Talking on the radio or on the web

Reading Charlotte Higgins' excellent history of the BBC, and its accompanying articles in The Guardian, I've been struck by the analogies between the early broadcasters, working out how to use the new medium of radio, and those of us in universities working out how to use the online medium.

This passage from a letter by Hilda Matheson, BBC Director of Talks between 1926 and 1931, seems particularly relevant to our making of audio and video in which academics talk to students.

The thing broadcasting does, or can do, its chief claim as far as the spoken word is concerned, is that it provides not a silent-printed word, a dead word if you like, but a living and very personal contact with an individual. The crucially affectionate link that grows between listeners and announcers, between listeners and regular broadcasters ... is something quite peculiar to broadcasting. [p 35]

If a lecturer's audio or video is doing nothing more than delivering information, then we might as well have put that information in text and saved some money, as well as improved convenience for students. But of course, we are not in the business of content delivery: we are in the business of education, for which the relationship - the personal relationship - between teacher and student is a vital part of the magic, the spell, the spiel.