Radio Journal:International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media - Volume 10, Issue 1, 2012

Over the last decade, technology has transformed traditional radio broadcasting, not only as a mass medium but also as a cultural industry. Podcasting has been adopted by broadcasters as a useful tool for radio on demand. For broadcasters, it also offers the opportunity to explore new formats and new radio content and the possibility of reaching listeners in new ways. This article discusses the use of podcasting by the main radio networks in Spain. It is based on a quantitative study amongst broadcasters, focused on those chains that have adopted podcasting to offer some of their conventional broadcast programmes. The aim of the present study is to establish which elements of programming and business strategies are motivating the use of podcasts by these radio stations. In addition, this article also provides a first approach to the main genres and programmes supplied in this format.

In recent years, the launch of new diffusion technologies has changed the transmission and reception paradigm of traditional media. The podcast has arisen as a new way of distributing on-demand radio material and other related audible content on the Internet. This article discusses the technology, consumption, copyright and new business models in relation to podcasting as a radio enterprise. The text specifically analyses Spanish public and private radio companies, in order to draw a picture of the relationship between podcasting and radio.

In an era when audio is increasingly associated with three-minute digital storytelling, the use of crafted oral history in long-form radio narratives deserves to be recognized as a specific genre: the 'COHRD' (Crafted Oral History Radio Documentary), a blend of oral history, art and radio journalism. The author, a long-term practitioner of both disciplines, compares the theory and practice of oral history interviewing and the narrative concerns of the radio documentary/feature producer. The article considers how oral history may be enhanced by imaginative treatment and careful crafting, to yield a hybrid COHRD form. This combines the creative scope of the feature, the editorial gravitas of the documentary and the ground-breaking personal narratives at the heart of oral history. Radio benefits from the in-depth primary research provided by oral history, which often records the experiences of the marginalized and the overlooked. Oral history benefits through broad dissemination and being made more engaging due to the radio documentary/feature aesthetic. The article suggests that the COHRD found a nascent expression in the pioneering work of producers such as Corwin (United States 1947), Mitchell (United Kingdom 1950s) and Terkel (United States 1958) and particularly in the Radio Ballads of MacColl, Parker and Seeger (United Kingdom 1958–64). Podcasting has reinvigorated long-form radio narratives, which can now be sourced online as academic research texts. The COHRD form is exemplified today in programmes such as Hindsight on ABC Radio National (Australia) and Hearing Voices and Radio Diaries on National Public Radio (United States).

In this article I draw on the contested concepts of naturalness and unnaturalness in narrative, in order to analyse the sporting radio broadcast. I take as my case the ball-by-ball broadcasting of cricket on the BBC radio programme Test Match Special, examining its complexity in narrative terms and uncovering its 'unnatural' elements. The aim of this analysis is to reveal the complexity of the sporting radio broadcast, exposing it as a fictional narrative, and furthermore a most unnatural one at that. In doing this I draw on work by Jan Alber and colleagues (2010), who present an analysis of 'unnatural narratives' defined in terms of logical and/or physical impossibilities in three interconnected areas: unnatural storyworlds; unnatural minds; and unnatural acts of narration. The purpose of this is to exploit the uncertainty inherent in the unstable natural/unnatural dichotomy in order to produce a different reading, thereby enabling new insights to be generated.

This article provides an in-depth analysis of the United States' National Public Radio's journey as it strives to become a more web- and multimedia-savvy company. The article offers a qualitative account of a significant transition phase in the news organization's development: what started as a 400-person retraining of the newsroom ended as a rethinking of the newsroom's digital development. The article examines the way in which NPR created the conditions of ambiguity that allowed for innovation to take place.