Tuesday, July 30, 2024

Digital Radio: Go Big or Go Home

 
Roger Lanctot writes that large screens represent a huge opportunity for radio

By Roger Lanctot 
Published: July 29, 2024

The author is founder of StrategiaNow. This commentary appeared in the Radio World ebook “Global Digital Radio.”

Big screens are coming to dashboards in Europe, North America, China and just about everywhere else in the world. Bigger screens with higher resolutions are the rule, reflecting the onset of video in the dash as well as the desire to dazzle drivers and passengers.

I am more than a little skeptical of this trend, given the sorry, sordid history of distracted driving and the annual toll of 1.2 million highway fatalities. The good news, though, is that that real estate represents a huge opportunity for the least distracting form of media in the car: radio.

Radio has always represented the distraction-mitigated solution for driver and passenger engagement. With the onset of digital radio, the opportunity to convert the lean-back, audio-only experience to a visual event is transformative.

Additional story from Radio World: