cannot compete with the Internet [in music distribution] and if it does, it loses,” he summed up. The problem is real, but there are solutions, right from the start “introducing the word into music”. In Portugal, there are already examples of the change that is taking place. «Radio Comercial surpasses RFM, until recently the leader in Portugal, not for music, but for Ricardo Araújo Pereira and Nuno Markl», he said.
The Internet is a threat to music radio that has led audiences for decades to this part, but it is also an opportunity for those who know how to adapt their business model and take advantage of this global network.
In addition to having revolutionized the offer, the Internet is also a strong competitor in the advertising market, the main source of revenue for the media. And that's where journalistic projects will have to invest, he believes, to ensure their survival, since advertisers "want to be where there is an audience".
"If journalistic proposals are going to manage to survive in the face of potential publicity, this is something that needs time to be tested, it is a kind of arm wrestling between the two parties", he considered.
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