Hasta La Creative!

Social media seems to be chocker with people whose main source of fame and/or income appears to be making apocalyptic predictions about how technology is going to kill off some legacy device, behaviour, or medium. The latest instalment in Seth Godin s blog is a classic example. Entitled An end of radio it asserts how Bluetooth connected smartphones in-car are going to “destroy” radio. Now please don t get me wrong, I m not complacent about the challenges that new audio services and changes to technology (especially in-car) pose to radio, but the evidence Seth uses to support his claim is a story about a car-sharing driver who still listens to local radio despite all the alternative sources of audio he could access. Nope, I don t understand it either! In contrast, the RAB s recent Audio Now multi-faceted research study suggests that whilst new formats such as streamed music services and podcasts are adapting the audio ecology they seem to be doing so at the expense of people s own music collection rather than radio listening occasions.
What differentiates radio is the human voice and human choice it s not going to be easy for an algorithm to replicate the uncertainty of human intervention that radio listeners embrace, or the general serendipity of legacy media that David Brennan celebrates in this blog.
Coming in the same week that the Guardian published a story about how digital prophets only sell optimism to a terrified tech industry , this and the New Yorker this piece deconstructing Shingy the self-styled Digital Prophet from AOL you would hope that Seth s blog is one of a dying breed.
In recent years there certainly seems to have been a re-evaluation of the enduring value of broadcast legacy media and the important role they play alongside more precisely targeted connected communications opportunities. In which context, I d like a make a prediction of my own. Within the next two years, common sense and rational thinking will “destroy” the business of these unsubstantiated nihilists. Or am I only fooling myself?
Mark Barber is plannign director at the Radio Advertising Bureau