Stay Tuned! An Investigation of Content Substitution, the Listener as Curator and Other Innovations in Broadcast Radio

Abstract

This paper demystifes listeners' wishes with respect to broadcast radio innovation (with a specifc focus on radio-mediated music consumption). Our study encompasses an ideation workshop with radio experts, an exploratory survey and a mixed methods empirical evaluation. The empirical evaluation uses two concrete concepts (i.e., letting listeners on-the-fy replace radio content with preferred content and fostering participatory radio production by involving listeners as radio content curators) as a lens to zoom in on the questionable desirability of radio innovation. It is learned that a signifcant consumer group exists who will stay loyal to broadcast radio even if it does not evolve substantially, whereas others need disruptive incentives to start listening to radio (again). From our results we distill design recommendations to educate the radio production community about how best to approach radio innovation. CCS CONCEPTS• Information systems → Multimedia streaming; • Humancentered computing → Laboratory experiments; User studies.