Using Radio

Radio, the first of the electronic media, was "new" in the 1920s, when it began to offer an alternative to print information media. Subsequently, broadcast television became the novel medium—then cable and the VCR, along with the computer and the many programs and database services that turn a personal computer into a medium of mass communication.

Does that mean that radio's days are past, that the medium is a relic of a bygone era when people listened to it carefully for up-to-the-minute news and to hear events as they unfolded? Not if you think about what radio is and does today. Radio is another person talking to you. Radio is local. And the cost of radio is comparatively inexpensive per message, which permits an organization to repeat something. Radio, in other words, is a very important medium for the public relations practitioner to consider.

Let's begin our discussion of the way radio fits into the public rela­tions campaign by analyzing the formats it offers, from paid advertise­ments to public-service spots.