PSAIRCHECKS said:
Corporate radio has been killing itself since 1996. Who cares what AM radio is doing. The future listeners of radio could not care less about AM or FM radio.
As I follow the threads here, I have come to realize that many people.... just about everyone... comes up with some way to say... radio is not what it used to be. Some people are in mourning over it. Some people are smiling from ear to ear.. yelling "bring it on... change is good!" (Oh yes, when I read a post I can tell who is smiling, who is dead and has no emotions, and who is crying with disappointment.)
I wish I could be up there the sit and listen as they present the documentary and listen to the discussion which follows. Since you and I cannot be there/won't be there... maybe we can bat around a few words here.
Your final sentence puzzles me: If they don't care about AM or FM, how will they become "future listeners of radio". They may listen to podcasts. They may listen to streaming. But in your scenario, the future listeners of radio would have no radio... so they won't be radio listeners.
They can be listeners to audio programming. But radio (as we know it in the U.S.) implies two things: A transmitter at work creating energy known as radio waves... and geographical area. Most radio listening has always been done by people who co-habitate the same geographical area as the station. (Yes, A.M. radio of old made use of night-time skywave and we had an expanded/extended geography.) But come daytime and even the night-time power-house stations found that their available audience was a bit like a chained dog in your back yard.
Once we move audio content to the Internet or the satellite, there is no cohesion of the members of the audience. Weather, the stock market, the farm product markets, the neighborhood school lunch menut... all the immediate things that have shaped radio are out the window. (Because of the Internet, most of those things are out the window, and we could say that radio is like a person standing naked in their front yard and the door to the house is locked. They have been stripped of what they used to wear... and are hurting for ideas on what they are going to wear to hide their nakedness.)
So, when you say something that predicts what the future radio listeners will expect, and what they won't care about, tell us what they will care about, and what will they do? If they don't care about AM and FM... are they going to stand in the front yard whistling? Playing the harmonica? Reading the bumper stickers on cars as they drive by?
Help us see the future.... as you see it.
