Nope, I'm saying radio CAN make it work. The advertisers have talked themselves out of it. We can't change their minds.
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Radio is Dead (and not just AM)
- Thread starter landtuna
- Start date
Nope, I'm saying radio CAN make it work. The advertisers have talked themselves out of it. We can't change their minds.
But you admit that radio CAN'T make it work without the advertisers, unless you're talking about noncommercial radio. And even noncomms aren't a slam dunk when it comes to getting the old farts to open their checkbooks and support old fart-friendly programming, especially music. So radio can make it work only in some alternate universe in which radio station owners and employees are happy to produce minimal income and receive minimal wages. That doesn't sound like any universe that contains the United States to me.
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That's the alternative. Satellite is subscription radio, and that's why you have 50s On 5 on satellite, and not on OTA radio. That's why non-com stations are able to play Americana and lots of other fringe music formats with no repetition. The money has to come from some place. But you will find no shortage of radio people who would gladly work in formats aiming at 50-plus. Why? Because they're that age themselves.
It seems that way because A: it is that way, and B: the phones that have FM tuners in them are not particularly popular. Some of them sell relatively well -- enough for the companies to justify their production -- but nobody's buying them for the FM chip; they're buying them because they're what's in their affordable price range and have at least most of the features that they do want.
The fact is, digital delivery is the new radio. Live streams, Pandora, podcasts... they all offer what the listener wants, when they want it, on the device on which they want it. Traditional broadcasters, after nearly two decades of denying it, are finally starting to figure out that they need to go where the listeners have already gone... and they're playing a terrible, uphill game of catch-up to do it.
Sprint has activated nearly its entire line of phones to work with an FM tuner app. A large percentage of existing models are equipped with the ability to tune FM frequencies, but the capability is not activated in the US. In quite a few countries they are and only require an app to begin listening.
With smartphones approaching 80% of all mobile phones and the updating to new models tending to be even less than the average contract length, FM on smartphones could be pushed to the 75% level via activation and new models within a 12 to 14 month period if all carriers supported it.
But it does not have to be senior-only products. The moment that marketers want to sell Chevys and Coke and Bud and Aleve to 55+, broadcasters will start doing formats appealing to 55+.
The issue now is that the "one brand fits all ages" products specifically exclude 55+ from their marketing.
Fully agree with your statements but in the past your response has been that advertising to 50+ costs too much for value received and that's why it isn't done. That's why I used the TV example. Apparently if the ads are cheap enough it does work.
That's basically what CBS's viewers see every Sunday night when they watch "60 Minutes." Just about every ad is targeted at 65-to-dead.
What's the first thing us old farts talk about when we run into our old friends? That's right....age, health or who has departed. We can't talk about girlfriends, sex or conquests (or perhaps we could but no one would believe us) so we talk about age-appropriate subjects.
Back in December 2005, I met a kid who had a smartphone with an FM tuner here in Ottawa. The tuner was crap. It couldn't get the local stations very well. We tried it side by side with a Sangean DT-110, which pulled in all locals clearly, despite it's tendency to overload. The tuner in the cell phone couldn't get half the stations. The station he most wanted to hear was still in test mode and was previewing the music they would later play when they launched. Since they weren't officially on air yet, they weren't streaming. I can't assume all smartphones have bad tuners, but his model wasn't one I'd trade that radio for.
At the gym, while working out, I listen to either music on my i-Pod or NPR. The tuner is excellent, and pulls in most local FM stations. The gym is the bottom floor of a big concrete building next to underground parking - in a shopping center...probably not the ideal place for radio reception.
Speak for yourself. When I engage with contemporaries, the topics usually include current politics and world events, local events, technology, sports, science, humor and family. Oh, and in California today, the big topical subject is the drought.
If my contemporaries talked about those first few subjects we'd be in a fart fist-fight faster than you can believe.
I'd say that's a pretty good test for a tuner. That's a lot better than most radios would do in a similar situation.
Pardon me for being overly philosophical on an otherwise beautiful day.
You have put your finger on what I think of as "The Issue of The Day". In this country we are proud, rightfully so, of our successes in developing a form of self-government. But our ability to maintain our system... much less improve upon it... seems to depend on our ability to exchange thought-processes in what we refer to as "an adult way".
Mature civilizations look to their "elders" for wisdom. When our "elders" cannot engage in conversation without it developing into a noisy, stinky verbal fist-fight, maybe our system has no choice but to self-destruct.
I'm not so amazed by our inability to remain civil and peaceful in how we tackle tough issues.... I'm just flabbergasted at what has become almost our pride-and-joy over our phobia over reasonable conversation.
Oh well.... it's election season. What ever possessed me to expect humanity to be reasonable?
Pardon me for being overly philosophical on an otherwise beautiful day.
You have put your finger on what I think of as "The Issue of The Day". In this country we are proud, rightfully so, of our successes in developing a form of self-government. But our ability to maintain our system... much less improve upon it... seems to depend on our ability to exchange thought-processes in what we refer to as "an adult way".
Mature civilizations look to their "elders" for wisdom. When our "elders" cannot engage in conversation without it developing into a noisy, stinky verbal fist-fight, maybe our system has no choice but to self-destruct.
I'm not so amazed by our inability to remain civil and peaceful in how we tackle tough issues.... I'm just flabbergasted at what has become almost our pride-and-joy over our phobia over reasonable conversation.
Oh well.... it's election season. What ever possessed me to expect humanity to be reasonable?
Well said. However, I'm one of those people who believe that things are generally better today than in the past. I am not including Congress in that statement, given that the recent "do nothing Congress" would put the one Harry Truman ranted about to shame as a model of equanimity.
But as far as discourse is concerned, I don't think we are any worse than the past. I recall my father (a liberal) having many screaming political arguments with my aunt (a conservative) in the 1960s.*
I have a very conservative friend, and she's a wonderful person. But we rarely talk politics, and if we do, we do it in a calm and civilized manner. About a year ago, she said "I really love Sarah Palin." I believe I almost severed my tongue from biting it so hard.
* A few years later, my Aunt became an almost instant liberal, when her son reached draft age during the Vietnam War.
My grandfather once said that if a man gets to the point that he can't appreciate a pretty girl, he might as well be dead. He was in his 80s at the time.
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