- Is it necessary to be a battle?

If you go to the Internet and key in the following address: www.crieasyfm.com, you will see a website with abundant contents: on-line broadcasting, previous program audio links, essays, pictures, listeners’ forum, chat-room, and many more.

The website is provided by Easy FM – a bilingual comprehensive radio channel in China, with programs from news and reports to music shows, and broadcasting signals covering most major Chinese cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhai and Lhasa.

Meanwhile, more than 100,000 people visit the website on a daily basis: they look up the schedule for programs, make up for missed favorite shows, leave messages to hosts, or simply check if anything new is going on in this place. To many, it is more or less like a “home” on the Internet. Therefore it is hard to imagine that only ten years ago, this website was barely a “plan” in the decision-makers’ mind……

“At that time, we simply did not have an ICT (Information and Communication Technology) Department. Though what we were facing was an overwhelming boost of TV industry and a plummet in the rate of our own audience, nobody thought the new media technology would do us any help. – ‘Come on, we are a radio station! Why introduce in those irrelevant things?’” recalled Liu Chi, director of the ICT Department of Easy FM.

“But I strongly believed that the new media technology is bound to play an increasingly important role in supporting our core business. In addition, faced with the aggressive competition of TV industry in recent years, I particularly felt that the Internet could be a great chance for us to win back ground. – However, few would buy my idea at that time. I remember quite clearly, it was only after times of plead, did I finally get the permission to change the smallest room of our floor (it used to be a storage room, and did not even have a window) into a computer lab, and do my ‘experimental developing jobs’ there.”

In the following years, however, Liu Chi dramatically proved to the managers how useful these “experimental developing jobs” were!

In year one, he began with the most fundamental part. He established a server, built up a basic Internet platform, created email box for each colleague, and persuaded the managerial level to adopt this e-communicating way with audience, apart from the traditional mailing method. As a result, the channel immediately saw a jump in the quantity of listeners’ response. Apparently emails were far more efficient and appealing, plus it saved a lot of labor on calculating, classifying and archiving.

Year two, Liu went on to establish a homepage for Easy FM, put the basic introduction of the channel on, and encouraged colleagues to upload their broadcasting scripts so that interested listeners could have a chance to review the stories.

“By doing so, the Internet had actually endowed the broadcasting station some features of traditional press media. I mean, I could have unintentionally snatched business from some newspapers and magazines, you know.” Liu Chi laughed when saying so.

No matter whose business he snatched, the managerial level did see a pickup in the number of listeners. Liu was therefore upgraded from the “little dark room” to a bigger office (this time with window), with a special appropriation to him. The ICT department of Easy FM was officially established.

In the following three years, the ICT department rapidly expanded into a team with more than 20 members. It not only duplicated all the on-air contents onto line, but also realized the contextualization of them. Listeners then were able to find any program broadcasted in the recent year. At the same time, the ICT department decided that SMS method should have great potential in real-time communication with listeners due to its handiness, and therefore sought cooperation with telecommunication companies to build up a SMS platform for all program hosts. – This turned out to be a great success in operation. Everyday thousands of short messages came in, generating a handsome amount of revenue. In addition, the volume of messages became a good selling point to potential clients, who had intention to advertise on this channel.

“The new media technologies such as SMS and Internet chat-room are all useful complement of our traditional business. With their help we make up for the shortcomings of radio – invisibility, fugacity, monodirection……Yes, I admit that the new media part expands in our channel, but it doesn’t marginalize the traditional broadcasting means. Actually they together create a win-win situation. This is exactly the result I wanted to see.”

Therefore in this case we may draw a conclusion now: the survival solution for a traditional media company is not necessarily a confrontation between new media and itself, but rather, a combination.