Switching Channels: Radio's Role in Society

Last week, I wrote about radio and the way it is perceived by broadcast executives. Too many feel that radio is dead, that because radio is old it is no longer relevant. I disagreed.

I work as an assistant producer at a radio station. Everyday I see firsthand the possibilities that radio has, the relevance of radio. But I realize that not everyone holds this opinion. And not everyone has the privilege of being involved in radio firsthand. So I started asking around.

On the far end of the spectrum, Barbra Clayton, one of my parents’ friends back in Michigan, no longer even owns a radio except for the one in her car. In her mind, radio is dying and is being replaced by services like Pandora. Eric Devey, a student here at BYU, proves this point. He doesn’t even use the radio in the car, instead he hooks up his phone and listens to music from there.

But it would seem that these people are in the minority.

There are still a lot of benefits to radio. From a financial standpoint, radio commercials are much harder to skip than those on TV and online, making it a great place for advertising. And from the listeners’ point of view, many like radio's personal touch, of hearing someone’s voice curating their music. In the words of Lydia Cadena, a teacher at my old high school, “[we] need real humans to host and organize [our] auditory world.” Of all the people I talked to, her opinion was in the majority.

So with radio, the loyalty is there. People are listening. So why do people think it is dying? I’d argue that this is due to an overly close-minded view of what radio is. Those who think that radio is only what you hear when you turn on a radio are going to have a very limited view of radio’s potential. Unfortunately, this seems to be where too many broadcast executives go wrong.


Radio is changing, adapting. Podcasts and services like iHeartRadio are allowing people to take their favorite stations with them, regardless of location. In fact, iHeartRadio claims they are growing “faster than any other radio or digital music service — even faster than Facebook.”


Too often, when completely new forms of technology come in, we hastily replace what we already have and assume it dead. Instead of throwing out the old, let’s improve upon it. As we look to renovate as well as innovate, we will be left with a much richer experience. Radio has a long life ahead of it, as long as we are willing to widen our horizons.