Senior executives from all the main commercial radio networks met in Sydney today to discuss some of the challenges and opportunities that may arise for the medium over the next decade.
Joan Warner, chief executive of Commercial Radio Australia discussed how broadcasters need to work together to overcome issues in the future.
“With such a rapidly changing media world, it is a constant challenge for traditional media like radio to look at new ways to interact with listeners. The radio industry is extremely fortunate that competing networks choose to work together for the benefit of the industry as a whole in indentifying future challenges and opportunities,” she said.
According to Cathy O’Connor, CEO of DMG Radio Australia, the industry has performed solidly in the last year, despite the challenging conditions.
“The radio industry has performed better than many other traditional media and also international radio over the past twelve months which augurs well for the future. However, there are certainly challenges ahead and if we can work together as an industry to address some of these issues, then radio overall will benefit,” she said.
Some of the issues discussed at the think tank included: radio in the digital world, research projects, digital radio in regional markets and in cars, identifying the next big thing for radio and future promotional and advertising strategies.
Warner commented on how the industry has changed since the last think tank in 2006, which was focussed on the introduction of digital radio.
“Since then we have successfully introduced digital radio in five metropolitan markets but our next challenge is to extend this to regional markets and look at future possibilities for digital,” she said.