Kate Chisholm

Kate Chisholm connects to her inner tortoise

issue 17 August 2013

Of course there’s a future for digital radio, it’s just that we’ll probably be listening to it online, or on the phone. The wireless set, tucked on the kitchen shelf, beside the bed, among the vases in the lounge, permanently tuned in to Aggers or Humphrys, Livesey or Lamacq, will become a museum piece, an object from the past. Instead we’ll be going back to the future and walking around with a smartphone plugged to our ears as if it were an old transistor radio. But with a difference. Aggers and co. will have to compete with the constant chatter of online life. No longer a dedicated stream of wireless talk but a babble of disconnected thoughts and ideas.

But that’s still in the future for most of us (though not the 15- to 24-year-olds who are fast discovering smart radio). In the meantime, on Saturday evening Radio 4 gave us a haunting.

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