Traditional Radio Endangered By New Tech

Rob wrote to mention a Reuters article discussing the danger to traditional radio posed by new new technologies. From the article: "The radio industry could find itself at the kids' table in the media banquet hall, as new technology threatens the business, advertising executives said this week at the Reuters Media and Advertising Summit. Satellite radio, digital music players and the Internet are slowly encroaching on traditional radio's stronghold on local entertainment and advertising. Plus, radio ads themselves are less memorable and creative, these executives said."

Satellite Radio Sucks

[dgatwood]

The encoding artifacts hurt my ears. I tried listening to it once, and found myself REALLY glad I hadn't spent the money to buy one.

The Howard Stern Effect

[ellem]

Ahhh yes. Radio as we know it will soon be the 8 Track of media. Unless, like broadcast TV they are allowed to piggyback onto Satellite Radio.

Let us all come together and hope that the FCC doesn't try to regulate that which we pay for.

NPR

[ducatier]

I have switched to listening to NPR on the radio as have alot of people. The ads and DJ's on other stations always seem to be yelling as if somting important were happening. On NPR that does not happen. I believe this is one of the major reasons why NPR has seen so much growth in ratings

And...?

[turnitover]

If it means a break in the Clear Channel et al stranglehold on the traditional radio marketplace, I can't cry all that much. However, if it leads to another auctioning off of the public radio spectrum and endagerment of things like college radio stations, it's not so great. On the third hand, it's exactly some of those smaller concerns who are finding not competition, but new opportunities in these alternative distribution methods. Check out what KCRW (www.kcrw.org) has got going on: they stream music and news and simulcast, and have used this to break into a national market so that they can promote events across North America. (Though, I should note, KCRW is one of the behemoths of public radio.)

Ah, the old blame game

[Rude Turnip]

I would say that lack of compelling content will kill all but actual, "local radio." Where I live, radio stations like New Jersey 101.5 FM and WWFM, The Classical Network, provide me with up-to-date access to information I need to function in my community (snow closings, traffic info, local news and discussions). The big commercial stations don't give me anything I can't already get on my iPod. Satellite radio will have its heyday for a while because it's new and offers variety, but I can't see it surviving a revolution in nationwide, wireless internetworking (ie WiMax). When that happens, I think local radio will have already made the jump to internet broadcasting. In fact, the two stations I mentioned are already available via streaming through the net.

Odd

[confusedwiseman]

I've tried XM for a little more than a year, only to cancel it for what I have found to be the better option. NPR for local news, and my ipod for music. I can no longer stand the advertisments on either radio. XM or free broadcast.

XM/Sirius question

[Tsiangkun]

How well do their portable recievers work indoors ?

Can I be in the basement of a building and still get a signal ?

Traditional radio killing itself

[Alsier]

As far as I'm concerned, "traditional" radio is killing itself. I finally switched to satellite when I realized I was hearing maybe one song on FM radio while driving to work. It seems like every station has a morning show that insists on talking inanely half the time, then splitting the rest of the time on commercials, inane joke clips that they replay everyday, then maybe a couple of songs. Of course, then I found that the satellite radio still had some talking, but at least I can avoid most of it and just hear music 95% of the time now, instead of 15% of the time I was getting music on FM radio.

Re:Stay tuned for another bandwidth auction...

[MikeFM]

I'd much rather the govt buy back (or jsut take back) the spectrum and release it to public use. The small amount of public spectrum we have has given us such useful things as wireless phones and WiFi - much more useful than a broadcast of Jessica Simpson's latest hit - so why not collect more of the spectrum for those useful things. If we could collect back all the spectrum sold for radio and tv use we could have a lot more spectrum to work with. Faster Wifi with fewer problems with overlapping AP's maybe.

Podcasting Satellite Radio

[ikewillis]

Satellite radio is totally pointless. Why do you need realtime delivery of prescheduled content?

Podcasting is the solution: Get the data when you're connected to a nice, high speed land line, store it on the digital media player of your choice in nice high quality formats where you don't have to make compromises due to transmission speed limits, and then listen to your heart's content. Don't like a particular show? Skip it, no waiting for the show you want to come on. It's all the content [i]you[/i] want constantly at your fingertips.

And best of all it doesn't gib when you go into a tunnel...

Podcasting is getting big with sites like ClickCaster [clickcaster.com], Podnova [podnova.com], and Odeo [odeo.com]. I really do think that Podcasting will bring about the death of traditional radio, and hopefully we'll see Vidcasting as a replacement for TV.

Radio is free, but not all radio is the same

[Divide By Zero]

Because what you get on XM (I've never had/heard Sirius, but this should apply equally) is NOT the same thing as you hear on broadcast.

Sample choices on FM: Alternative, rock, country, or Top 40. Commercials for five minutes every half hour.

Sample choices on XM: All traffic, 80's hits, bluegrass, comedy, each baseball game being played, hard rock, progressive rock, folk rock, classic rock. Twelve different talk stations, from far-right to far-left, sports and news. Commercials on the comedy and talk stations, but that's it.

When you have 200 stations, you have to keep them different, which means... and this is the kicker... you have to DIG DEEPER INTO THE FEATURED GENRE. Example: I like Rush. (I'm a nerd, I'm on Slashdot, whatever. My taste in music is an example, not the argument.) On FM, I hear three or four different songs by Rush, maybe one a day. I'm done with Spirit of Radio for a while, thanks. On XM, on their ProgRock station, I hear obscure stuff from unpopular albums that I like. You won't hear Analog Kid on ClearChannel stations. I also hear other groups who don't get the press who play a similar style of music. This depth of genre (obscure songs from well-known bands and obscure bands) simply isn't available on FM. Hell, I heard Side One of Thick as a Brick by Jethro Tull on XM the other day. The whole thing. It's on the order of 30 minutes long. Nobody on FM will play that - it's not "radio friendly". So I don't get to hear it if I only listen to FM.

That's why I shell out $13/mo for XM. IT'S NOT THE SAME AS FM, and it's a service I'm willing to pay for. When I have the choice and depth that I get from this service available to me for free, that's when Hogan's argument becomes relevant.

"iPod killed the radio star..."

[SuperBanana]

The radio industry could find itself at the kids' table in the media banquet hall, as new technology threatens the business

Could? Try "already have". Every time I get in the car, I listen to the radio for exactly as long as it takes for the radio to load the cassette adapter for the iPod. Funny that usually the 2-3 seconds of radio I hear each time are...either a DJ, or a commercial. I got an mp3 player for christmas back in '99 primarily because I was tired of spending most of my commute listening to commercials, if I wasn't listening to NPR news.; the iPod finally made it practical. So cry me a river for the radio industry which is NOW realizing a market correction that started at least 2-3 years ago.

XM/Sirius is complete garbage; a relative has Sirius in his car, and it drops out all the time; tree cover, bridges, tall buildings. The audio quality is atrocious; the casette adapter for my iPod may eat low and high frequencies...but even a 128kbit mp3 through the casette adapter sounds better than Sirius. Plus it doesn't address any issues except the commercials- it's still crap other people want you to listen to, and not crap you want to listen to :-)

About the only thing worthwhile on radio right now is NPR; the news is superb, and the stuff during the weekends is usually pretty good too (I'm a fan of the old-school radio quiz shows.)

Re:Public Radio

[iamlucky13]

I certainly won't cry when Clear Channel bites the dust. It seems (contrary to what I'd expect) that the smaller guys are able to operate more efficiently than Clear Channel affiliates, since they always have fewer commercials and local DJ's. More importantly, the non-clear channel stations have a far more diverse musical selection, and their DJ's spend less time talking than playing music and are much less annoying, sometimes even entertaining or (gasp) intelligent sounding. I was extremely disappointed when looking for a good station to listen on my commute to come across "The Nelson and Terry Morning Show" on Portland's 105.1. The old man voice impressions, fart noises, DJ's interrupting each other, and incessant cackling were a pitiful change from my favorite oldies station, which Entercom had demoted to the AM band.

Re:Satellite Radio Sucks

[bunkie21]

First, the quality is not "better than standard radio". That's marketing hype. Second, you don't have to be a "music elitist" to dislike the loss in fidelity inherent to lossy encoding schemes, you only have to have a set of ears and to have been exposed to decent speakers. But if your idea of of hi-fi is a four-letter word that starts with "B", I can certainly understand why you hold this opinion.

Re:"iPod killed the radio star..."

[dr_canak]

"XM/Sirius is complete garbage; a relative has Sirius in his car, and it drops out all the time; tree cover, bridges, tall buildings. The audio quality is atrocious; Plus it doesn't address any issues except the commercials- it's still crap other people want you to listen to, and not crap you want to listen to :-)"

Wow,

that hasn't been my experience at all. I have a Sirius Sportster and it's been great. Granted the quality of the sound for the music channels is "ok", but I'd hardly call it "Atrocious." I'm listening to it in my *car*, not on a $10,000 home audio system where even CD's can sound like crap. I have a plain old VW golf, with a very average sound system and the satellite radio sounds perfectly fine. I will admit that most of the talk stations sound pretty bad, but I only listen to Bears games when i'm on the road, so bad sound is better than no sound and not hearing the game at all.

As far as dropping signals go, I almost never have that problem as well. There are a few underpasses I go through that drop the signal, but an equal number of parking garages where the signal is just fine. Even for a large part of lower Wacker Drive in Chicago, it holds the signal. I drove from Chicago to the north woods of Wisconsin this summer and never once did the signal drop, regardless of the tree cover. I have my antenna mounted to the roof of my car, just behind the factory antenna mast so nothing special there.

About the only real problem I've noticed is that if you try to use the FM Transceiver(?) feature to "broadcast" to the in-car stereo, there is too much intereference from competing stations. There are only a limited number of frequencies available with the Sirius radio itself, and just too many FM stations in the Chicagoland area to get a clean signal. So I went with a cassette adapter and all is well.

just my .02
jeff