A rádio que temos

“With narrowcasting the programmer or producer assumes that only a limited number of people or a specific demographic group will be interested in the subject matter of a program. In many ways, this is the essence of cable television’s programming strategy”

“For the most part, the major networks [”In the earlier days of American television, the three major networks (NBC, CBS, and ABC) dominated programming and sought to obtain the widest audience possible. They avoided programming content that might appeal only to a small segment of the mass population and succeeded in their goal by reaching nearly 90% (combined) of the television viewing audience on a regular basis”] continue to gear their programming to the general mass audience. But increasingly, they, too, are engaged in forms of narrowcasting by segmenting similar programs that appeal to specific groups into adjacent time slots. A network, for example, might target young viewers by programming back-to-back futuristic space programs on one night, while on a different night, feature an ensemble of ethnic-oriented programs. This strategy allows the networks to reach the overall mass audience cumulatively rather than simultaneously”.

citações retiradas de
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/N/htmlN/narrowcasting/narrowcasting.htm

Há, por um lado, uma evidente dificuldade em catalogar/separar os diferentes formatos que fazem a rádio que temos, nomeadamente nos EUA.
Mas, por outro, será que essa diversidade de conceitos, essa pluralidade de oferta, significa, mesmo, uma multiplicidade de escolhas?
Ou estaremos perante um aparente paradoxo? É a mesma rádio, com nomes diferentes?
Um conceito que tem sido muito estudado é o de narrowcasting (ver a breve definição que pus na categoria).
“More stations competing for the attention of the same listeners simply means that the total audience is being divided between a larger number of operators. In the past two decades the obvious - and first - response within the commercial sector and the advertising industry has been to move away from the notion of chasing rather ill-defined mass audiences in order to target more specific ones: narrowcasting, as opposed to broadcasting. In this approach, a radio station refines the format of its programming in order to attract a very clear, tightly focussed group of listeners to be ‘delivered’ to an equally tightly focussed group of advertisers. ”
Hendy, David, Radio in Global Age, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2000, pág. 32