1. The joy of audio

Most media -- writing, video, painting, sculpture -- communicate by creating facsimiles of the world around us. Audio replicates it. When we talk, sing or make a radio documentary, we're using the same medium of vibrating air molecules as birds chirping to each other, waves soughing on the beach or jet engines roaring. A well-placed stereo speaker in the trees can fool a flock of birds, and there's no essential difference between listening to a recording of someone you know and hearing them talk to you in person.

Perhaps that's why many people say audio feels so natural. They call it "intimate", "direct", "personal." Here's five experienced community radio producers on that subject.  

The many faces of radio

Five community radio reporters

Seeing it on the radio

Although radio has no pictures, it is also often called the most visual of media. This is because radio listeners, unlike TV coach potatoes and cell phone doom scrollers, create images in their head based on the descriptions and the ambient sound they hear.  

Radio's imaginative spectacle presents a powerful dynamic which is rarely prioritized by alternative electronic media. By giving the listener the opportunity to create an individual filmic narrative and experience through the imaginative spectacle the listener becomes an active participant and "dramaturgist" in the process of communication and listening. This participation is physical, intellectual and emotional.

Tim Crook, Radio Drama: Theory and Practice (2001)

One study found that children who listen to radio were able to perform more imaginative tasks, such as inventing new endings to stories and writing alternative dialogue, than children exposed only to television. The researchers concluded that their findings supported Marshall McLuhan's famous dictum that "the medium is the message."

Mobile microphones

From a reporter's point of view, radio is more active as well. Producing high-quality video requires bulky equipment and carefully choreographed scenes. In the presence of a camera, natural behaviour goes out the window. A microphone, however, is unobstrusive; it can capture natural conversations as they happen, record from the thick of events unfolding and go places a camera can't... no matter how hard how those places are to reach.

The future of sound

Despite the unique features of audio, its future might appear uncertain in a world of ubiquitous video. The fear isn't entirely new. The Buggles sang that "video killed the radio star" back in 1979.

But even traditional audio formats are moving to video platforms like TikTok and Youtube. In 2024, Youtube passed Spotify and Apple to become the most popular way to consume podcasts.  

Jo Coleman is a professor of communications at Birkbeck College, University of London, in England. She thinks audio, especially in the form of community radio, still have a lot going for it. 

The future of community radio

Jo Coleman