BBC Radio: Now With Pictures

In my day, we called a radio with pictures a "television". Not so today. A radio with pictures is now a user experience enhanced by glanceability.

BBC Radio 1, known for unsuccessfully chasing youth audiences for years, has been experimenting with adding video to digital radio broadcasts, even filming live concerts to accompany the audio.

Skeptical? Me too, but Radio 1 controller Andy Parfitt makes some good points in favor of diluting the pure, audio only nature of radio. He cites the ubiquity of media players with screens (ideal for low bitrate videocasts) and stresses how important it is that pictures not be required in order to understand the programming:

On radio the meaning of what you say, the actual words, count for 100%

So, instead of streaming images of radio DJs doing their stuff, think live scorecards for sports (glanceability, remember?) and Electronic Program Guides. It starts to make sense.

And as if proof were needed that we don't want to see DJs in the studio, Iain Meadows, of Original 106 FM, describes the process:

All you're doing is just pressing buttons, fiddling with bits of paper, maybe occasionally surfing the net to see what's going on in the world.

From there, it sounds less like blogging and more like adult entertainment:

If you had a camera looking at you all the time I think inevitably you would be self conscious, you wouldn't be able to perform. It's like walking around your home naked; you need to think you're safe in that environment and you can do what you've got to do.

Howard Stern, Naked at Home. Please, God, no!

Radio has picture perfect future [BBC News]