Abstract

Radio, the first broadcasting medium in history, is also the first mobile medium that meets the currently mobile ecology based on mobile communications network. As a result, it is easily approachable to consumers, can easily engage individual consumers, and its program contents have a huge appealing power to individual listeners, allowing it to form intimacy with audiences at the closest distance. However, the listening rating of radio has decreased greatly because it has experienced various changes by many other competitive media such as TV and internet and it has been influenced by relative constant hypothesis. Also, radio now faces a bigger competition due to the emergence of smartphone. In this circumstance, radio showed movements to evolve into a digital radio that presents improved sound, strengthened reception power, and increased number of channels, but it suddenly changed to DMB and portable multimedia DMB is having huge problems in its marketability due to smartphone. Yet, the listening rating of analogue radio broadcasting that remained unchanged was 13.99% in 2014, an increase by 47% from 2011, and the percentage of listeners under the age of 18 increased by 2.4 times from 2011 to 2014, which was a unique and interesting phenomenon. Accordingly, this paper compared the characteristics of internet and radio that have the traits of daily life, information, individuality, participatory, adventurousness, alternative media, expertise, and sound media. The paper then examined the listening method of radio, in which the direct groundwave antenna reception through a vehicular device is the most common form during the use of transportation means. Finally, it sought to investigate the future of radio based on the understanding of the increase in radio listening ratings, especially by comparing it to the characteristics of smart generation that focus on smartphone and the internet The study results demonstrated that entertainment and amusements are attempting at changes while they used to be obtained selectively by the smart generation from fragmentary information. In addition, radio is expected to become an influential medium in the future through its advantages of 'selected information' and reliability. However, considering such possibilities, radio needs to build the expertise and reliability of broadcasting contents much more at the same time as its digitalization, and it will be able to have its own competitiveness by focusing on various experiences and cultural exposures.