NY Times: Will The Internet Kill Traditional Radio?

[TheBigA]

O.K. Now I'm not feeling so bad about commercial (OTA) radio having to pay royalties. In fact I'm going to write my congressman right now and tell him to go for it!

So two wrongs make it right?

From what I've read in this thread, you're a freeloader who's recording music from the internet, and not paying anything to anyone for the content you enjoy. You're not paying the artists, the writers, or anyone, but you want everyone else, the people from whom you take your content, to pay for you. Something sounds unfair about that to me.

 

[TheFonz]

O.K. Now I'm not feeling so bad about commercial (OTA) radio having to pay royalties. In fact I'm going to write my congressman right now and tell him to go for it!

So two wrongs make it right?

From what I've read in this thread, you're a freeloader who's recording music from the internet, and not paying anything to anyone for the content you enjoy. You're not paying the artists, the writers, or anyone, but you want everyone else, the people from whom you take your content, to pay for you. Something sounds unfair about that to me.

From what I gather from this thread, you are somehow associated with commercial OTA radio. And you're having trouble handling the fact that it is dying. When OTA radio is truly "free" (from commercials) then you will have a talking point. Until then OTA needs to pay royalties, just like Internet radiio. And nowhere in this thread did I say that I wouldn't pay a subscription fee for Internet radio.

 

[Tom Wells]

Is there technology to "scramble" a radio signal?

Our lawyers said a radio station isn't allowed to do that. TV was allowed because only the video was scrambled.

Sure you can, it's called iboc. Its signals cannot be decoded with a "standard" radio receiver, and it is in direct opposition to
FCC law which requires(d) that transmissions in the broadcast bands not be encrypted but detectable by standard circuits.

I'd love to see the official retraction notice for this law. I think it was "conveniently" ignored for ibiquity.

 

[TheBigA]

When OTA radio is truly "free" (from commercials) then you will have a talking point. Until then OTA needs to pay royalties, just like Internet radiio.

When artists and labels can have hits songs without OTA radio, then they'll have a talking point. Until then, they need the golden goose to make it possible for them to fly their private jets. Even those who support the royalty admit that they need OTA airplay to survive.

Internet & satellite radio charge for music. A percentage of that fee should be shared with artists and labels. OTA radio doesn't charge for music. People listen for free, unlimited, no bandwidth limits, no time limits, no restrictions whatsoever.

 

[TheBigA]

Sure you can, it's called iboc. Its signals cannot be decoded with a "standard" radio receiver, and it is in direct opposition to
FCC law which requires(d) that transmissions in the broadcast bands not be encrypted but detectable by standard circuits.

I'd love to see the official retraction notice for this law. I think it was "conveniently" ignored for ibiquity.

SCA audio can't be decoded on a standard receiver either.

 

[Tom Wells]

Sure you can, it's called iboc. Its signals cannot be decoded with a "standard" radio receiver, and it is in direct opposition to
FCC law which requires(d) that transmissions in the broadcast bands not be encrypted but detectable by standard circuits.

I'd love to see the official retraction notice for this law. I think it was "conveniently" ignored for ibiquity.

SCA audio can't be decoded on a standard receiver either.

SCA receivers were not available to the general public, SCA transmisions were a paid services at low fidelity and
subject to some really disagreeable noises. I remember well how the old National Cash Registers back in the 70's tore up the the SCA music on the store intercom at the grocery where I had my first job. Not noticable down at the floor level much, though, and good enough for
in-store background music. A 67 khz take-off could be added to about any FM if somebody wanted to.
It would not be necessary to buy proprietary encode/decode methods. You could even roll your own, if you cared to.


This morning's Chicago Tribune had a half page "fluff story" about "dialing up the death of AM/FM radio".
It compared a few 'internet radios" and went on and on about the benefits and features, but naturally no real
helpful information to help the avearge person understand that they don't work like real radio.
You can't take it to the beach, you can't take it anywhere that you don't have access and a login to a wired network
within a hundred or so feet. You can't listen to a show then go get in the car and just continue listening to program on the car radio.
You need another subscription data service for mobile. Then there's no mention of the bandwidth hogged.
If your spouse begins to download some other data, they find the download slow and you'll find the audio stream halts.
You can be listenng to a show on the car radio, get home, and find the audio of what you've been listening to simply
isn't on the internet, or that the internet is getting it's "own" feed from that station, different from the air signal.
Too many internet stations won't or can't afford enough bandwidth to justify paying for this.
The minimum acceptable rate for mp3s and listening somwhat closely is 128K, 96k for causual low background music.

The internet is a useful medium for music delivery, or any data, but it looks as foolish trying to imitate radio
as Radio does does trying to become digital.

More and more, to me, what defines radio is:
the very nature of radio distribution which cannot be "owned", any more than sunlight can be "owned".

At this point when we still have "radio", the attempt is to get you to forget all normal rf aspects and benefits, and begin to PAY for what
you once got for free. Can anyone say cable TV? " SURE there'll be no commercials! You really believe that?"
And they all did, and now somone siphons 20-100 dollars from every cable household monthly and all the commercials came back
and a new breed of vermin was born, the "all advertisement" channel.

I recognize the that corporations drool over the opportunity to sell us bottled air with the perfect marketing angle.
And those who are subject to marketing will "know" they are buying the "Finest, most delicately handled" air possible.



To this day, the ionospehere and the laws of physics haven't sent me a bill with an activation charge, a service fee, a plan explanation,
a data fee strucure, download caps, taxes, surcharges, or disclaimers relating how the service will not "always" work,
but that it will be "normal" for the service to not always work and I must agree to accept that, etc, etc.
Or at least they haven't figured out my address to send the bill to.

 

[TheFonz]

When artists and labels can have hits songs without OTA radio, then they'll have a talking point.

If I owned a record company I would just buy me some radio stations and promote my own music.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

To this day, the ionospehere and the laws of physics haven't sent me a bill with an activation charge, a service fee, a plan explanation,
a data fee strucure, download caps, taxes, surcharges, or disclaimers relating how the service will not "always" work,
but that it will be "normal" for the service to not always work and I must agree to accept that, etc, etc.
Or at least they haven't figured out my address to send the bill to.

Nice sermon.

The rivers are still free. Get a canoe and forget about license tags, toll roads, gasoline, etc. Unfortunately we choose to live where very few of us have a river going where we want to go, need to go. So, we dig deep and we buy vehicles with their never ending costs.

Classic over-the-air radio is a deep seated love affair for many of us. Some of us just want to be listeners. Some of us have this romantic urge to be in the business, stay in the business or return to the business. Some of us have this love affair with the idea of owning one, being able to say to someone: "Yes, that IS my station. You haven't found one that makes for better listening have you?"

Sadly, for many of us over-the-air radio is a bit like the river, or the Appalachian Trail. It's something we love. But it never goes where we want to go, want to be today. It has a mind of it's own driven by the market, and the market is no longer a "benevolent dictator". It has become simply a dictator.

As I sit here in my little hide-away home office, the RADIO IS NOT ON! There is not a single station receivable that I want to listen to. I will get in the car in a few minutes to do some errands. I will wander up and down the dial a few minutes to see what non-attractive-to-me programming is available. Is anyone doing better today than the last time I sampled. Soon I will turn the radio off and do a few voice exercises, and mentally compose the next few paragraphs of a written project I am working on.

Radio has all the majesty of a beautiful flowing river. Unfortunately the water is too full of yard fertilizer and human fecal material and the river doesn't run where I want to go.

Outside of that, OTA radio has a great future.

 

[TheBigA]

If I owned a record company I would just buy me some radio stations and promote my own music.

There was a time when they did. RCA records was owned by the same company that owned NBC. Columbia was owned by CBS. ABC owned Paramount. Today, the major labels are foreign-owned, and FCC rules prohibit foreign companies from owning US broadcasting licenses.

Funny story was in 1968, Elvis Presley's career was dead. But he was still the main artist on RCA Records. So the label president got NBC to do a TV special with Elvis. The King came in with a black leather jump suit, and it revived his career. Labels today can't do that.

The real problem though is labels don't know how to program radio, as evidenced by label owned and operated web sites.

 

[TheBigA]

As I sit here in my little hide-away home office, the RADIO IS NOT ON! There is not a single station receivable that I want to listen to.

But as we've said many times, that's more a function of age than programming. My father stopped listening to the radio when he turned 55. Just stopped...cold turkey. Before that, the radio was always on, from morning to late at night. I'd ask him about it, and he'd say "Nothing there I'm interested in." And we know that radio advertisers don't care about listeners over 55. Connection? Probably.

 

[TheFonz]

My father stopped listening to the radio when he turned 55. Just stopped...cold turkey. Before that, the radio was always on, from morning to late at night. I'd ask him about it, and he'd say "Nothing there I'm interested in." And we know that radio advertisers don't care about listeners over 55. Connection? Probably.

There's defiantly a connection. I'm "over 55" and understand what your father was talking about. That's why I was ecstatic when I found an Internet station that I love. That's not meant to be a slam against OTA. They don't want me, and I don't need them. Hopefully Internet radio and OTA can co-exist.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

But as we've said many times, that's more a function of age than programming. My father stopped listening to the radio when he turned 55. Just stopped...cold turkey. Before that, the radio was always on, from morning to late at night. I'd ask him about it, and he'd say "Nothing there I'm interested in." And we know that radio advertisers don't care about listeners over 55. Connection? Probably.

This could be an interesting conversation. In some ways we should begin it as a brand new thread rather than hijacking this thread.... and maybe this is NOT hijacking. What we have to say on this topic may help us understand the rest of what we are discussing about the Internet's effect on Traditional Radio.

I do a lot of heavy duty thinking.... some of which ends up in writing here as well as writing I do for some non-Internet discussion and meetings. I have asked myself: Is it ME... it is not radio that has jumped the track... I'm expecting radio to jump through hoops for me.... and because of age I have become the impossible hoop.

I was 67 when I was shown the door on my final full-time job. And the "kids" in tears about me and others being part of the economic cut-back included this in their goodbye: "We're gonna miss your radio!" I played it very softly in hopes of not disturbing anyone else. And I don't think it did. Some could hear it at their workstation. Others heard it only when they came to me with a request for one of my customized save-your-butt data-mining reports. I think there were a couple of mp3 players with earphones in the department, but I had the only radio. So 55 being declared as the brick-wall for radio listening I reject.

When I was 25 I worked for one of the geniuses in the radio business. This genius gained fame for understanding small, rural markets. And he understood that a lot of young people leave small rural markets and the audience is typically older in average age in that kind of market. He had a lot of philosophy about older listeners and a few hard and fast rules. I didn't have a golden voice but I did have a voice that cut through the noise in AM radios out at the edge of the coverage area, cut through the background noise level in the automobile shop and the dairy barns, cut through the pitiful hearing aids of that era, and cut through the thicket of hair growing out of the ears of 70 year old men. And this genius had a list of production techniques that were to never, never, never-ever hit the airwaves that he owned and loved. Retail merchants in that era didn't have college degrees in marketing. They didn't have audience surveys. They ran advertising and paid attention to evidence of results. And when someone walked through the door asking to see the What-zit advertised on the radio, the merchant knew what was working. And our merchants knew that advertising reached older people because they came through door asking just like the younger people.

Today radio is drowning in production bits in commercials, in promos and in station branding bits that scream: you people with hearing problems, no matter what your age, need to abandon ship right now. WE DON'T WANT YOU.

But it's not the fault of the industry that people quit listening when they are 55. It's something like erectile dysfunction. They just can't/don't listen anymore and no one has invented Viagra for the ears yet.

So I reach into my more recent background of Business Process Improvement and raise this issue: Are we asking the right questions? Are we using good evidence in establishing our business plan? Are we sure we are on the right track on our demographic studies.... particularly in the area of age?

I'm currently car shopping. I spent Friday and today looking at what the industry calls "entry level luxury cars". I wonder if the ad industry folks have any idea how many of those little jewels are purchased with checks written on I.R.A. accounts? Folks who will buy a brand they have never purchased before. So the old idea that by age 45 everybody has already been locked into a brand may not work in this case.

Could a radio station focused on retailers actually build a book of business on this market?

Things that make you say: "Hmmmmmmmmmm."

 

[TheBigA]

But it's not the fault of the industry that people quit listening when they are 55. It's something like erectile dysfunction. They just can't/don't listen anymore and no one has invented Viagra for the ears yet.

Wow. I've never heard it put exactly that way.

I think you're right about the car thing. My uncle bought Buicks his whole life. Then he retired and bought a Lexus. Go figger.

Maybe it's not that the internet will kill traditional radio, but it's changing media consumers in terms of what they want, which simply means traditional media will change. It has to! Radio in the 60s was very different from radio in the 30s. And other media had to have an effect on those changes.

I think it's possible that people are going to get to the information overload stage. Too many choices, too much media, too much too much. The Dave Matthews song, if you know what I mean.