Comunicación transcultural

INTRODUCTION

Overview and context

Radio is a very popular medium in Ireland, with 86 percent of all Irish adults tuning-in on a daily basis¹. Its appeal is equal across all social classes. As a media device, it enjoys pride of place in the heart of the home, the kitchen – the key family social space (Crisell, 1994:229). While many homes have two or three television sets, most have five or six radio sets depending on what research you read. There’s nothing objectionable in admitting to others that you enjoy listening to radio as compared to TV which is often considered a somewhat populist and low status medium.

In its early days, it wasn’t only the listeners who discovered radio, advertisers too discovered the 30-million listeners that regularly tuned into Radio Luxembourg (Chapman, 1992; Rudin, 2007). Listeners become acquainted with the presenters and the programme content. Despite the long distances involved in its

transmission, radio is an intimate medium and people imagine that they ‘know’ the presenters and picture them ‘with headphones on, clean shirts and papers

everywhere’ (Taylor & Mullan, 1986:115). Former Desert Island Discs presenter Michael Parkinson believes that the radio interview works best when the presenter and guest believe that they are alone talking to one another (Parkinson, 2010:10).

However, while the approach of programme makers is to develop and foster a ‘one-to-one’ relationship, both the presenter and the radio listener understand that the listener is part of a shared community of interests.

Radio offers programmes that fit in with the daily habits and lifestyles of the listeners (Scannell, 1996). Presenters also feel that they have a connection with their audience and sometimes share with the audience the intimate details of their own lives. In October 2011, the RTE Morning Ireland presenter Aine Lawlor startled her listeners when she announced: “That's all from us for the week, and from me for a while, as I'm taking a break for medical treatment. Thanks to all of you who have listened over the past, it's been, sixteen years".² On a more trivial note, in January 2012, Tony Blackburn revealed that his Pick of the Pops show was

‘not actually live but recorded - so I’m actually at home listening to myself’.³ This revelation caused me reflect on the what might be going thought the audience’s minds as they heard that statement. Would the presenter/listener relationship be in any way damaged following the presenter admitting to not actually being ‘there’?

As he had mentioned being at home, I then began to conjure up a mental picture of just what type of house he might actually live in.

2 Speaking on Morning Ireland, RTE Radio 1, 14^th October 2011.

There is of course the aesthetic aspect of the actual sound coming from the radio device - the comforting ‘radio-as-company’ factor. Barnett and Morrison found in their large-scale study of the radio audience, people who relied on radio for

company, to fill a vacuum in their domestic spaces. One ‘empty-nester’ respondent who used radio to fill the silence stated, ‘I dreamt when they were all sort of young that one day I could have a nice quiet house – but I miss the noise’ (Barnett &

Morrison, 1989:3).

Radio helps us navigate and make sense of our world. When Burmese

pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi emerged from house arrest after fifteen years, one of the first things she mentioned in her first press conference was how radio enabled her to have ‘a lifeline’ to the outside world. The show she highlighted was Dave Lee Travis’ A Jolly Good Show on the BBC World Service, this programme had made her ‘world much more complete’.⁴ For some listeners, it is the music blend that is the attraction – the presenter as curator of the both past and the present. Music radio provides postcards from our past selves, the connection buried with our memory while new music provides a sense of the unexpected, enabling us to keep track and updated with the present.

For others, it is the cadence of the voice reading the late-night Shipping Forecast on BBC Radio 4 showing as Hendy describes, ‘the enduring attraction of the unadorned human voice’ (2007:382).

4 Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13844131 [Accessed date 21.6.11]

Like a family member, radio’s ‘usefulness’ is often concealed by its very

taken-for-‘grantedness’ (Crisell, 1994). We often embrace and then forego presenters on an ongoing basis.

Within this study, comparisons are made between RTE and the BBC network radio and its public service broadcasting model. It is acknowledged that the population of Ireland and the UK differ vastly, and that comparing the BBC’s scale with RTE’s might result in a unequal contest, nonetheless it can be argued that a very worthwhile comparison can be made and commented on. All BBC national radio services can be received in Ireland, and moreover, the BBC, it might be argued, provides perhaps the highest benchmark in terms of quality and

creativity against which qualified comparisons with RTE Radio 1 can be made and measured.

The Broadcast Authority of Ireland’s (BAI⁵) strategy for 2011-2013 (Strategic Goal 7) specifically mentions ‘It will seek to promote media literacy initiatives which will enhance the public’s ability to understand and interact with the broadcasting environment’.⁶ And so it is against this background, that this

5 The Broadcasting Act, 2009 established the BAI that replaced the Broadcast Commission of Ireland (BCI). The Act provided for the establishment of a single content regulator for all radio and television servies in the Republic of Ireland.

6 BAI’s Strategy 2011-2012 (p.22)

http://www.bai.ie/wordpress/wp-research project sets out to explore the radio audiences’ understanding of some key issue on public service broadcasting and radio listening in general.

RTE Radio services

While this study focuses on RTE Radio 1 and to a limited extent, 2FM, it is

worthwhile listing all radio services operated by RTE: The main FM stations RTE Radio 1 (news and full service), 2FM (Music and tabloid chat), Lyric FM (classical music station with arts coverage), and Raidio Na Gealtachta (Irish language

station). RTE also operates a suite of digital stations, some of which are fully or semi-automated. The stations are broadcast on DAB and online. RTE Pulse (music), RTE Choice (selection of repeats and BBC/NPR etc programmes), 2XF (alternative music), RTE Jr (children’s service), RTE Gold (automated oldies music station), RTE 1 extra (selection of radio repeats and speech radio from around the world).

Study background

This research is primarily qualitative in nature and is conducted with listeners residing in the Greater Dublin area. While RTE Radio 1 is a national public service station, it nevertheless competes for audience reach and share against a number of privately owned independent-commercial national and local stations

around the country.⁷ The Greater Dublin ‘franchise area’ is highly competitive and over the last two decades has seen many shifting sands beneath the ebbs and flows of the top-line audience listenership figures. A Dublin audience is chosen in that the area of study as it is somewhat unique due to the fact that the licensed

independent-commercial stations are for the most part formatted music stations that carry top-of-the-hour news and are not viewed as ‘full service’ when compared to the model that has evolved over the last two decades in counties outside the Capital. In markets outside the Greater Dublin commuter belt – and where the Dublin stations don’t ‘spill over’ - the ‘Home Local’ stations perform particularly well against national competition in general. The large metropolis of Dublin might be considered to be somewhat generic in terms of not having a ‘full service’ local station equivalent to say, Radio Kerry or Donegal’s Highland Radio. One-time Dublin local speech broadcaster NewsTalk 106FM struggled for five hard years to build an audience before applying for, and then winning, the ‘quasi-national’

licence (covering most, but not all of the state) in 2006.

This research looks at the Dublin market as the selected research participants were residing in Dublin or the suburbs. So while the focus of this research project is on RTE Radio 1 as a national broadcaster, some quantitative comparisons are made between RTE Radio, 2FM and the independent-commercial competitors. 2 FM is the ‘younger’ sister station of RTE Radio 1; it is primarily a music station founded                                                                                                                

7 Each Irish county usually has one local independent-commercial station licenced by the Broadcast Authority of Ireland. Larger cities can have a couple of licensed local stations operating. A full list of

to provide a national music station and coming in the wake of a very vibrant culture of pirate music stations. 2FM will be looked at in the quantitative analysis and its importance to this study is the potential supply of audience ‘replenishers’ to RTE Radio 1. One of the main propositions of local services outside Dublin is that they provide an uncompromised local service. In Dublin, by contrast, with the exception of news coverage, each station delivers a particular music format. This collection of music stations along with the offerings of NewsTalk 106 FM, Today FM and ‘multi-city’ newcomer 4FM, plus the RTE offerings of Radio 1, 2FM, and Lyric FM provide the widest variety of radio programming for the listening

audience and hence my focus on this audience as against a particular county, which would lend itself to a case study between the ‘Home Local’ station and RTE. In such a case, the contrast between the local station and a national public broadcaster would be too great. It could be suggested that RTE Radio 1 has honed its appeal to favour Dublin listeners over listeners from, for example, the ‘second’ city of Cork⁸. Conducting this research has been enormously self-educating for this researcher.

Notions and hunches that one subconsciously held are explored and challenged.

Studying the literature and other radio research provided me with a detailed map against which I could measure my own modest efforts. Indeed, I am so grateful to the many scholars noted here who have charted the landscape and increased my knowledge on the area of radio audience research and of public service

broadcasting.

8 Speaking at a presentation in March 2012 to AIRPI, the association of independent radio producers,

While I held a belief that, in general, listeners might be somewhat au fait with RTE Radio 1’s programming, I was particularly curious about the significance or value that these listeners would attach to public service broadcasting.

Research – some starting questions

In the context of my chosen listeners, some general questions arise:

What recollections do listeners have of childhood and adolescent radio listening?

And what are their adult perceptions of RTE Radio like now - living through a period of great uncertainty and unprecedented change - with increased competition and audience fragmentation?

What is it about RTE Radio 1 that appeals or not to them?

What role do its presenters play in attracting and keeping an audience?

How does that relationship mature or change over time?

The Research Questions

The above questions performed an underpinning reference that included a wider scope of inquiry to be examined. However, out of the starting questions above, four main research questions emerged that this thesis would set out to answer.

1. What are the underlying trends in listening to Irish public service radio?

3. What do listeners believe is the value of Irish public service radio?

4. Do some core opinions and perceptions on public service broadcasting change over time?

These questions will be addressed by way of more specific research objectives as listed below.

Study focus

This study focuses on RTE Radio 1 and examines audience reception of notions of public service broadcasting in a context of a highly competitive environment. The environment in which PSB exists has changed dramatically across North-western Europe, the heartland of PSB. Economic austerity in the UK has forced the BBC to accept a licence freeze until 2017 coupled with the funding of the World Service, the Welsh language station S4C and BBC Monitoring.⁹ In Ireland, the Minister with responsibility for broadcasting has confirmed that he is in favour of a

‘broadcasting charge’ to replace the television licence fee. In effect, he has initiated the beginning of a more comprehensive debate about the provision of public service broadcasting and by extension, questions concerning the funding and entitlement of RTE to be the sole benefactor of the proposed broadcasting charge.

Like the BBC, RTE has expanded beyond its core broadcasting activities and now has many detractors seeking to regain lost advertising or a slice of the licence fee

9 ‘BBC Cuts – How the axe will fall’ The Guardian 6.10.11

pie. In the battle for audiences and advertising, has RTE Radio 1 jettisoned its distinctiveness in pursuit of commercial goals?

This study looks at the history of PSB. It looks at over a decade of audience data.

It takes a snapshot of audience qualitative opinion at two points in time in order to examine how some of key understandings and perceptions have changed, or not, on some key issues pertaining to public service broadcasting. The study also looks at the future options for RTE. The thesis explores understandings of PSB in the context of academic debate regarding the value and future of public service

broadcasting both within radio studies and wider literature on public service media.

The study is exploratory in design and therefore has no hypothesis. However at the conclusion stage it may be possible to suggest a hypothesis that might be tested in further research. Specifically, the study has the following aims:

1. To identify the reasons why RTE Radio 1 attracts and engages listeners and to evaluate critically the literature surrounding some key debates in public service broadcasting and points of interest in the evolution and development of RTE Radio 1.

2. To explore key issues surrounding the audiences’ perceptions and

understandings of RTE Radio 1 and public service broadcasting in particular and to examine at the role of the presenter and consider in-depth aspects of presentation and personality.

3. To explore the early experiences of users and the socialisation of radio as a medium and to establish if early listening references and impressions have any link to an individual’s current listening pattern.

4. To see if some key opinions and perceptions of Public Service Broadcasting can be affected by the passage of time.

Thesis structure

The chapters in this thesis are presented in the following order:

Chapter 1: Introduction. This chapter sets out the background and study questions for the thesis and outlines the context and background to

the inquiry.

Chapter 2. Changing fortunes of public radio – a review of the literature. This chapter looks at issues related to the development of the medium and the development of BBC radio and RTE radio. Key arguments and discussions surrounding the concept and notion of public service broadcasting are examined. It also looks in detail at key points of interest in relation to RTE Radio 1’s programming.

Chapter 3. Research Methods. A full account is given of how this project was set up including, the background quantitative pilot study which lead to the setting up of a larger qualitative research project. Methods of

analysis and research strategy are outlined. It also sets out and lists the key Aim and Objectives of this research project.

Chapter 4. The listening audience – context and change. This chapter provides an overview of the listening audience distilled from a secondary

quantitative dataset. It provides an overview and context to the questions and dilemmas in the following chapter.

Chapter 5. Qualitative research findings and discussion. This chapter presents the qualitative findings with a detailed discussion to provide interpretation and analysis to the theory and context of public service broadcasting and related aspects of broadcasting approach.

Chapter 6. Conclusion. The final chapter draws the thesis to a conclusion and presents answers to the stated Aims and Objectives of the research. It will also makes recommendations in light of the conclusions.