The last day of the conference was a short one with just two sessions. I attended the first session "Online News and Journalism/Internet vs. Traditional Media" to hear David Park's presentation - Webcasting’s Importance to the Radio Underdogs: Noncommercial Radio, Local Scenes, & the Absorption of the Internet-accessible Audience.

Abstract: This paper addresses webcasting as an emergent practice in small non-commercial radio stations in the U.S. and elsewhere. Though webcasting has been the subject of intense scrutiny in the broadcasting trade press, this attention has focused almost entirely on the phenomenon of webcasting as it relates to large commercial stations. Meanwhile, college radio stations and other non-commercial outlets have begun to adopt live online webcasts as a tool for extending their audiences. By consulting those who program and organize these stations, and by analyzing their descriptions of their own programming and their on-air playlists, we can better understand how this situation has developed. Like many other features of the internet, webcasting has often been imagined as a way to remove the pre-existing gate-keeping restraints that are familiar to the mass media. This paper begins with a brief review of these utopian expectations, matching them with a description of the technical limitations for webcasting, and an outline of the music industry’s attempts to establish constraints on webcasting. This clash between (high) expectations and the continuing attempts to rein in some of the potential of webcasting provides a good background for understanding why webcasting looks like it does today.

With this clash of expectations and constraints in mind, the paper moves on to a discussion of how the introduction of webcasting has both changed and stabilized the practice of running small noncommercial stations. Here, the focus on noncommercial radio stations is particularly important. Because noncommercial radio stations are usually smaller in terms of their allotted broadcasting power, and more inclusive in terms of their programming philosophies, webcasting offers the promise of large and diverse new audiences without any need for adjusting to commercial audience-building techniques. Drawing on interviews with managers of numerous noncommercial stations in the U.S., the paper shows how webcasting has in some cases adjusted the process of imagining the audience so that geography does indeed play a less direct role in reaching audiences. In other words, the idea of webcasting has fed back into the programming philosophies of small noncommercial stations.

This may seem like a positive development for the oft-struggling radio underground; it offers the chance for larger audiences, and for greater prestige. However, this potential also represents a possibility that these smaller radio stations may lose some motivation for staying connected with the local music, public affairs, and sports scenes that have defined their appeal in the past. In particular, the college radio station’s connection to independent music scenes—traditionally established by the mere fact of radio towers’ programming ranges—may be eroded if programming philosophies are being adjusted to serve the ostensibly global audience made possible by webcasting. The result may be the kind of dispersal and standardization long-ago made familiar through Harold Innis’s notion of space-biased media.

This plot thickens when we see that small noncommercial stations have frequently not adjusted their locally-based programming and have simply found ways to make that kind of programming available through webcasts. Interviews with program directors and general managers of small noncommercial stations show that many of them maintain their concern for the local, though they frequently do make some adjustments to their programming philosophies. One pattern that emerges from this is the phenomenon of locally-oriented programming that is targeted to audiences formerly well out of broadcasting range. In this sense, locally-minded programming can be matched with a global audience. Data drawn from the playlists and stated programming philosophies of these radio stations support the hypothesis that webcasting has not (or at least not yet) wiped out the concern for the local. At the same time, global audiences may represent a valuable resource for local scenes.

The stubbornness with which noncommercial stations maintain their pre-existing broadcasting philosophies demonstrates that there are cultural factors that complicate what might otherwise be a clear narrative of technological effects on programming policy. Old habits of community-mindedness continue to die hard, even in the face of the new webcasting possibilities. Concluding notes discuss the importance of all this to international and global ideals of culture, with an emphasis on the variety of media systems into which webcasting has been introduced.

During the second session on "Internet Research Ethics" I listened to valuable exchanges between and among the audience and the presenters - Mark Johns, Caroline Haythornthwaite, and Charles Ess. After the conference officially ended I enjoyed talking to a Charles Ess at lunch, I always do enjoy talking to Charles.

Then it was all over.

Posted by prolurkr at September 22, 2004 11:12 PM

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