Keeping radio findable in the connected car: platformisation, prominence and the meta-platform response across Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan and Korea

As listening migrates from the FM tuner to software-defined car dashboards and voice assistants, public-interest radio must remain findable in interfaces it does not control. This article asks how national radio industries are securing prominence and data visibility in the connected car, and what their experience contributes to debates on platformisation and media governance. It develops the concept of the complementary meta-platform – an industry-level layer that augments rather than replaces broadcasters’ own services in order to restore data visibility and consolidate bargaining power towards the car – and reads Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan and Korea through four analytic dimensions. The comparison finds the same functional response under three contrasting governance regimes, while Korea, despite an equally car-dependent audience, exhibits the exposure in full. The response is necessary but not sufficient: it secures radio's place only when coupled with a prominence regime and a governance settlement holding participants together when data interests diverge.