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The Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union represents broadcasters serving more than half the world’s population. As its Head of Radio, Olya Booyar manages the strategic direction for radio and helps expand services to more than 230 member organizations across the region and worldwide. Booyar started as an on-air broadcaster-journalist at the Special Broadcasting Service and quickly rose through the organization’s journalism, programming and management ranks in both radio and television before leaving to become deputy director of Australia’s Classification Board. In addition to working as general manager in charge of content, consumer and citizen matters for the Australian media regulator, ACMA, she’s a former president of the global International Association of Women in Radio and Television and of Australia’s National Association for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect. She is on the boards of the World Summit on Media for Children Foundation and the International Radio and Television Union. She shares with RedTech how the ABU successfully navigates the challenges of dealing with its diverse landscape and is helping radio evolve.
RedTech: What are the biggest challenges facing radio broadcasters in the Asia Pacific region today?
Olya Booyar: Radio, especially public service media, has always faced challenges, such as finances and resources — both human and technical — and competition for our audiences’ attention. COVID had a significant effect. On the one hand, we faced enormous obstacles to getting programs out, while on the other, the needs of our listeners grew massively — people everywhere were fearful and desperately needed reliable information. Radio triumphed, but it was a hard time for everyone concerned. We lost our innocence, and we have to build new structures in a media environment that is radically altered, especially in terms of trust and fighting fakery.
RedTech: How is the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union helping its members address these issues?
Booyar: The ABU represents members across half the Earth’s surface. It is an enormous challenge, not made easier by the vast diversity of languages, cultures, economies and political systems. Our members range from tiny, isolated Pacific Islands broadcasters to some of the world’s biggest networks in India, Japan, China and Turkey. So we must do two critical things: Tailor our workshops, training, conferences, networking and resource-building offerings to each member, and act as facilitators, bringing members together to assist each other. All of this is paid for by a minimal budget funded by the members and levied proportionately to their revenue. Our large members have always been incredibly generous in assisting less well-resourced colleagues in broadcast infrastructure, technology, capacity building and programming.
Because of the size and diversity of the Asia-Pacific, no two members face the same challenges.
RedTech: What types of projects does the ABU craft to encourage regional co-productions and capacity-building initiatives?
Booyar: We work with our members and external partners to tailor news, sports, programming and technology capacity-building initiatives. We exchange daily news, as well as sports and music programming. We enable rights-free content acquisition for developing countries, negotiate sports rights, and organize coverage for major sports events for our region. We also facilitate co-productions among members to improve skills and raise capacity across the board. ABU organizes key industry, regional and global conferences and summits as platforms for exchanging ideas, experiences and practices. We also have a Media Academy, providing a center of excellence for capacity building.
RedTech: What are your members’ main regulatory, operational or technical challenges?
Booyar: Again, because of the size and diversity of the Asia-Pacific, no two members face the same challenges. For some, it’s financing, finding or training skilled staff or developing technologies to serve diverse audiences; for others, it’s the changing political and regulatory systems. No challenge is simple. The ABU strives to assist each member fairly as much as they desire, and we can provide resources. It isn’t easy at times, but radio can be great fun.
RedTech: What’s happening to time spent listening and loyalty to radio in the Asia Pacific region?
Booyar: Radio worldwide struggles with change and retaining audiences across different platforms, so Asia-Pacific is no different. New digital platforms have made huge inroads into our traditional audiences, but radio, by its nature, is remarkably agile. We can pivot on a penny … if we have enough of them. Our members in developed nations rely on technologies and adaptability, moving audiences to new platforms, especially for streaming and social media on mobile devices. Smaller, less-resourced members still rely on legacy platforms for core activities while recognizing that their audiences increasingly use their smartphones for information and entertainment. Public service media have a built-in advantage of reputable, known branding that we must work hard to maintain and to justify audience trust.
RedTech: With increasing competition from streaming services, social media and other demands on your audience’s attention, how do you see your members sustaining their audience loyalty?
Booyar: A radio network’s most important asset is its reputation. If it has been serving its citizens for decades honestly and truthfully, listeners will remain loyal as long as possible. The challenge is to provide a service when and where they prefer to use it. Radio as we once knew it no longer exists.
It is no longer a service inside a box, and we cannot survive and thrive on that legacy alone, especially when most of our audiences don’t remember when radio was something people sat around together. So, today’s broadcasters must be super agile, responsive to changing audience needs and behaviors, and always thinking forward on technological developments while remaining trustworthy and service-oriented. How do we do that?
We have to throw into the air all the fundamentals of radio and interrogate if they are still serving their purpose, and if not, we have to revise them to what is required here and now. Do we really need formulaic or time-fixed schedules and rigid formats? Do we need news on the hour when our audiences are demanding immediate and constant access? Radio has the great advantage of being mobile, able to go out into listening land to gather content and provide information and entertainment to communities, schools, public events and wherever else they can show they are there and they care. Let’s use that to our advantage!
RedTech: How do you see the future of in-car radio listening?
Booyar: While some vehicle manufacturers are — in my opinion, unwisely — ceasing to install in-car radios, especially the legacy AM and FM bands, real demand for radio services on AM and FM bands will continue to grow in many countries, whether that is for traditional radio services or emergency broadcasting, especially in developing countries with active, well-used analog radio networks. Digital radio coverage can be patchy or non-existent in developed countries because of geography or transmission infrastructure. In Australia, for example, over-the-air DRB is still largely only available in major cities and, therefore, not so helpful to listeners in rural and regional areas and certainly not during emergencies. In many Asia-Pacific countries, mobile radio listening is mainly on buses, trains, boats and cycles or motorcycles. While audiences are accessing audio through their mobile devices, including in vehicles with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, there are real risks of malicious interference with IP services that don’t exist with conventional terrestrial radio. So I wouldn’t write off in-car radio just yet.
RedTech: There has been a lot of news recently about AI; what role do you see it playing in radio and audio broadcasting operations now and in the future?
Booyar: Radio has embraced AI in our region and that will continue to develop. It will do for communications what robotics did for manufacturing, making repetitive tasks easier, less human resource-intensive and more consistent. For smaller broadcasters who struggle to find skilled people to fill all the available functions and tasks, it’s a godsend, albeit expensive. It may not be so successful in areas where human qualities still excel — especially unpredictability, serendipitous innovation and, let’s face it, errors and mistakes. Radio is the most human of all communication media, and “happy chance” plays a big part in the listeners’ liking. Yes, they want their news and factual programming to be honest and reliable, but for all the rest, they still listen for the unexpected. We all want to be shaken and shocked, and I’m not convinced we are anywhere near having algorithms that can authentically do that. Also, while AI is an excellent tool for content creators to scrape and repackage information on the internet, in linguistically diverse regions such as the Asia-Pacific, some benefits from quantity and availability are not so great.
RedTech: What trends do you see among your peer group of broadcasters that are particularly encouraging for radio and audio’s future?
Booyar: Just as Mark Twain quipped, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,” so too has doom-mongering about the death of radio. Yes, “radio-in-a-box” is in its death throes, but radio as a service to people has survived and thrived as audio, in its many forms and on platforms we cannot yet imagine. I see young people across our vast region taking great interest in making radio and audio and experimenting with formats, approaches, language and content. People love the human qualities only another voice can deliver, and just as we have learned to manage digital technologies, we will adapt to seek out and recognize authenticity where it is important. The growth of podcasting has proved that long-form audio still has a future, and our ability as broadcasters to play around with formats and scheduling means we will better connect with listeners who want us when and where it suits them. That has got to be good, eh?
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