Radio is form of mass-communication, which uses one-way wireless signal transmission technology to send audio recordings to a particular audience. The first radio station came into being in 1916 in Pennsylvania. In the period that radio has been in existence, it has become an avenue for sharing educational and entertainment content. This includes news, sports, political discussions and music.
A podcast is an audio-recording presented to the public on the internet. Pod-casts are generally structured around the principles governing radio broadcasts, with the primary difference being that listeners have the liberty to download to the recording at a time of their choosing.
Pod-casts, like radio, are unidirectional in the sense that the author comes up with content and sends it out to users, without the users actively responding to the message during production.
So, what are the advantages that radio has over podcasts? First radio, by virtue of its lengthy existence, is more widespread than the internet. Anyone sending a message over radio can rest assured that it will reach a much-bigger audience than if he/she sends it over the internet as pod-cast. This is because the number of radio sets in any particular area is generally more than the number of computers, or gadgets that can tap into the internet.
The other strength that radio has over podcasts is credibility. Most people tend to regard radio stations as more reliable sources of information compared to podcasts. This is fundamentally because the internet is very liberal and gives anyone the authority to publish anything.
Radio on the other hand is more regulated, with media councils in different countries providing rules governing the broadcast of audio recordings. Because of this fact, listeners tend to believe information distributed over radio, more than they would believe messages carried in podcasts.
Podcasts also have strengths of their own that may make them come to replace radio broadcasts with time. First, podcasts are more flexible in terms of access than radio broadcasts. Listeners can download podcasts at their own convenience and because they can rewind and replay them as many times as they wish, they end up getting more informed than if they had listened to the same recording on radio.
Podcasts also have the advantage of a reduced restriction in terms of the kind of content that people can broadcast. The internet is less subjected to the limitations on the scope of coverage that are radio experiences. A person can create a recording on a varied number of topics, without taking into account the principles of journalism, and broadcast it via the internet.
The role of content creation is also easy for podcasts in comparison to radio broadcasts. Creating a podcast on the basic level requires a microphone and recording software only, items that most people can easily access. In contrast, Radio broadcast requires one to have specialized recording and editing equipment, for content generation, and expensive transmission sets for the broadcast itself.
These equipment are very costly to buy or rent. Purchasing broadcasting time on radio is also very costly compared to online platforms such as Youtube, which allow users to host their podcasts for free. However, because the internet is yet to spread as deep as radio has, in terms of infrastructure, it will be some time before podcasts lead to decline of radio.