Global Radio Forum

MUSEXPO Europe's final panel of this year's event had the good fortune of a line-up which included the most relevant men in radio from around the world. Jeff Smith, head of BBC Radio 2 couldn't have picked a better time to get out of the office, given the current Russell Brand/ Jonathan Ross 'Sachsgate Scandal' that's dominating the front pages in the host country at the moment. Co-moderator Andrew Phillips told the audience from the off that that prickly issue was off-limits during this panel, as news filtered through that Brand had resigned from his Radio 2 show.

Not that we needed to pick over the titillating tabloid stories when there were more important things to mull over.

“Is radio still relevant?” Phillips asked a bunch of men who were always going to fight their corner, with London's Capital FM, Australian station Triple J, KROQ Los Angeles and UK station Absolute all represented on the panel. Jeff Smith noted radio's role as “more important than ever before in a sea of music” with Yahoo's John Lenac agreeing that, given the ubiquity of choice for music everywhere, filters for the music are more needed than ever.

Lenac later berated some radio stations for not understanding how to integrate social networking understanding into their programming. Stations with large MySpace presence didn't help, simply resulting in more traffic, and more money, for Mr. Murdoch.

In the age of exploiting radio content for as many uses as possible (podcasting/ events/ video streams) Mark Findaly of Capital FM said the biggest danger facing them was “not forgetting about the original radio content”. Richard Kingsmill of Triple J followed by giving an example of his station's role in exploiting the content that tests well on-air. Currently their comedy series about the US Elections (which has aired previously on Triple J), is now the No1 podcast on iTunes Australia.

Clive Dickens of Absolute warned of radio stations “narrowcasting music”, featuring it simply because it was signed to a large label. It was certainly encouraging to hear the COO of a large commercial station talk about playing music irregardless of whether it's signed, unsigned or has a 'plot' or not. He also got a plug in for an unsigned band added to Absolute Radio last week – Jersey Budd

As the panels closed, the assembled delegates got their networking shoes on for a cocktail party hosted by Natalia Lesz at Carbon Lounge, presumably exchanging them for dancing shoes later on for the final night of the live showcase schedule – of which, more later.