You are placing way too much emphasis on the word "digital". People left AM because it does not sound very good compared to FM. Few people have insisted on HD radio because, while it is indeed digital, it really offers almost un-measurable improvement over analog FM which sounds good.
Radio pushed HD radio to be ready at the beginning of the new millennium, because they were afraid of all things digital and, in particular, satellite. In the end, neither "pure digital" nor satellite radically changed much of anything.
Digital TV offered wide screens and enormously improved resolution. Digital radio offers nothing of significance.
In the end, you are still defending and deflecting.
I am giving you the listener's reality based on doing thousands of direct audience music and perceptual tests as well as tens of thousands of telephone tests and surveys.
Right about what? You are just negating, not making any listener-based point. That is called "personal opinion".
First, I never heard broadcasters "scoff" although many doubted the viability due to the huge expense... a fact that was absolutely true for the first decade. I never, despite going to nearly every NAB and lots of programming seminars and conferences, heard anyone say it would "die quickly" but everyone was concerned about it ever being profitable.
As David already pointed out, Satellite's "success" hasn't been the success that it had originally hoped for. At its peak, SXM had only 2.3% of the audience that traditional AM-FM radio had. And included in that 2%, they counted vehicles with SXM-capable tuners in new cars still sitting on lots.
Not sure what you mean by excuses. David well understands the unvarnished history of radio as a business. He's not known for hyperbole for the sake of promoting any particular group.
If SXM wanted to run spots on terrestrial radio, I'm sure there are plenty of stations eagerly willing to carry those ads. The advertising climate these days doesn't allow one to be picky. That, and history has already shown that SXM isn't a serious threat of stealing away all the terrestrial audience forever.
Clearly you have your mind made up, facts be damned.
About what, is the question.
It's not when at that level is not enough to be profitable.
I was at a direct competitor to Clear Channel, so that statement is offensive. And not true.
Why? That is the same logic that many stations used in the 50's and 60's to not run ads for TV shows and channels. Or why they would not give away a "new color TV" in the 60's when everyone wanted one. Radio usage is shared with TV usage, recorded music usage and other entertainment options and covering our eyes does not change the fact.
Radio is trying to resolve the issue of being a legally required free service which necessarily can only be financed via advertising. It is possible that the only successes in the industry will be with companies that are using radio as leverage to move people to their own paid subscription services. An example is UnivisionTelevisa which is moving radio and OTA television viewers to its paid Spanish language subscription services; the end game is to capture existing OTA radio and TV users and entice them into a paid product.
BUll F'in Sh-T
yes, plenty.
That is not true. Lots of stations, new to the web, looked to Cuban's company as a way to get on the Internet and establish a presence.
That was not a "website" in the way we think about them now. It was an individualized way for each station to get a website with its own content. Radio.com was just an amalgamation of separate sites for separate stations. I looked at it seriously, even went to Dallas and met with them and decided to do my own site for KTNQ in LA around 1997 because I wanted more than a boilerplate site.
And until the advent of the smartphone, that was true. And it still is, but in a slowly decreasing percentage. About 85% of adults use radio weekly.... just less than before.
Wrong. It was already a major topic at the NAB and state associations.
Wrong again. Listeners, who used to have "friends on the radio" now have real friends on social media and via texting. So music radio has adapted.
We've been paying the songwriters since the 30's with ASCAP and then from the 40's with BMI. You are full of wrong information.
see..your gatekeeping and gaslighting.
What radio did successfully was thwart the intent of the satellite broadcasters to do local services aimed at each larger market. The FCC long regulated radio to relatively low power limits and local coverage, but the satellite folks wanted exactly what the FCC, since the 30's, was chartered to prevent.
Radio has paid ASCAP since the 30's, BMI since the early 40's. SESAC came along later as European (the "E" in SESAC stands for that word) music needed a rights organization.
Radio has always been "corporate". It started with stations owned by makers of receivers, insurance companies and even stores: WLS meant "World's Largest Store". Then they became owned by the radio networks and radio groups. And so on up till now.
A "hypocrite" is a person who espouses one idea but believes a different one. You can't lay that one on me as it is simply a convoluted lie.
