Does Digital Mean Total Radio Silence for Bangladesh?

Let’s recall Charlie Chaplin’s famous movie ‘City Lights, which was deliberately kept silent, even when the world was celebrating sound in the new trends of ’’Talkies”.

Chaplin believed that movies were more powerful without sound, and he never thought sound with visuals were a must, but it was an option.

Instead, he focused on enhancing how silence is experienced. His fight to keep ‘audio’ an option (and not a must) with ‘video’ continued, against the commercial pressure. He took a break from the movie world with the fear of being blamed as old fashioned (which he was indeed heavily criticized for). He kept winning and losing, but he never gave up, and we got another classic “Modern Times” this time too with no dialogues.

Now, after almost a century later, for my lack of knowledge (and Google search) I can’t find a similar story of radios challenging the pressure to turn visual (via social media)- or irrelevant.

So ever since the era of audio-visuals emerged, we hear the question “Do people still listen to radio?”

Like my colleague asked me when we were planning to visit Radio Pollikontho, a community radio in Moulvibazar run by BRAC’s Community Empowerment Programme.

Going back to my colleague’s question, that is asked from the assumption, that audio+video is better than just audio, or just video.

But is it?

When we listen to a good speech, an audiobook, those youtube videos of guided meditation, our eyes close automatically, to focus more on the words, as we hear them and feel them at heart. We haven’t focused as much on improving the audio experience, played with the sound bites in radio programmes as much as we’ve done in the ‘audio-visual’ world. One reason why this may have happened is probably because the industry was under threat of being irrelevant and pressure to create visual engagements or turn digital, the same way they gave up during Chaplin’s time.

Why radios matter, even in this digital age

But in the age of cheaper internet, Facebook live and Youtube streaming, aren’t radios/community radios supposed to die?

Probably. Everything is turning digital. Norway has closed its FM signal last year, moving to a digital only broadcasting system nationwide.

But moving to digital is expensive. Especially for a country like Bangladesh. Running different models of commercial and community radio would be difficult in Bangladesh without the availability of FM/AM radio.

With the growing threats of the radio sector being obsolete, instead of focusing on better radio content for listeners, the commercial radios are turning to Facebook interactions to stay ‘relevant’, creating shows in languages that make no sense, messages that are often insensitive and even offensive-because guess what, there is market for this; and meanwhile the core radio experience is losing the battle with AVs.

However, Community Radios didn’t follow their path, primarily because they were backed by development funds, so they continued their efforts to create social change through communications for more than a decade now. Radio Pollikontho has been a continuous role model for innovation, winning countless awards for it’s impact and innovations from the very beginning. But it may no longer be the case with the shrinking donor fund and pressure to reach sustainability.

Bangladesh has 14 community radios with approximately 500 people who represent the underprivileged communities these radios serve. These radios not only have had impact in the listener community but also have changed the lives of those who work with them, giving them exposure to standard Bangla language, training on communications, script development, social interaction etc. And they’ve done it in an environment full of challenges and few recognitions for solving them.

Truth is, radio has its unique appeal in the context of developing nations, when a farmer works in the field, when people commute on bumpy village roads with no electricity, when women cook in their kitchen and listen to programmes that teach them about family planning.

So do people still listen to radio?

“I have been in this family planning method for 7 months now, can you tell me about the side effects?” Maloti Debi asked Nilima, live during a daytime show on Radio Pollikontho.

7 years ago when Radio Pollikontho started, those who worked behind it could barely believe that they could reach a point where women would freely talk about stigmatized issues like family planning methods on live radio shows.

Maloti Debi belongs to a conservative family, in the conservative district Moulvibazar, where BRAC’s Community Empowerment Programme started the community radio initiative to not only reach rural people with the right messages, but to co-create awareness campaigns with them.

Maloti is just one of the millions of lives Radio Pollikontho has touched over the years with their daily reach of over 1,00,000 people, and 766 listeners club in the semi-urban and rural areas of Moulvibazar.

So yes! People do still listen to radio. That is why Radio Pollikontho generated a surplus last year, without even absorbing the funds allocated for them. It happened when community radios finally had the permission to broadcast advertisement (socially responsible) for 20% of the time.

What lies ahead

There aren’t many incentives for innovations in the radio industry of Bangladesh, not much accountability to produce socially responsible content, yet a lot of threats to sustainability.

If local and community radios are interested in adopting technologies and creative strategies to enhance authentic radio experience at lower costs, we will probably see more innovations in creating new audience, may be some cool hobby based radio run in the communities (like this one for coders), campus based radios, few good podcasts in Bangla (may be close to Harvard Business Review quality?)

Or maybe we can build our own public radio for Bangladesh that gives us the same sense of a community like social media does, so in future someone based somewhere in Moulvibazar can run their own cooking show on radio for people in Dhaka!

Digital should not mean total ‘radio silence’ for Bangladesh. Tech has never been so irresistible in history. Instead of chasing them (which is hard not to do), we should be able to think outside the box, develop technologies that work for all. Pushing solutions to communities never work. Co-creation does.

And our goal should never be to adapt quick, but adapt right!