Big data in radio broadcasting companies: applications and evolution

Abstract

The radio broadcasting industry is facing a process of profound digital transformation throughout which, over the last 20 years, the strategies to preserve the traditional business model have prevailed. The consolidation of platformization and datafication in the economic management of the media requires adaptation of the radio broadcasting sector’s structures, management models, and corporate culture. Through an exhaustive bibliographic review, nonparticipant observation, and in-depth interviews conducted with heads of the systems, sales and marketing, content, and digital and innovation departments of the three leading Spanish companies (Prisa Radio, Grupo COPE, and Atresmedia Radio) and the state public broadcaster (RNE), we seek to identify the functional areas of the radio broadcasting company in which big data (BD) has a greater potential for application, trying to establish the differences in its utilization in the analogue and digital business model. The results revealed that the degree of BD implementation in the Spanish radio broadcasting industry was significantly different between the private sector –which within the last 2 or 3 years has begun to introduce, very incipiently, big data management, applied primarily to the analysis of digital audiences, these users’ consumer behavior, and business management– and the public sector, which so far has not adopted these technologies on a systematic basis.