Video Killed the Radio Star — Or Did It?

At midnight on August 1, 1981, MTV began broadcasting. This was back in the days when it played only music videos (imagine that), and its very first, appropriately, was a little ditty by the Buggles called "Video Killed the Radio Star." For those of you who, like me, are old enough to remember this and want a little nostalgia fix, here you go:



OK, back to the blog.

Since that moment 27 years ago, the Internet has become ubiquitous. A majority of Americans has broadband service at home. Tens of millions can view email and video on mobile devices like iPhones and Blackberries. 

So why do our leaders still rely on the radio to communicate with citizens? 

Each week the president delivers a radio address to the nation. Typically issues of great importance to citizens are discussed. The opposition party also delivers a response, much like the way an opposition leader speaks on national television following a president's annual State of the Union address. After being elected president last week, for example, Barack Obama delivered the Democratic Party's weekly radio address, using the occasion to lay out much of his early agenda. 

I've never heard one of these addresses. Have you? Isn't it a little bizarre that, decades after television supplanted radio and well into the digital information age, our government chooses such an outdated medium of communication? Our cratering economy may make it feel like the 1930s, when Americans huddled around their radios to listen to FDR's fireside chats. But it isn't. 

To be sure, there are some legitimate reasons why radio makes sense. For one, the tens of millions of Americans who don't have broadband (or any) Internet access can tune into radio at little to no cost. Of course, they could also tune in to network television for free, presuming they own sets. I don't know the details of how all this evolved, but I'm guessing that television networks have judged their time too valuable to give away to politicians each week, and their lobbyists have convinced Congress of the same, thus the persistence of the radio address. 

It's also true that the press pay attention to these addresses and report on them, disseminating their messages to citizens who don't tune in. And the president and opposition leaders often repeat the themes from their radio addresses in press conferences, which results in these messages being carried on television, the Internet and print media. 

Still, I'm flabbergasted that our leaders are not making better use of cheap, widely available technology to communicate more directly and effectively with citizens. Why not convert the radio addresses into video addresses that are posted on the Internet and emailed, along with a text transcript, to citizens? For those without broadband or any Internet access, the audio could still be broadcast on the radio. But those of us who do rely on the internet and mobile devices could watch these speeches at our leisure -- after work, before retiring for the night, during commutes. Citizens could sign up for email alerts so they don't have to check websites regularly. It would improve participation in the democratic process. 

In this election we saw the power of the Internet. Obama used the medium very effectively to organize a community (hmmm...) of supporters that spanned all 50 states (and those supporters used the Internet to quickly debunk the silly false rumors being spread about him, a stark contrast with the sliming of John Kerry in 2004). His backers regularly received video updates from campaign staff and the candidates on the ticket. My hope is that as president, he will try to apply these same principles to governing. That will be a good thing for everyone —just as long as he doesn't wear huge glasses and a silver lame´ jacket.