Radiodays Europe has begun.
As a media partner for Radiodays Europe, radioinfo can bring you exclusive content from the conference, which is taking place now in Lisbon.
Yesterday (Saturday 9 Oct) the conference began with a covid safe Fast and Curious meet, greet and discuss session and this morning Lisbon time in-person delegates began to enter the conference, while virtual participants logged in from their home offices in their own time zones.
In the first session of the world leading radio and audio conference, Peter Niegel opened by telling the audience that 60% of them are at the conference centre in person, while another 40% of attendees are virtual.
Marianne Bugge Zederkof, the Director of the commercial radio body Danske Medier, said one of the important things on the agenda for radio companies in Europe is to prevent anticompetitive practices such as third party apps that do not pay to rebroadcast radio services and apps that insert ads into radio streams without the permission of the original broadcaster.
“We will act to ensure that listeners can continue to access and enjoy free radio.”
Adam Bowie, Business Development Manager at the BBC World Service looked at changing audience habits during the pandemic.
In The UK, Rajar surveys stopped because the methodology involved visiting people’s homes and capturing the data on paper, but Adam used other information to extrapolate the changes to audience habits during this disrupted covid period.
“What we know about radio is that it is habit driven, but habits were disrupted. We know that the commute is an important part of radio listening, but working from home became more common.
“People are now coming back to work in cars and commuting data shows car transport returning to normal, but we have seen that public transport commuting has not returned to normal so listening on public transport has decreased. But what we have found is that people are listening more during the day than they were previously, especially to podcasts, which you can do between work and parenting from home.”
“People are also exercising more and having picnics. their audio listening has adapted. 22% of Americans are listening to more podcasts during the pandemic. Listening has not been lost, it has been displaced.
“Longer term there may be some reversion to normal listening, but it will not be a total return to normal in radio listening nor many other things either, habits have changed, such as online shopping and many other changed things too.”
📺 Watch the Opening Session of #RDE21 in Lisbon… https://t.co/yS0OUEDg7s
— Radiodays Europe (@RadiodaysEurope) October 10, 2021