Swedish Radio’s Tomas Granryd joined with ARD’s Gwendolin Niehues to explain the importance of the radio broadcasts being available in cars. However, some car manufacturers started to remove or restrict the access to radio in their new automobiles. Whether by hiding the broadcasts behind an unpractical amount of menu screens or making the access to paid services much easier, listening to the radio in the car is becoming more challenging.
That is why Tomas and Gwendolyn have joined with some of the biggest radio stations across Europe to propose the new “The EBU Connected Car Playbook”. This Playbook is meant to strengthen the bond between car manufacturers and radio broadcasters again. However, the plan is not to just ask car manufacturers to feature radio broadcasts again. Tomas Granyrd clarified that “This is a true collaboration – we need to bring stuff to the table as well.”. Radio broadcasters need to give car brands a reason to feature radio stations again.
Cariad SE’s Christian Winters joined the stage to explain different possibilities of modernizing broadcasts, to make them more valuable to car manufacturers again. By supplying modern graphics or individual interfaces for each radio station to check different statistics or the current program, the radio broadcasts could be integrated into modern Infotainment systems of newly developed cars. However, Michael clarified that implementing these changes won’t be the easiest of tasks. As a large amount of radio stations work independently from each other, getting all of them to upgrade their own systems to keep up with the new automobile systems might become problematic.
However, the team seemed confident that if the radio industry comes together, the Playbook might be implemented sooner than some might think.
