Live Versus Downloadable

"I'm not the world's greatest businessman, but it just seems to me that the market is pretty flooded with quality products. The BBC soaks up the oxygen and it's very tricky. I'm not criticizing the BBC. It's doing the job it's been told to do, and it's doing it really well" (Maggs 2009).

Only half the story: Radio drama, online audio and transmedia storytelling by Lance Dann details the scope of BBC's radio broadcast and chronicles how this scope has affected content creators. Dann describes the way's in which the BBC controls the production of radio drama - it organizes its air time not according to available content, but instead generates a pool of available content according to the organization of the air time. It fosters an "environment in which producers do not develop ideas from which broadcaster may construct a schedule," and where "independent producers see their role as being not to sell programme ideas to the BBC but to sell the network controllers' scheduling solutions." Dann also comments on the availability of BBC content when compared to the availability of independent downloadable content, claiming that the "audience for downloadable audio is able to choose when to listen, and how it listens, thus creating the possibility for the generation of entirely new forms of audio drama."

I agree with Only half the story up until this point. Here Dann states that the reason that live radio is so appealing is because the listener actively understands that "there is someone out there talking to you at that precise moment" and because "listeners feel themselves to be a part of a listening community." He follows that by saying that "online audio is narrow casting and private, an intimate and controlled experience" that "loses the sense of dynamic openness that exists in broadcasting." I disagree.

Listening to live broadcasts is itself an "intimate and controlled experience." The listener does not get to control the particular content that is being played and does not get to decided when that content gets air time. Once a live broadcast has concluded, it can be difficult to find this content again, and if a listeners misses the content or does not hear it the first time, they might not have a full understanding of what the content was about. In comparison to this, downloadable content grants the listener freedom in what they listen to or when they listen to it. Topics discussed in downloadable content can be replayed and digested, allowing the listener to consume the media until it is fully understood.

Because of the nature of live broadcasts, it can be difficult to discuss what was said during the broadcast itself. In any given conversation about a broadcast, an individual might have been distracted during a particular segment, or several individuals may have missed the broadcast entirely. This severely limits the amount of discussion that can be had. However, downloadable content can be played indefinitely and naturally lends itself to better audience comprehension. Listeners of downloadable content are able to fully grasp material and are more ready to discuss this content later on. This fact can be seen in the number of online forums and groups that exist to discuss downloadable content - it is certainly much greater than the number for elusively live content. Reddit is a largely used forum website, and some of its groups that fit the previously mentioned description are for Spotify, Soundcloud, Podcasts, iTunes, and audiobooks in general.

Ultimately, Dann did a great job discussing the power and scope of BBC, but he failed to understand the true reach that downloadable content can have in terms of their corresponding communities.