The direction we are going is audio, video, text, all combined with interactivity between all of them. This is not necessarily bad for radio. In fact it’s good. It’s a wider audience.
Predictor: Duke, Dennis
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 Tampa Tribune article, journalist Frank Ruiz discusses how radio will change with the Internet. He writes:”Maria Cantwell, marketing vice president for Seattle-based Progressive, said the Internet radio audience is restricted to roughly 300,000 people who have so far downloaded the free RealAudio software. However, she expects that more people will try it when they hear about it, considering that the software is free and for the time being, so are the virtual radio programs. Soon, there could be millions of people tuning in, analysts said. That’s because Progressive expects to announce within days an alliance with Netscape Communications Inc., the public corporation that promotes the most popular software for browsing the Internet. It will soon include RealAudio built into the Netscape Navigator software, Cantwell said. Besides that, the RealAudio program is also bundled with an add-on software for Windows 95 called Microsoft Plus, which incidentally provides Internet software. That would bring radio to a massive group of Internet users, now estimated at 30 million. And the audience is developing far faster than almost anyone can keep track of … ‘The buzzword for all of this is convergence,’ [Dennis] Duke [a computer scientist from Florida State University] said. ‘The direction we are going is audio, video, text, all combined with interactivity between all of them. This is not necessarily bad for radio. In fact it’s good. It’s a wider audience.'”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Tampa Tribune
Title, headline, chapter name: Radio’s Newest Wave; With the Click of a Mouse, Through a Computer’s Speakers, Listeners Can Tune into Radio Via the Internet
Quote Type: Partial quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 8
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne