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Is there a disconnect with the leader of NPR and reality?
- Thread starter OKCRadioGuy
- Start date
He's right that Internet radio will replace regular radio. But not in 5-10 years. More like 30-40.
Figure 5-10 years for the technology to be perfected, then another 20+ to get it in all cars, and cycle the cars with terrestrial radios off the roads. AM and FM aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
Figure 5-10 years for the technology to be perfected, then another 20+ to get it in all cars, and cycle the cars with terrestrial radios off the roads. AM and FM aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
I tend to agree on the 30-40 years, at least partially. It's hard to guess, but it's pretty easy to guess she's wrong on the 10 year thing. Maybe in her mind everyone drives a car that's no more than three years old and equipped with all the latest SUBSCRIPTION services, like internet connectivity, but those of us that live in the real world don't have that luxury. What's the least the big-ugly ATT would charge for something like internet in a car, that could do streaming, etc? 30 bucks MORE a month or another 20 bucks a month to share your data plan on your cell phone (tethering)? Does Ms. NPR boss think the rest of the world makes as much as she does with her gov't assisted salary (through those nasty member stations, of course)?
Here's my view:
I just rented a car that happened to have Sirius in it. But it wasn't activated. So who cares if my car has satellite radio installed? Not me. Unless it's activated, and preferably free, I don't care.
How available is internet access? Wifi? WiMax? 3G? Lots of decisions to be made, lots of monthly bills to deal with, and a lot more complication than simply getting in and turning on the radio.
The next step here is how the internet is used. Do you really think internet radio is the main use people have for the internet? Would you like to see studies for how most people use the internet? Just because the internet is available in cars doesn't mean people will throw out their OTA radios.
However, all this means that if you are an NPR affiliate, you need to ask yourself: What am I doing that our listeners can't get from npr.org? Because if they can get it there without listening to pledge breaks, that's where they will go. NPR should not be the ONLY reason people listen to your station. Because if it is, you may be in for some trouble.
I just rented a car that happened to have Sirius in it. But it wasn't activated. So who cares if my car has satellite radio installed? Not me. Unless it's activated, and preferably free, I don't care.
How available is internet access? Wifi? WiMax? 3G? Lots of decisions to be made, lots of monthly bills to deal with, and a lot more complication than simply getting in and turning on the radio.
The next step here is how the internet is used. Do you really think internet radio is the main use people have for the internet? Would you like to see studies for how most people use the internet? Just because the internet is available in cars doesn't mean people will throw out their OTA radios.
However, all this means that if you are an NPR affiliate, you need to ask yourself: What am I doing that our listeners can't get from npr.org? Because if they can get it there without listening to pledge breaks, that's where they will go. NPR should not be the ONLY reason people listen to your station. Because if it is, you may be in for some trouble.
Several things need to happen before the standard radio shifts to Internet based
- 100% wireless internet coverage (this is going to be VERY hard)
- All inclusive internet plans: your internet bill would cover in-home, your phone and home internet
- FCC would have to "encourage" the move, in other words they'd have to eliminate the AM and FM bands, like they did with analogue TV bands
- 100% wireless internet coverage (this is going to be VERY hard)
- All inclusive internet plans: your internet bill would cover in-home, your phone and home internet
- FCC would have to "encourage" the move, in other words they'd have to eliminate the AM and FM bands, like they did with analogue TV bands
landtuna said:
Maybe in them flying Deloreans. ;D
Don C said:
Will traditional radio survive the full 20-year period while internet radio deploys?
Who's driving a 20-year-old car today? Except for a small number of automotive enthusiasts, the vast majority of people driving cars more than 10 years old are doing so because they can't afford anything newer.
Over that 20-year period, internet radio will appear first in the cars of the richest part of the audience. It will spread down (in income) from there. Well before 20 years are up, the only people driving 20-year-old cars will be those barely able to pay their bills -- and barely able to buy much of what's advertised on radio.
I don't see the government making the decision to close traditional AM/FM broadcasting. (in any case, the spectrum, especially AM, is of very little economic value to any other radio service besides broadcasting) I do see a time coming when traditional broadcasting ceases to be profitable, and is closed voluntarily by the stations.
(Actually, what I see happening is an increasing proportion of traditional stations operating in a non-profit mode, with religious, community, public, and ethnic programming. Starting on AM, and accelerating once commercial FM broadcasting begins to become unviable and FM licenses become available at low cost. On AM this is already happening.)
w9wi said:
I've been suggesting that in conferences I attend with music industry people who are perpetuating their performance royalty. One exception to the royality is non-commercial radio. So all Clear Channel has to do is go non-commercial, and they only have to pay $500 a year for unlimited music. Boom.
Some well-to-do and rich people just have no understanding about the lifestyles and necessities of the economically poor. I remember attending a demonstration of HD TV at the local PBS affiliate back in the 1990s. It took a forklift to roll this huge TV out for the display. In the audience were all these business and educational leaders in pin stripe suits. The guy doing the "selling", talked about how fast this would take over, and that people would just go out and buy the new TVs as the old ones would be nothing but "door stops", as he put it. He talked about price and other things. During the Q&A I asked, how could poor people afford all this if sprung upon them rather suddenly? I brought up the whole issue of needing the little money they do have to buy food for the family... etc ... The presenter, after a bit of a pause, quietly said something about something probably happening to help them out. It was obvious to me that he, no others in the presentation group, had even thought about those less blessed economically then they were.
Don C said:
Given the pace at which technology has changed, it should not be nearly as long as 30-40 years. 40 years is longer than it's been since a colleague of mine showed up at work one day proudly bragging about his new electronic pocket calculator. For about $250, his new toy could add, subtract, multiply, divide and not much else - square roots possibly, but certainly no trigonometric or statistical functions; that's the same as what you can get for $1 today.
Like everything else that comes along, WiFi will find its market and its limitations, and its competitors will survive in some form, though they'll certainly have to adapt. If you're stuck with an old car that didn't come with the option and you want WiFi, there will surely be a market for retrofitting. WiFi radio won't replace terrestrial radio completely, but it will give AM and FM station managers a run for their money in moderate-to-high population density areas - especially if they continue to under-serve different segments of their potential audiences.
The weekly on-line radio audience is said to be 43 million.
http://radio.about.com/b/2010/04/13/weekly-online-radio-audience-holds-at-43-million.htm
This is not a trivial number. People who listen to online radio (whether on a regular computer or a dedicated WiFi radio) at home will jump at the chance to do so in the car. WiFi car radio may not dominate AM and FM in 5 or even 10 years, but it will have advanced enough to give them a major headache. It won't need to have been "perfected" to become a major presence.
listener-in said:
Keep in mind that the "them" you refer to are also heavily invested in internet radio. CBS Radio is perhaps the strongest, with last.fm and now radio.com, as well as programming both AOL.com and Yahoo.com. Clear Channel is also a huge player, as is Citadel. Then you have NPR itself, which gets 250K a day. But the major radio players view the internet the same way they viewed cable. It's just another platform for what they do.
The difference is that the commercial entities are using the internet to promote the content on their local stations. CBS is using their new domain of Radio.com to turn every one of their stations into a national program supplier. NPR, on the other hand, is only promoting the National Program Service. I imagine that will have to change, although I don't know exactly how.
listener-in said:
You see the post above you about the HDTV guys not even considering that some people wouldn't be able to afford this new technology? You're showing the same myopia.
Add the "I will only listen to what's standard in my car, and never pay for service" on top of the "I can't afford to retrofit my car" crowd, and you have a massive hurdle for car based wi-fi radio to overcome. Satellite radio has had the same problem. Most people just want to turn the radio on and listen. They don't want to retrofit an adapter or pay a monthly fee. It will take MANY years for that to become commonplace. It took cable more than 20 years to become ubiquitous, and people watch a lot more TV than they listen to radio. The entire perception of what radio is has to change. And that's going to take time.
I wouldn't even be surprised if some technology that hasn't even been thought of yet replaces all of it. Whatever the case, it's going to take a massive rethinking of how we consume media.
R
ratingsgeek
Guest
Interesting subject.
Listener-in, the 43 million represents a cume of 17 percent, with no movement in the past two years. That compares to terrestrial radio's 92 percent, likewise holding steady. I had expected a jump from 17% up into the mid-20 range, myself, so the "hold" pattern says to me that web radio has either stalled and/or hasn't gotten past the "geek" stage.
Big A, I think you hit the nail on the head. If I was running an NPR member station, I'd be furious about now. Multiply that by 300+ stations. The message that Vivian Schiller delivered was "hey, we don't need no stinking radio stations no more."
FWIW, this is typical for NPR's Chief Executive Officers. Schiller is the latest in a long line of NPR CEOs with no real background in radio, aside from inadvertently hearing a radio from time to time. Prior to her coronation she was chief of the NY Times dot-com division, following years in cable television. Two years ago she couldn't spell radio, and now she are one!
Unlike commercial networks, NPR's power is at the member-station level. Ten bucks says this woman will be back in cable TV within the year...
Listener-in, the 43 million represents a cume of 17 percent, with no movement in the past two years. That compares to terrestrial radio's 92 percent, likewise holding steady. I had expected a jump from 17% up into the mid-20 range, myself, so the "hold" pattern says to me that web radio has either stalled and/or hasn't gotten past the "geek" stage.
Big A, I think you hit the nail on the head. If I was running an NPR member station, I'd be furious about now. Multiply that by 300+ stations. The message that Vivian Schiller delivered was "hey, we don't need no stinking radio stations no more."
FWIW, this is typical for NPR's Chief Executive Officers. Schiller is the latest in a long line of NPR CEOs with no real background in radio, aside from inadvertently hearing a radio from time to time. Prior to her coronation she was chief of the NY Times dot-com division, following years in cable television. Two years ago she couldn't spell radio, and now she are one!
Unlike commercial networks, NPR's power is at the member-station level. Ten bucks says this woman will be back in cable TV within the year...
There will be people who can't afford it especially at first, but since when has that blocked new technology? Many people (including yours truly) made the same prediction about cell phones - who in their right mind would want to pay big bucks for a mobile phone service? The numbers for web radio may have stalled but what else would you expect when millions of people have been taken to the cleaners by their (former) employers and their banks? It's just my opinion, but the myopia is is on the part of those in the radio industry who are complacent with the status quo.
That said, I agree with the comments about NPR's leadership.
That said, I agree with the comments about NPR's leadership.
listener-in said:
You're absolutely right when saying that people are hesitant to pay for new technology. This is something marketing folks call the diffusion of innovation, and it can be expressed as a normal bell curve. That curve is split into "Innvoators" (2 standard deviations before the median), "Early adopters" (1 standard dev) , "Early majority" (- < 1) , "Late Majority" (+ < 1) and "Laggards" (1+).
The question is when do we get to the top end of that curve. For something that is as incidental as radio, I still think it's a long wait. Since you used cell phones as an example, look how long they took to become ingrained in our lifestyle, and the phone is much more important to the average person than radio.
listener-in said:
Depends on who you're talking about. None of the major ownership groups are being complacent about new media, as I said earlier, particularly CBS. I know that there are hundreds of stations that have their own iPhone apps, and there are several companies who are assisting radio stations in mobile and digital platforms.
TheBigA said:
The only sector of online radio that is growing at the moment is the online presences of terrestrial stations.
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