Radio evolution - ICS - Universidade do Minho

Alejandro López Merayo & Mª de la Peña Mónica Perez Alaejo5.5, due to the greater fragmentation of its “magazine” programs. There is a total of 113 programs uploaded aspodcast with just one fragment, 34 of them belong to COPE, which holds the highest number, while Punto Radiowith just 2 programs is the station with less single-fragmented podcasts. Once recoded the variable “number offragments” and grouped the values, we observe that the highest percentages of fragmentation are in a rangefrom 2 to 6, where Punto Radio has a 32% of the total (which represents a 72.1% of its podcasts) followed by SERwith 19.7% of its programs fragmented from 2 to 6 parts and COPE with a 19.1%, while RNE and Onda Cero have22 programs each within this range (14.5% each). If we focus on the range of podcasts with more than 11fragments, Punto Radio stands out again with 45% of the total (13.3% of its programs) while SER and COPE onlyhave one program each with such number of fragments (5% of them each).+1020%5% 5%25%45%7-1020%15%40%5%20%2-615%20%19%15%32%1 25%20%30%23%02%0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%RNE SER COPE Onda Cero Punto RadioGraphic 5. Fragmentation of podcastsSource: Prepared by the authorsFindings and conclusions Spanish general-content radio stations, both commercial and public, have advanced considerably in theuse of tools to make them more visible and increase their presence in the Internet in recent years. Mostof them, especially at state coverage, use websites and podcasting as a basis for their onlineprogramming and as a lure for the audience that wants specific radio content without being subject tothe diffusion timetables of the waves. In contrast to what might be at first thought, this researchdemonstrates that almost every program broadcast though hertzian radio on the analyzed stations hasits corresponding podcast on the Web available to all users. However, we can also conclude that the Internet is not used to offer different and innovative contentsthat do not have place in traditional radio. The podcasts are simply identical copies of the analogueprograms and, in most cases, do not even have a fixed fragmentation structure. They are designed as asupport through which the same contents can be made available on the Internet and consumed ondemand but without designing a new specific narrative. The clearest example can be found in theadvertising those podcasts include which, as has been said, is exactly the same as that included intraditional radio, in the same place and order. The stations still have not bothered designing specialadvertising for this new form of radio consumption, wasting the commercial advantages that itsredesigning could bring. Only Cadena SER announces on its website specific Internet content, however,during the week of the analysis these contents were not updated. The radio stations websites and their podcasts are not, generally, easily accessible to the users and thereis a huge anarchy in the ways information is made available. The stations do not seem to have a clear270 | ECREA: Radio Evolution: technology, content, audiences – conference 2011