Dave Watson from DAVID Systems introduced the panel session tackling the challenges and opportunities for the reinvention of radio. He introduced the panel: Florian Notter from TPC, SRF, Carine Fillot from elson.fr, Marit Rossnes from NRK and Tamar Charney from NPR.
The panel started talking about personalisation and how each of their organisations are using it. Florian Notter talked about his experience making personalised speaker skills in the USA. Tamar talked about how at NPR they use personalisation to give people balanced news, recommending things with a different viewpoint. Carine said elson.fruse personalisation in their curation, although they do this in different ways for podcasts compared to radio.
Then the panel moved on to how each of the speakers are using this in their product development. Florian said Silicon Valley is more open minded to trial and error than Switzerland, but believes it’s important to get this mindset into the company. Tamara said the default position is often to retreat back into what we know, so the challenge is to demonstrate why this matters.
Finally the panel talked about how data is changing the way they work. Carine’s view was that it’s very important to understand who the early adopters are, and collect feedback via them. Marit values the granular data on their podcasts, as it helps identify where people drop off, what drives good listening habits and also helps them deliver their PSB mission. Tamar said that having data for virtually everything avoids arguments and, importantly, bad decisions.
