Radio has undergone many technical developments over the years. But above all, its key role during the Second World War is remembered.
At 11. 15am on 3 September 1939, Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, made a live radio broadcast from Downing Street announcing that “this country is now at war with Germany”. The entire country was listening.
Then, radio was a very popular medium used for propaganda. “Radio Londres” (French for Radio London) was a radio station broadcast from 1940 to 1944 by the BBC in London to Nazi occupied France.
Numerous media and blog wonder about the future of radio : “Will ‘Generation Z’ spell the end of traditional terrestrial AM/FM radio?”, “The future or radio: time for broadcasters to embrace digital”, “Podcasting is the new talk radio”.
We will therefore focus a little more on the evolution of content and the issue of radio podcasts.
8 years ago, a specialised European exhibition dedicated to the world of radio was created: “Radiodays Europe”. This Fair is presented as the: "Europe's leading conference and largest meeting point for radio & audio innovation!” This year it settled in Vienna, Austria, from 18 to 20 March.
During the Radiodays the question of the future of radio was of course at the centre of the debates. For the "old medium", it was the opportunity to find solutions. 60 sessions have been dedicated to radio during which 120 speakers testified for this purpose.
The new contents are thus highlighted.
Indeed, the arrival of smartphones has changed everything. With the smartphone you can both listen and do something else, whereas with video or text playback you can't. The BBC has launched the “BBC iPlayer Radio” in which podcasts can be downloaded using this app.
This year the Radiodays Europe welcomed Ben Hammersley, the inventor of the word "podcast". Moreover, the first Radiodays Europe Podcast Day was organised last year. Thanks to its success, the Show comes back this year in June. Obviously, the Podcast Day is meeting the needs of radio broadcasters, podcast producers and everyone interested in understanding the fast-moving podcast market.
In conclusion, whether radio is reinvented by video or audio podcasts, automatic transcription is essential to participate in making these numerous contents accessible! Indeed, autoplay is a common practice on social networks, videos are launched without sound and subtitles play a major role here.
Eventually, the transcription of podcasts makes it possible to improve their referencing but also to highlight the key words. This is what we have been doing since 2016 for the prestigious Belgian radio RTBF.
"Les Curieux du Matin"
"Le plus de Matin Première"
"Ecomatin"
"Le Point de Vue"
Radio broadcasts and podcasts are recorded in their entirety and audio segments are sent to the Authôt application every 15 minutes. These segments are then automatically transcribed by the application. My job consists in correcting what the automatic retranscription system did not understand well (mistakes, hesitations, addition of negations, etc. ). On the other hand, it is not a question of reformulating the comments of the hosts and speakers. The final rendering must be fluid, comprehensible and faithful to the audio.
The sections last between three and twelve minutes. So I don't take the same time to correct them, and like with any audio file, the speed of the correction also depends on the quality of the file.