Digital Innovation in Radio

Floris Daelemans is the Digital Radio Innovator for VRT Belgium, and spoke at the National Radio Conference about VRT’s start up team, a totally separate division who operate independently to the rest of the business.

Daelemans spoke of what he referred to as ‘innovation myths’:

• “We don’t have to innovate, others will do it for us”
• “Innovation is expensive”
• “It’s a playground and nothing substantial and nothing comes up out of it”
• “We try to not follow the rules and we do our own thing.”

According to Daelemans, the main principle for creating content without restraints of current brands, practises of formats follows this process:

• Start Small
• Develop Prototypes
• Make Adjustments

And keep repeating that process.

He spoke of how VRT search for traditional content domains that need disruption, an example being “Ninjanieuws” – featuring 15 second news grabs.

Their way of grabbing attention of younger demos – 15 seconds news bulletins that live on smart phones in video format, and station branded.