Swedish Radio’s Cilla Benkö, started in the broadcaster’s sports department and is now the Director General and CEO.
“Even back when I first joined, people asked me, why are you joining a dying medium. When I became CEO people asked me the same thing. They said, why do you want to be captain of a sinking ship, the future is about video?
“The market is global and the market is digital. Spotify is a Swedish company, a very successful audio player from Sweden that is now worldwide.
“Even with such competition radio is doing fine. We have more listeners than we did in 2023, including young audiences.”
Radio listening is no longer just through transmitters, but the audience is still strong for live radio across all platforms. Swedish Radio is Sweden’s public service broadcaster and, because of that, Benkö sees her mission as even more important in these turbulent times.
“I could not be on stage today without talking about something that I consider to be a big problem. Last year there were 145 journalists killed, primarily in Gaza. This is devastating for people in Gaza but it is also a problem for all of us. Those journalists are the eyes and ears for everyone in the world today,” she said.
She also referred to the trend of some social media platforms and private commercial broadcast companies to criticise public broadcasters. This was also a crucial issue echoed by other public service CEOs in another RadioDays session.
“Some leaders consider media as ‘the enemy of the state.’ In the face of this type of criticism we have to stay calm and continue on our important mission, to tell people what is going on and put things in perspective. We also have an obligation to give people hope, entertainment and music so that they don’t turn off. It would not be good for democracy if audiences turned off public service broadcasting.”
To a huge round of applause from the audience, Benkö welcomed a small delegations of broadcasters from Ukraine.
“I went to Ukraine last year, I learnt a lot from them. I learnt that if you are covering a war, in the beginning everyone wants to know what’s going on, but now, three years into the war, audiences in Ukraine are getting tired of the war news and they are turning to entertainment to keep their hopes up. We have to be able to provide all the things our audiences need.”
“Don’t be fooled we are not part of a dying media.
“We are more important than ever,” said Benkö.
On the subject of Public Service Broadcasting, Charles-Emmanuel Bon, the Secretary General of Radio France also commented on the importance of public service media to democracy in the CEO conference session.
“Everything comes back to whether you trust people. Radio is one of the most trusted media… that’s what is very important today.
“You were asking what keeps us up at night. For the last few weeks it was more like we were awake and the nightmare was still happening. We used to say that democracy is about shared values, it’s not even that anymore it’s about shared reality.
“I think shared reality is one of the important things that radio is able to bring, to have a shared reality of what is really happening on the ground, in people’s lives. We have to tell those stories, that’s a way for us to preserve democracy.
“We were talking about social media and search algorithms. There’s this debate about free speech, because of course everybody can talk on social media, everybody can post, but the reality is that what is viewed on social media is only decided by the one that controls the algorithm. That’s what keeps me up at night, shared values are not the point anymore, a shared reality that what is really happening is the role of media today.”
In the same session Steve Ahern talked about the importance of truth and trust for public service media
“Trust is built over time, audiences trust people they know who have built a relationship with them over time this is particularly true of talk radio.”
“In this so called post truth world, some media have simplified issues so much for superficial scrolling or short updates that no one knows who to trust for the full story. The best public service broadcasters are not afraid to explain complexity to their audiences, you can still make complexity compelling if you structure the content correctly. Public service broadcasters who understand how to do that are needed more than ever now.”
Chair of the Latvian public service broadcaster Baiba Zuzena said: “We have heard that the North American audience is much more valuable to recording artists because they can be successful in a bigger and more wealthy market, so many people are singing or listening to podcasts in English.
“But if we speak about the size of world audiences who can consume content in the Latvian language, we are maybe two million maximum. This is the big challenge for younger audiences as they become more global citizens so they use the English language.
“The role of media to preserve culture in local languages is very important… public service media can promote local musicians who create music in their local language and give them success in their local market because they want to survive and earn some money. That’s why we are proud that we have one channel which is the most listened radio channel broadcasting music only in Latan language. In such crazy times our local personalities are also known and trusted to give a Latvian point of view and stand up for our cultural values. This is the value of public service media in our country in the face of polarization, jukeboxes and lack of trust.”
Radio and podcasts serve similar audio first markets, but in a different way. Live linear radio is a companion and builds community. Podcasts aggregate existing specialist communities and help them discover con tent that is of interest to them.
View the CEO session here
Photo: Radiodays Europe
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