Analog radio is still here. But it's nowhere near the force it was even 10 years ago (and even then it was showing signs of trouble ahead.) There are simply things data can do that analog radio just can't.
However, there are also still a few things analog radio can do now that data just can't. They still haven't figured out a purely digital way to immediately and universally reach local people with information on smartphones after a horrific disaster that wipes out power to the cell towers yet (the FM chips are rarely activated, if included at all in most smartphones. So that's a non-starter) But inevitably, they will figure out a workable and purely digital system. They will have to. New portable radios are rarely manufactured and most young people do everything else on smartphones only. So why not radio as well?
If you're on a limited data plan (which will be phased out eventually for unlimited) currently, local radio doesn't eat that. Or if you're way off in the The Land That Data Carriers Forgot (there are still a few good sized areas without any form of wireless coverage.) Plus analog signals don't break up into unlistenable fragments. Or need to buffer. But the DTV transition went ahead in spite of the fact most on-air DTV signals in urban areas start breaking up badly 10 miles from their transmitters.
There's not much else you can use the AM and FM spectrums for once everything has moved to data. But once advertising agencies begin to smell trouble, there is a very real chance commercial radio will just give up it's terrestrial signals within the next 10-20 years. I just don't see terrestrial radio as being commercially viable for them in the long haul. Most radio conglomerates don't even own their towers. And with iHeart in deep trouble (they may not make it another year without pleading for time that their creditors and shareholders are not willing to give. They've heard enough excuses) and Cumulus and ESPN laying people off by the score, it just takes one catastrophic event at iHeart or somewhere to set off a chain reaction throughout the industry. And it won't be pretty.
The pace of technology and increasingly unlimited data plans isn't slowing down. The market will not allow it. Terrestrial radio does do slightly better in recessions (and with Republican administrations historically speaking-not politically, recessions are guaranteed and have been since Nixon.) Forces can briefly slow the decline, but ultimately, they will never stop it.
But commercially, radio can't fight this kind of change forever because it's so thorough. Data encompasses just about everything else in our lives. And radio will eventually be forced to turn off the transmitters and join in with both feet. Because that's where everybody is right now. Including you.
Yes, analog radio has lived through TV, movie theatres, LPs, CDs, video games and portable physical format music players of every stripe, But like the Boy Scouts who a few years ago deliberately knocked over a naturally precariously balancing landmark boulder in Utah that had stood that way for 170 million years, nothing is totally invincible.
We haven't reached the tipping point yet. But it's on it's way and there will be no denying or escaping it when it does. And radio will always exist. Just in a new form.
