Announcing in multiplatform broadcasting: self-referentiality, buzz and eventfulness in a commercial music format

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explore what kind of transmedia – and crossmedia – strategies are used within commercial music radio. What happens when a format is extended to digital platforms and included within the crossmedia-strategies of a large media company? The materials used to explore these questions are recordings, as well as participatory observations and interviews with producers, from the Swedish radio station Rix FM, and are a part of an ongoing PhD-research project. The article shows how ‘announcing’ (defined broadly) have been transformed to take on a more collaborative character, in which listeners are invited to develop talk and buzz around the ‘micro-events’ and publicity stunts staged and performed within the ‘texts’ of commercial music radio. This, as the article shows, has also affected the role of the DJ to increasingly take on the function of commentator or moderator. Furthermore the article shows how the new digital platforms are used in order to extend the format: to give audiences access to its place of production (backstage) and to extend the scope of the ‘memory’ and ‘history’ of the commercial music radio through open access to the station’s archive for listening as well as commentating and linking. The argument put forward in this article is that, taken together, all of these strategies serve the purpose of enhancing the eventfulness of radio as communication. These developments have accordingly increased the importance of the ‘micro-event’: actions and happenings intended to stand out from - and break off the ordinary flow of music, program segments, commercials, voices and jingles.