The perils of choice on the radio
Posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 3:41pm. #
“Better creations are superior to more creations”.
In March last year, I posted a comment on Mark Ramsey’s blog. Mark has consistently said that radio listeners don’t want more choice, and used this to relentlessly bash HD Radio, the US’s kind-of-equivalent to DAB Digital Radio here in the UK. I’ve consistently said that choice was the thing that sold DAB Digital Radio over here, and thus there’s proof that radio listeners want additional choice. In short, I always thought Mark was wrong.
I’m beginning to think that Mark was right. In a way, at least.
I am, as regular readers of this blog know, quite a fan of beer. So it was that, a few weeks ago, while on holiday in the Benelux countries, I popped into Antwerp’s famous Kulminator, a beer mecca for Belgian beer afficionados.
Walking around any ordinary Belgian beer shop, I recognise almost every brand on the shelves. I regularly drive into Northern France to buy beer to take back home. I have an endearing irritating habit of photographing beer. A fully paid-up member of CAMRA, I go to beer festivals where I can, and always buy the guest beer in pubs where I can, assuming that they don’t sell my favourite beer on tap; only the Hat and Stick in London does, as far as I can tell.
So, I walked into the Kulminator with excitement, confidently picking up the beer menu.
I flicked through the beer menu.
And panicked.
You see, that’s a photograph of the beer menu above. It’s 38 pages long, of tightly-typed bottled beers. It proudly states that there are 918 different beers in stock. I knew some of them. I didn’t know others of them. I found this choice bewildering; scary, even.
I did what most people would have done in the situation. I went up to the bar. “Um, hello. I quite like darker beers. What would you recommend?” I enquired of the landlady. She recommended a Golden Carolous. I drank it.
In the television world, the amount of channels broadcast on Sky can be bewildering too. Just looking at that list fills you with dread of ever finding anything. Thankfully, Sky have made this easier, with an electronic programme guide which helpfully splits channels up by genre, then by programme.
In both cases, this is choice made much easier - not just one big list, but clearer navigation to something I want, either from a human (in the Kulminator) or from technology (on Sky).
But because screens aren’t the first thing you think of when it comes to a radio, radios are very poor when it comes to navigation. The 50-odd stations I can pick up on my DAB Digital Radio are sorted in nothing other than alphabetical order. The only thing I know about these stations is the name. Now, I know what most of these brands stand for - but I wonder how many people, unpacking their DAB Digital Radio, have the faintest idea what these stations play?
Life clearly gets worse if you’re skipping through XM Radio’s 170 channels - and don’t even get me started on the user interface of a typical internet radio, where a great demonstration is to try tuning into WBUR (which is helpfully near the top of the ‘W’s, after the bottom of the ‘K’s, and therefore if you’re tuning in alphabetically using one tuning knob it’ll take you a number of minutes to find); and what’s “WBUR” as a descriptor of what I could find there?
For radio listeners, there’s no doubt that choice is good, in my mind. But we need better ways of navigating through this choice: otherwise the choice turns into unmanageable bewilderment. Bewilderment only fixable with a stiff drink. Might I recommend a Golden Carolous?
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