The evolution of the traditional media has never been on hold and it appears that the rate of innovative approaches just gets amplified. At the same time, the radio seems to have had a pretty log run without being too interrupted over the last decades. It appears, however, that the new consumption habits of millennials and younger generations that have been powering radio consumption is finally starting to shift.
I guess the big question to answer is whether the radio will survive the competition of the modern world or give in? Throughout its history, radio has managed to evolve at times when it has faced crises in the face of the popularization of new technologies. With the arrival of television, many announced the disappearance of radio, however, the medium knew how to evolve and reinvent itself to maintain audiences through the decades and the ravages of new technologies such as television and now the Internet. Even many of the existing genres and formats on television derived from formats created by radio.
Initially, families gathered together with their radios to listen to stories, news or music programs, in the same way, that decades later they would do it in front of a television screen. With the arrival of television, radio changed, in format, and in scope, automobiles began to include radio receivers among their accessories; news and music accompanied the ever-growing car-driving population.
Over the years, the radio became, also, the favorite medium of many young music lovers, the stations began to create lists of musical tops, which were called the Hit Parade, and the phrase: Yes, for which you vote, became part of popular culture in our country. Even today there are programs dedicated to particular groups such as the immortal hour of the Beatles.
The radio created irreverent and attractive spaces for young people such as Rock 101, Radioactive 98.5, who defied the vulgarities and nonsense of a television unable to evolve before the submission and convenience of the owner to the system, declaring himself a soldier of the system.
With the arrival of the Internet today many of the radio stations do not need to be listened to in the old receiving devices, in portable devices like the cellular telephones or in the desk computers many Mexicans listen to their favorite radio station.
The success of the news sports of journalists such as Francisco ZEA or Martín Espinosa in the Imagen group stations is not compared to the very low ratings that both journalists achieved on their television spots. It is well known that even Joaquín López DORIGA or Javier ALATORRE are unable to overcome the rating of the soap opera that precedes their news spots on any day of the week.
Radio in Mexico has served to unite families, to have communication between different small and isolated communities, unlike television in Mexico there is a whole network of indigenous community stations that broadcast in the different original languages of our country.
According to the IFT (Federal Telecommunications Institute) report for the last four months of 2015, while open television audiences have fallen by more than 15%, in the metropolitan area of Mexico City, radio audiences grew by two years by almost 50%. The same has not happened for the metropolitan areas of Guadalajara and Monterrey. Morning radio audiences continue to grow nationally according to this same quarterly report, and although the report for the first quarter of 2016 is not yet on the IFT site, there is no reason to believe that trends have changed. radical way. On the contrary, we can infer thanks to the cuts, restructurings, and relaunches that the crisis in open television is far from being overcome.
Radio has learned from the beginning to compete for audiences and advertisers because the number of communication groups that own radio stations is much greater. There is no duopoly, in addition to the fact that many times regional stations enter fully into this competition, unlike the ridiculous presence of regional television channels, both governmental and private repeaters, with their meager and inconsequential production, unlike what happens in other countries.
Now that in terms of audiovisual entertainment content the competition has become global, the two national television stations seem to lack the response capacity to contend, the radio is growing and, in many cases, it is even going viral. Despite being in crisis as well, and facing a forthcoming tender by the government for new radio stations both FM and AM, 191 of the first and 66 of the second throughout the country, which shows that the strength of the radio has nothing to do with the weaknesses of television where the fourth television channel could not be sold, even today it is not known whether it should be re-tendered as such or as a series of regional mini-chains.
