VRT and Pluxbox presented to the audience innovative solutions about listening to audio. They have been working with other companies together on the Marconi Project, their goal to develop interactive and personalised radio experiences.
The Belgian TV and radio public broadcaster VRT is working on developing those experiences. Floris Daelemans, radio presenter and innovation researcher in the group, talked about how consumers can interact with live radio. Furthermore, Floris showed solutions on how to bring radio shows and the audience together so they can also be a part of programs.
To do that, they developed software to create interactive stories with the public. Floris Daelemans gave examples of hyperlocal short-form audio stories. The NPO Radio 2 tested this idea: listeners had to co-create a podcast about mysteries.
During the summer of 2021, forty mysteries were launched. They had daily items on air and a short form podcast on Fridays. During the streams, radio presenters talked about the stories’ development.
VRT has been working also on virtual multicam, virtual studio in unreal engine and synthetic voice. Using artificial intelligence, they can generate conversations, research relevant information and relay it back to the user.
Caspar Adriani, CTO of Pluxbox and metadata.radio, explained the technological solutions they have been working on for the radio stations. The goal is to make easier and intuitive presenters and producers tasks. An electronic program guide and a program agenda assistant are some of those projects that include audience interaction. Most of the software is customized together with the clients to suit their needs. Pluxbox worked with broadcasters such as RTL, RTVE, Virgin Radio or NPO.
These two enterprises are focused on making sure the public stays tuned with radio.
Written by Artyom Laptev, Beatriz Figueira and Gonçalo Martins
