Identifying Radio's Digital Dilemma

Radio broadcasting is the last bastion of the traditional analog mass media to negotiate the communicative phenomenon known as convergence—the ongoing evolution of media technologies toward a universal digital communications language and platform, presently best exemplified by the Internet. ¹ Convergence is itself a phenomenon governed by three factors: the development of new technologies, industry strategy, and public policy. ² Although most analyses of convergence focus primarily on its technological aspects, the phenomenon is more often than not “the product of political will, rather than inexorable logic.” ³ Those involved in the crafting of communications policy often promise us that new media technologies will make our media environment fundamentally more democratic—but in many respects, convergence has opened up the potential for potent unsettlement, especially with regard to how the phenomenon shapes legacy media systems. ⁴ Unfortunately, corporate interests have skewed the regulatory development of our convergent media environment to entrench the priorities of commerce above all others; from the perspectives of industry strategy and public policy, convergence is a convenient vehicle by which to bring the “entire ‘ideological’ sphere of society” into the orbit of a hyper-capitalist political economy. ⁵