The Evolution of Infotainment Industry & Changing Preferences

Are you a 90s kid? If yes then you may remember the struggles of flipping of Side A with Side B for merely 12 odd songs and holding on to a fast forward button just to get to the best part of any song. The age of CDs and DVDs was amongst the pioneers who revolutionised the entertainment industry especially the music one paving the way to for the radio to boom all across the country. The radio industry took the audience by storm with the public tuned in from morning till wee hours of night. However the technological stagnancy, monotonous content and over commercialization of the industry brought in a sudden disenchantment of the people who started looking out for other options. That is the time when the podcast industry made its way into the Indian market offering the populace multi-faceted content offering a simple way to nascent content creators to craft podcast as per respective preferences and promote your tales with many platforms namely Spotify, Gaana.com, Hub hopper, Anchor etc. It is imperative to understand that despite the basic similarities both of them are structurally different which are enunciated in the subsequent paragraphs.

On-Demand vs Live.   

The primary distinction between radio and podcasts is therefore that the former is aired live while the latter may be accessed at any time. As a result, your audience address format will change. In live radio, you must reintroduce both yourself and your station since listeners may join in at any time throughout the broadcast. The only time you need to introduce the programme and yourself is now since listeners always begin each episode at the beginning.

Niche vs Mass Audiences.  

                Radio stations often cover a wide range of topics or concentrate on one “umbrella” theme like, for example, musicals since they are designed to appeal to a broad audience (As many people as they can from all walks of life! While podcasts aim to reach as many people as possible, they are more specifically targeted at a certain group of listeners. As a result, they tend to focus on only one song rather than several, to continue with our example. Consider the Fly Fishing-centric Orvis Fly Fishing Guide Podcast as an illustration. Radio programmes often need to appeal to a large audience in order to succeed and expand, thus they must cover a variety of themes in order to reach as many listeners as they can. Conversely, podcasting focuses on appealing to a narrow audience by raising certain subjects that will interest their particular target audience.

Be Careful What You Say!        

You have to be careful what you say on live radio. Even if doing things like cursing or laughing during a funeral (yes, this has actually occurred!) is absolutely unacceptable, after you’ve done it, you have to go on and deal with the consequences. Watch Charlotte Green in this BBC Radio 4 clip. During the Oldest Recording of a Human Voice clip, her producer ended up saying something to make her laugh, so when she attempted to go on to the following item—unfortunately, an obituary—she cracked up. Naturally, she eventually apologised and continued. As long as you take the necessary steps to apologise after instances like these, these spontaneous moments may actually strengthen your relationship with your audience by making you more approachable. You may take your time to correct your faults when you podcast. Since you may exclude anything you believe won’t sit well with your audience, the whole piece sounds neater and cleaner, and you have less to worry about. Even still, some people go as far as to remove all laughing and pauses, which runs the danger of seeming too edited and less real.

Easily Accessible.  

         Radio is very simple to get, however this is something that is changing quickly as the business changes. If you want to listen to an FM, AM, or DAB station, all you really need to do is press a button and maybe adjust your radio to the station. When it comes to podcasts, you must go looking for the ones you enjoy using Google or iTunes. This is still quite simple, but there are more steps than with radio, requiring you to search for podcasts in a desired genre, choose one you like, and subscribe. Radio merely entails turning it on and perhaps tuning it in. Nevertheless, as we previously noted, both platforms are becoming simpler to use as new podcast and radio directory applications are becoming available daily.

Rights to Music.   

A podcast is more difficult to cover with a general licence than a radio station. You can licence certain songs to play in your podcast, but in general, it’s difficult to readily include mainstream copyrighted music into your podcast due to various copyright terms and limitations. The simplest approach to obtain music for your podcast is to entirely commission it from a creator, whether through Fiverr or another platform. To cover the entirety of your station’s radio broadcast, you’ll need a broadcasting licence, which also requires reporting to licencing organisations.

Considering the above facts it is easier to say that there is no clear or better version of entertainment while drawing a comparison between these two forms. Despite the stark similarities, each offers distinct variety of products with inherent advantage as well as shortcomings making it perspective based infotainment system. So at the end it ultimately boils down to the listener to ascertain the best for him which is a much desired system for any entertainment industry as well as the audiences.