Proclaimed in 2011 by UNESCO member states and adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2012 as an international day, February 13 has become World Radio Day (WRD).
On this occasion, Adweknow looks back at the main qualities of this popular medium in Africa and around the world:
- Radio is a mass medium. All audience studies confirm that radio is listened to by a large majority of the population in French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa. According to Africascope, which covers eight countries, two-thirds of the population listens to the radio every day.
- Radio is an easily accessible medium. It can be listened to anywhere, with small, inexpensive receivers that do not necessarily require access to electricity.
- Radio is the medium of immediacy. As such, it is essential for staying informed in times of crisis.
- As a mass medium, it is also a medium that appeals to everyone, with an endless variety of music stations, continuous news radio, generalist stations, and religious stations, offering a range of possibilities to satisfy all tastes.
- Although it lacks images, radio nevertheless has immense evocative and emotional power thanks to the power of sound and voice.
- Due to its ease of implementation, radio is the local media par excellence: local stations are often the ones that keep people informed about what is happening in their village, their country, and around the world.
- Even though the advent of digital technology is changing the way it is used, radio continues, particularly in Africa, to be the preferred means of obtaining information or entertainment thanks to its ability to be present in places where technology has not yet penetrated.
Despite its many qualities, radio faces new challenges that World Radio Day 2022, themed "Trust," aims to highlight.