Beyond Broadcast: Future Networked Public Service Radio

Abstract

Radio continues to be a widely consumed, polyphonous, complex, and critical form of media throughout most of the African continent. It is immediate, “warm,” free to receive, and dialogical without requiring expensive hardware, literacy, or exclusive attention. From the era of single stations filled with colonial propaganda, through market liberalization, to today's commercial and religious mix (fueled by an apparently unending supply of ads by telcos), radio on the continent has been shaped by many factors. For the first time, as attention shifts to digital, people around the world can ask the question: what radio do we want? In Brazil and Mexico literally thousands of pirate stations broadcast local information, often in indigenous languages not served by the state or media. In England and France the move to digital has opened up space for hundreds of new community stations; the US announced 10,000 new slots for low power community radio in 2014. What could the future of African radio look like? Who will get to determine its political economics?