Industry Insights: Radio Broadcasting

Why radio listening is on the up and Tom Hanks is the greatest actor of our time.

For our next interview in Conjure’s Industry Insights series, Chris Tingley, Conjure’s CTO chats with Michael Hill, the Managing Director of Radioplayer to find out more about the radio industry, the importance of the human connection and why Tom Hanks is the best actor of our generation.

Chris: Hi Michael, thanks so much for taking part in our Industry Insights series. To get us started, perhaps you could say a bit about who you are, your remit and what Radioplayer is?

Michael: I’m Michael Hill, the Managing Director of UK Radioplayer and Radioplayer Worldwide, and have worked in radio all my life. I joined the BBC in 1989 as a sound engineer. Then I branched over into journalism and was a BBC news journalist for 10 years. Later on at the BBC I ran radio stations like BBC Radio Five Live, and now I have bridged into a role that spans the whole radio industry — not just in the UK, but around the world.

Radioplayer is a nonprofit organisation. We are 100% owned and supported by radio broadcasters around the world. We exist to represent those radio broadcasters in an increasingly complicated distribution picture. So, just as an example — it’s logistically impossible for every broadcaster to talk to every car company about how radio should look in the dashboard. So how are we going to achieve that? Even a broadcaster as big as the BBC can’t possibly talk to every car company in the world, have a meaningful dialogue, and progress technologically with each one. So we forge partnerships with platforms, companies and organisations that are strategically beneficial to the future of radio.

Chris: Talking more about Radioplayer’s role as a proxy for broadcasters and the logistical challenges that you solve — is this still a similar mission now as compared to when Radioplayer came into existence? Or have these challenges changed over that time?

Everyone’s streams were broken, and everyone’s browser-players worked in a different way. Sometimes you had to download special plugins like RealPlayer.

Michael: These challenges have very much changed. We launched Radioplayer in the UK 9 years ago, and I don’t know if you can imagine a world before the mobile and tablet boom, but there were certainly no smart-speakers or voice-control around.

Back then, online listening was only 2% of all radio listening — so a very, very small slice — and mostly done through a screen on a desktop or laptop. It was a mess. Everyone’s streams were broken, and everyone’s browser-players worked in a different way. Sometimes you had to download special plugins like RealPlayer. You remember the blue player, quite an invasive piece of software that you had to download?

Chris: Oh yes, I do!

Michael: And then there was Windows Media, where codecs had to be downloaded and regularly updated. Listening to stuff on your computer was a mess. So the radio industry said: What can we do about this?

In response, a visionary guy at the BBC, Tim Davie, who was Director of Radio at the time, said: “Let’s work across the industry on this. Let’s not try and do this by ourselves”, and so Radioplayer was born.

When Radioplayer started as a concept, it was a very small company with one employee. Just me, looking into how we could collaborate on a shared pop-up player: a web player for radio, and looking at technical solutions to how users could use this like a radio on their computer. In other words, they could search for stuff, they could find new stations, they could set presets for their favourite stations. They could listen reliably for hours on end without the stream crapping out. We launched that 9 years ago in 2011, as Radioplayer’s first product — the desktop browser and some back-end systems to support it.

Obviously, since then the world has changed. We launched mobile apps when they became a thing, and then extended them to tablets, then later we looked at voice control and smart speakers. Now we’re still about all those things, but mostly about radio in cars.

Chris: So, actually, from the very conception of Radioplayer, embracing innovation has really been at the heart of what you’ve had to do. If you consider that radio technology itself is a very old technology, then actually as an organisation, Radioplayer has had to adapt very quickly. Trends have changed and digital technology has moved forward at quite some pace. So would you say that innovation has always been a really important part of what you do and your ethos?

Michael: Absolutely. Because we are that proxy for radio. We need to make sure that we are really on it when there’s a new distribution opportunity for radio. Now, we’re very lucky. The core content model that is radio — in other words, a linear flow of sound with a human connection — that core content model remains as strong today, as it was 20, or even 50 years ago. People love radio.

90% of people listen to the radio every week in the UK, and that figure has not changed one little jot. Obviously, the way that people listen has changed. So we’re all about taking that very strong core content model and adapting it for new spaces.

We only had three months to get our head around voice control. We massively pivoted. And we achieved it.

A great example is when Amazon launched the Echo in the UK, about three or four years ago now. The only other place that it had launched previously to that was in the US, it felt very new, this kind of hockey puck-shaped thing that was coming into our homes. You know, this talking tube?

We didn’t know, in fact, nobody really knew how to interact with voice systems and nobody thought it was going to go anywhere. But, Amazon asked Radioplayer three months ahead of their UK launch to integrate our API with their systems, so that Radioplayer would be available at launch. We only had three months to get our head around voice control. We pivoted our brains towards that, and we achieved it — we were the first European radio presence on the Amazon Echo. As a result, and to this day we have a very strong relationship with Amazon because of that early R&D. So — quick innovation, quick pivots. That’s the story of Radioplayer.

Chris: There must be quite a pressure on you from external technology providers — Amazon and the Echo is a great example. It must take an incredible amount of foresight from your point of view, to think “is this gonna be a big thing?” and “is it strategically important for us to make sure that there is a radio presence on this new device?”. You must see a lot of that. How do you work out whether technology is going to be “a thing” or not?

Michael: Yes, it’s really important, because we are a small nonprofit organisation. Radio has massive reach and impact in our cultural lives, but actually in industry terms, in sector terms, it’s not that big. So because we’re funded by broadcasters from a relatively small sector, we don’t have that much money. Frankly, we have to be very careful about what bets we place on new platforms. So, I think it is as important to make decisions about what you’re not going to integrate with, as it is about what you are going to integrate with.

Crucially it’s really important to get your core systems — your platform — match-fit for integrations. By which I mean: Do you have an API that works to a standard that other platforms could integrate with easily?

When we started off, we made the mistake of doing lots of things in quite a proprietary way — because we were using those APIs largely to power our own products. But now we’ve realised that actually, yes, it’s still important to power our products, but it’s really important… super important… for us to have developed an API hub. So for example, when we’re talking to a car company, we can point them to a place where they can get a very quick idea of what our metadata consists of, and how to integrate it into their systems. Because otherwise, they’ll just run away. They won’t be able to do it. I guess there are lots of tips and tricks that we’ve developed over the years, about how to make your stuff fit with other people’s stuff. To me, that’s the trick of being able to pivot quickly into these new spaces.

Chris: I think for people reading this that are building their own platforms and systems, where there’s always this pressure to be able to pivot fast and integrate with various different systems, this story is going to resonate really well. I agree fully that having consistent APIs and following industry standards and ways of doing things, that, as you say, things can play nicely together. And that’s absolutely the way to be approaching this stuff.

The next question I have is around how you’ve embraced new technologies and continued to move Radioplayer forward to stay relevant with new technology. What do you think… where do you think that’s going over the next 3 to 5 years? What technology changes are going to see in our everyday lives?

Michael: We’ve sort of got the distribution challenges for mobile, desktops and smart speakers under control. Actually, streaming is reliable. APIs are reliable. We’ve got good relationships with Amazon and Google. I think that now, those types of “classic products” — the apps space — is being dealt with very well by both Radioplayer and broadcasters in their own apps.

The area that we’re really concerned about staying ahead in — is cars. Connected car dashboards, specifically, because there’s a trend towards these areas becoming much more internet-connected and having higher resolution colour screens in them, coupled with drivers having potentially more headspace to consume entertainment, as autonomous driving becomes a thing.

Radio has always been a brilliant partner for the dashboard.

Then there’s voice control as well, which has a uniquely good fit with driving because it enables you to keep your mind and your hands focused on controlling the car. So we’re trying to work out where that core content model of radio, that I talked about earlier, fits into the new connected car space.

Radio has always been a brilliant partner for the dashboard and depending on where you are in the world, it represents between 25% and 50% of all radio listening. The car is incredibly important to the radio sector because that’s half of our listening hours and therefore, our revenue is at risk if we lose that primacy in the dashboard.

Now, obviously, connectivity, screens and voice are enabling other entertainment sources to come into that space, particularly music streaming services. Car companies are understandably rushing to work with music streaming services to allow people to listen to great tracks while they’re driving, But that human connection that radio brings — that varied content model that allows you to listen to music, entertainment, chat, news, information, weather, travel news about where you’re heading — that is uniquely valuable in the car and always has been. And we think it has legs for the foreseeable future as well.

We need to convince the car companies to keep radio strong and central to the dashboard, and to do that we’re partnering with them. We’re lobbying them to realise the importance of radio, to drivers and to their own customers. We’re working with them on technology, designs and metadata to make the radios of the future visually exciting, easy to use, and rich in content. Both live and on-demand so that drivers in five and ten years time will be in love with radio, as much as they are today.

Where do you see podcasts fitting into Radioplayer’s plans?

Chris: Yeah, and I guess that leads really neatly into the next topic that I wanted to touch upon. That really human connection of radio that you mentioned, and the immediacy and relevance of information you can get through radio. But, the internet era has enabled anyone to be a content producer. Now, people can make albums in their front rooms and record podcasts in their kitchen with people on the other side of the world — and that’s quite clearly led to the meteoric rise of the podcast. I think that is something worth touching on, because to me, podcasts feel a bit like radio. They have that human element, they have that curated element, and we have the facilities that the digital age has given us to listen to them anywhere, at any time. So, I guess my question here is, where do you see podcasts fitting into Radioplayer’s plans?

Michael: Well, I think it’s just radio. It’s crafted audio with a human connection, which is my definition of radio. The main difference is that it’s not live, linear-like and of-the-moment. It’s on-demand and time-shifted. The best broadcasters on live radio reflect the world as it is now. So they might be bouncing off the back of a news story that’s breaking, at that moment. They might be doing an interview, or playing a live set from a musician, and that feels different because it’s happening at that moment. Or they might be reflecting a tweet or a text from a listener that is very much of today, of right now. Now podcasting can’t do that. So it is still crafted audio with the human connection. But it doesn’t have that live connection to “now” that great broadcasting has. That’s the main difference and in fact, really the only difference between podcasting and live linear radio.

The pandemic crisis has reminded us that radio is absolutely central to people’s lives.

I believe the radio industry, the classic broadcasting industry, should embrace podcasting and should really be the best at it. We’ve got studios, we’ve got the voices, we’ve got the talent, we’ve got the production and the craft skills. In fact, the BBC is making incredibly good podcasts, and they have worked out that new way of listening. Way more than 90% of people consume podcasts on their mobiles — by themselves. This is very different from the radio way of listening, where you’re often listening with other people in the room.

It could be the kitchen-top radio next to the toaster at breakfast time. It could be in the car on the school run with the kids in the back, listening to Capital. Whereas podcasting is almost entirely consumed on the mobile and as a solitary experience. I think that does change the nature of your relationship with that audio. If I’m honest, we’re still working through what that means in terms of the craft, the production skills, the radio. But I do think podcasting should be owned by the radio industry.

Chris: Definitely! Some pioneering to do there, and yeah, I like that differentiation that you talked about with who’s listening and how. That’s an interesting thing to think about.

So, a couple of things to finish off. I guess it wouldn’t be a real interview during Covid times if we didn’t play some cursory attention to that. What kind of impact have you seen on the broadcasting industry as a result of Covid?

Michael: Well, first and most importantly, the pandemic crisis has reminded us that radio is absolutely central to people’s lives. We’ve seen massive jumps in listening. I’ve seen figures that show that music streaming has gone down, and I believe there was never a greater need for the human connection. The warmth, the entertainment, the companionship that live radio brings into your home. There’s never been a greater need for that than now — when we’re all fragmented, we’re all scared, we’re all sitting at home by ourselves, and radio knits us together. Between February and March, Radioplayer saw a 50% jump in our reach figures (what the radio industry calls unique listening).

I think Tom Hanks is brilliant because he has a lot of what radio has — intelligent, adaptable and warm as hell.

That’s across the apps and the web players, and yes, it will have gone down a bit in cars because no one was driving anywhere. But that shows that people are bringing digital devices into their homes, smart speakers, apps, desktop web players, and using them to stay connected with live radio. Which gives you that news, information, reassurance, human connection, companionship, and warmth from trusted journalists and broadcasters, and that has never been more important than now. I guess that’s not a technological challenge from Covid, it’s the human impact of Covid on our media consumption.

Chris: That’s a really nice answer and one that definitely provides a very different way of looking at our situation. I think we’ll see that as a very different answer from other people who’ve been asked a similar question.

So, we’ve heard a really eloquent and passionate view of the broadcasting and radio industry from you, so now for something completely different! In the movie of Michael Hill’s life… who would you most like to play yourself?

Michael: You didn’t warn me about this question!

Chris: Well, I had to keep some surprises!

Michael: My favourite actor in the whole world is Tom Hanks. I think he’s brilliant. I think he’s brilliant because he’s got a lot of what radio has got. He’s really intelligent, he’s very adaptable and he’s warm as hell when you see him interviewed. So you think, what an amazing human being, I would love to spend time with that guy. These qualities are what I admire in my favourite radio broadcasters. So I think it would have to be Tom Hanks

Chris: And I guess then I also have to ask, what’s your favourite Tom Hanks film?

Michael: Ah, well, I’m a space nerd, So Apollo 13, but you could literally choose any of them!