Speaking at this year’s Radio Asia conference in Beijing, the Vice President of China National Radio Zhao Tieqi said the Chinese national broadcaster, like most broadcasters, has been “worried about the age of new media, there has been a lot of discussion about it.”

Radio and tv are in crisis said Zhao, because “the internet has already changed the way audiences operate and how they think. The coming of connected cars might also contribute to a decline in listening.”

CNR is responding to the challenges of the internet age in various ways, including more interactive radio formats than were previously used in China. He gave an example of “live personality talk shows that are interacting with audiences in new ways.”

“We also need to be more imaginative and to use our voices well. These have been our underutilized tools for too long,” he said.

“We need to change the way we think about storytelling. We must change the way shows are produced. We need to draw on the advantage of the cloud and train our staff members to do new things. We also need to change the way we evaluate our programs – now a key metric is how far our programs have been consumed through internet usage.

“We need to come up with programs that are well suited to the internet – we must promote them through the internet.”

Zhao also believes his radio stations need to “find new sources of revenue as we join together traditional and new media. We need to work harder to meet the needs of our listeners. We would like to work with you all to develop this goal.”