Kate Chisholm

Radio is flowering because it’s so much more potent than TV

Plus: a Radio 4 documentary that gives a real insight into what it’s like to be a Syrian refugee

issue 12 December 2015

Who would have thought in this visually obsessed age of YouTube, selfies and Instagram that radio, pure audio, no images attached, nothing to hold on to but a voice, a tune, a blast of birdsong, could not only survive the arrival of the new image-making and digital technologies but experience an extraordinary flowering of talent and expression. Thousands of radio stations are popping up right across the globe, ready for you to tap into via your smartphone or tablet, taking you straight from SW9 or NE69 to Chicago, Cape Town, Lviv or Marrakech. The quality of the sound produced by these stations is less important than an ability to draw in the listener, to tell a story, create a narrative, to use audio and nothing else to paint images in the mind. Radio might rely on technology for its transmission but its enduring power is not about clever computer-generated tricks (although there’s always room for digital diversion in the sound-effects department).

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