Radio is being changed by the rise of digital communications – particularly those that are cellphone-based. Call-ins and live-reports are common, thanks to mobiles. SMS comments and polls are common. Twitter and Facebook (and Mxit in the case of Radio Grahamstown) integration allows for expanded interaction with audiences.

So, should radio itself go digital? To be sure some radio services are digital, being available to audiences live or downloaded on the Internet. But traditional dissemination via the airwaves is still analogue.

South Africa is missing a trick or ten, thanks to our silo policy approach to broadcast and broadband.

You may have thought these two realms, which share the character of being "broad" - and more importantly, will share a digital character sooner rather than later, were a natural for convergent treatment.

Angolan youth orchestra open the SABA conference on 13 September... playing Pachebel and Simon & Garfunkel. (Not kidding)

IT'S A CLICHE, but content is still King. That's what I said as the keynote speaker at the Southern African Broadcasting Association conference in Luanda, Angola. (Here's the powerpoint version.

But, what's new today are questions around broadcast "Kingship":

My second name (besides Julian, Eliot, Gough - what were my parents thinking?) should have been digital. "G D Berger". Since I realised the power of digital compression, without which ICT would not exist, I've been a promoter of all things digital.
But in the past year, something's gone sour. It's called digital migration. This is a process so complex and so costly, that it would need to be worth mega-benefits if it was to happen.

Squeezed into some 60 pages is a review of how digitisation is impacting on media in Southern Africa, and especially how the new digi-scape is impacting on state-owned broadcasters. It's been produced for distribution at the 13th Highway Africa conference to a mass of influential people in journalism and journalism education.