New Page 4

The magic of audio

IN THIS ARTICLE:

Relationship
Imagination
Visual

By Jonathan Halls

A broadcaster in Sydney once described radio as being “warm and real.” It’s a great way to describe the power of audio because, as we have learned from radio, it is the most personal of all media.

Relationship

Radio broadcasters build relationships with their listener and the same stands for the audio narrowcasting world of podcasting.

Audio is personal because it engenders a one-to-one relationship. Many listeners feel the announcer is a friend or someone who regularly talks to them over the dinner table. This sense of intimacy creates a sense of trust.

The warmth of the human voice also carries considerable impact and the podcaster can use seemingly meaningless words with a different impact by expression and pacing.

Imagination

Audio as a storytelling tool also possesses a certain magic. It relies both on the listener’s imagination and set of experiences to make sense of your story.

On television and in cinema, the content consumer has pictures beamed on a cinema screen or transmitted on a television tube.

In radio the listener is given the code to paint them on a screen in her mind. She beams them on her own personal screen in the back of her mind.

If ever there is an important point about the power of audio it is that audio is about creating pictures in your listeners’ minds.

If I talk to you about traveling to France for a holiday to stay by the beach, your mind will conjure up a picture of what you think I will be staying in. It could be a beachside apartment or indeed a beachside cottage.

Visual

If I say I am staying in a ‘beachside cottage’, your mind will visualize a cottage. You might picture a charming stone cottage covered in vines when, in reality, it is an ugly pink pre-cast concrete villa.

Audio allows the listener to add a personal perspective and the power of the description is fueled by the listener’s imagination. If it were on television the real picture may possibly undermine the description.

When I say ‘charming cottage’ your mind visualizes what you think is charming, while this may be entirely different to what I think is charming. But because I see what I think is charming and you see what you think is charming, it is more powerful.

This is the power of radio. It uses the power of your listener’s imagination to powerfully tell your stories by painting pictures in your listener’s mind.