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Dame Nellie Melba, in Britain's first advertised public broadcast, gives a song recital from Marconi's works in Chelmsford.

Recently I was lucky enough to see a piece of radio history: the microphone into which , the formidable Australian soprano, sang a live recital on 15th June 1920.

She was in a makeshift studio in Marconi's Chelmsford factory and it was the first broadcast by a professional singer. Indeed, her dulcet tones were heard from Iran to Newfoundland. Looking at the primitive microphone, made from a telephone receiver and pieces of old cigar box , I was struck by the conflicting feelings that often characterise any examination of the radio's pioneering days.

One gets a sense that so much has changed, and so little. Of course, technology has moved beyond our imagination but the simple appeal of a human voice, transmitted live to a listener, remains undimmed.

Much has been written about the resilience of radio during a period when traditional media has been thrown into the realities of digital convergence.

The recent growth of listening has taken many by surprise as they thought that slow, inexorable decline was the only possible future. It is not overstating it to say that a few years ago the radio sector was suffering a crisis of confidence as it looked over the fence at its media neighbours and saw the explosive growth of internet services.

Also, the world began its obsession with new brighter, flashier screens: tablets, HDTVs, games consoles, smart phones and more. The industry became worried by its lack of scale and there were concerns that what radio had to offer may be dated or, at a minimum, viewed as dated. However, although the sector is not completely out of the woods (young listening and fragile commercial economics remain a challenge), the overall strength of radio is excellent with over 90% of people tuning in each week and growing listening hours.

In summary, it has proved that it can sustain itself in a world of infinite online choice and sharper, smarter screens. This is not only down to radio's innate strengths (e.g. mobile, live, personal) but also due to a number of other factors: the outstanding quality of programme makers who recognise that intelligent, human curation is actually of higher value in a confusing world; the strengthening of national commercial radio under new leadership; and the beginnings of serious digital innovation.

So radio has proved it can survive in a digital age but now can it hope for more? Could it actually convince itself and others that it can deliver continuing growth over the coming years?

It was a question that I posed at a recent session at the , our industry get-together in Manchester. Growth would attract more money into the commercial sector and drive listening as a whole, building new audiences and increasing money into programme making.

I have offered possible seed funding for ideas that could build radio as a whole and we are now assessing a number of ideas. As an example, on-demand or catch-up radio is still only less than 1% of all listening. We know that while much of our programming is best consumed live, we have attracted new listeners by driving people through the iPlayer or podcasts to find programmes after their first broadcast.

Certain programmes have achieved over 10% of their listening via catch-up and this is incremental. Imagine if we achieved that across radio. At the Ö÷²¥´óÐã, we are looking at a concept that we call the "audiopedia" which could dramatically increase our already successful archive of old programmes.

We have already had millions of people download episodes of programmes such as Desert Island Discs or In Our Time. Imagine if we could take this approach across much more of our output.

This is just one area to explore among many.

Perhaps you have other thoughts about how we can grow radio as a whole?

Tim Davie is Director of Audio & Music

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