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News stations should watch for competition from low-power upstarts

Oscar Madison said:
So on-demand is NOT "radio?" The distinction is radio is programmed, we decide and you listen.
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The distinction is also in how musicians are compensated. On-demand is a different royalty system than radio. So legally, on-demand is not radio.

We've listened to music on-demand our whole lives from our personal music collection. Now those collections reside in the sky. That doesn't change the process.
 
So, now "on-demand" is limited to music. And podcasting is limited to podcasts from radio broadcasters. Wrong! NPR is one source of podcasts but not the only one - not even the only public radio source of podcasts. Look at any podcast client's directory. Broadcasters account for only a small part of the total; and a small part of listnership. Broadcasters came late to the product and their so-called "expertise" in terrestrial radio has not resulted in a superior podcast product. The inmates are running the asylum and often do a better job of it. Freedom of the press no longer belongs only to those who own a press or a broadcast license.
 
TheBigA said:
The distinction is also in how musicians are compensated. On-demand is a different royalty system than radio. So legally, on-demand is not radio.
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In the royalty realm, on-demand is not radio because it allows instant access to specific songs.

In the area that matters, the listeners, on demand is not confused with radio in any way. But to listeners today, any push service that is audio only is considered radio. From a marketing perspective, that is all that mattered.

We've listened to music on-demand our whole lives from our personal music collection. Now those collections reside in the sky. That doesn't change the process.
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Yes it does, because you lease the songs and do not ever take physical possession of them. If you stop paying, you can no longer listen. But the analogy to a record, tape of CD collection is essentially correct and changed only by the nature of technology, not of music listeners themselves.
 
Oscar Madison said:
So, now "on-demand" is limited to music. And podcasting is limited to podcasts from radio broadcasters. Wrong!
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The only thing "wrong" is you read of what I said. I said podcasting "can be" a subsidiary service of radio. The key word being "can". That means that radio stations that want to can podcast all they want, and podcasting is not the exclusive realm of non-traditional broadcasters.

Real time on demand services like Spotify and the Apple and Amazon offerings are pretty much exclusively music. Until we see real time on-demand services offering a lot of spoken word content, it's pretty safe to consider them to be music players almost exclusively.

NPR is one source of podcasts but not the only one - not even the only public radio source of podcasts. Look at any podcast client's directory. Broadcasters account for only a small part of the total; and a small part of listenership.
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Actually, if you look at the most popular podcasts, a significant number come from traditional media outlets like NPR and morning shows from commercial radio. There may be many, many more different podcasts, but the most listened to are heavily populated by those coming from traditional media... ones like "Serial".

Broadcasters came late to the product and their so-called "expertise" in terrestrial radio has not resulted in a superior podcast product. The inmates are running the asylum and often do a better job of it. Freedom of the press no longer belongs only to those who own a press or a broadcast license.
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Actually, radio came quite opportunely with repeats of morning shows and other talent-based non-musical shows. And, unlike most others, they have a working business model.
 
Music is not radio. Music is the recording industry. Radio recycles music. They do not originate it. Radio is personalities and spoken word. Like podcasts. Not like Pandora or Spotify. Royalty definitions are irrelevant to listeners. But too many radio people are so self-absorbed they think what's important to us, should be important to you. Radio is not and never has been customer-focused, which is why it is failing.
 
Oscar Madison said:
Music is not radio. Music is the recording industry. Radio recycles music. They do not originate it. Radio is personalities and spoken word.
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No, it's not. In many cases, music stations have personalities that act as the glue that holds the individual songs together. But not all music stations have big personalities; many have jocks who help to control the flow and feel of the station. And some have essentially no talent, employing imaging to create the flow.

The big "talent" or skill required for a good music station involves the way the ingredients are put together, including every music segue, the feel of every sweep and set and the stationality overall.

Like podcasts.
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There are podcasts which are essentially music mix segments, and others that are all talk. The only qualification to be a podcast is that the content be available on demand.

Not like Pandora or Spotify. Royalty definitions are irrelevant to listeners.
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But the royalties determine the sustainability of a type of offering. We saw what happened to Pandora's stock en the last few days... there are doubts about sustainability.

But too many radio people are so self-absorbed they think what's important to us, should be important to you.
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That is just not true. Good radio people spend time and money finding out what listeners want and then trying to deliver it.

Radio is not and never has been customer-focused, which is why it is failing.
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In radio the customer is the advertiser. Radio people know that the way to get customers is to increase the number of listeners because ad rates are quite proportional to audience size.

The only restraint on doing exactly what the audience wants is restricting a station's focus to programming that attracts people in the age groups that advertisers want to reach. Otherwise, it is a daily battle on the air to get the most people possible by doing what a significant group wants to hear when they are not listening to their own music collection.
 
b-turner said:
The ignorance of people not in the business is mind boggling.
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This statement is an example of radio's self-absorption.

David, the sales department's customer is the advertiser. The content creator's customer is the listener. But content people thinking their customer is the advertiser is a major factor in rusty tower radio's decline.
 
I understand Oscar. You make claims but offer no documentation. You offer condescending and insulting comments. I get it. You, that non-radio guy that I feel you must be, knows it all about radio and what goes on within those hallowed walls and those of us in radio, seemingly, need you to tell us about the business we are in. I repeat, the ignorance of those not in radio is astounding. I'll gladly add myself in that ignorance because I had only a tiny clue of what radio was like before I entered the field. I have to ponder why you're here. It seems you dislike radio and certainly your comments seem to dismiss a discussion. It seems you might want to merely irritate.
 
Oscar Madison said:
This statement is an example of radio's self-absorption.

David, the sales department's customer is the advertiser. The content creator's customer is the listener. But content people thinking their customer is the advertiser is a major factor in rusty tower radio's decline.
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No.

Radio has a classic bi-modal marketing model. It sells to one, and benefits another. Life insurance is another example, albeit with the mitigating quality of guilt driving the buyer.

The customer of a business is the one who pays the tab. In commercial radio, that is the advertiser. The consumer is the user, and benefits from a free service because the advertiser is paying for the delivery of content as a vehicle for their message.

The content creator does not have a customer. We have users, or listeners. If we make enough of them happy, the other half of this bi-modal model should work. In fact, as I somewhat intuitively knew when I put my first station on the air, it is a lot easier to sell a #1 station that one at the bottom of the stack.

There are lots of things heritage radio operators will have to do to remain viable. That includes obvious things like being easily accessible via new media by way of easy and feature-rich apps. It includes limiting commercial loads to modify the over-commercialized impression many have of radio. And it includes new forms of research to satisfy an increasing fragmented audience. If radio works even harder at things like that, and takes advantage of the highest reach platform in all media, it can continue to be viable because we are not in the tower and transmitter business, we are in the content business.
 
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