The news of this morning may cause reconsideration of that concept for some.
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New Pocket Radio at Walmart
- Thread starter kfbkfb
- Start date
Me, myself and I. I think I will be ordering one today... if Scott Fybush endorses it, I trust I will be happy!
It's a specialty product for a niche market of DXers. Nobody's pretending otherwise.
Note that it arrives without batteries - you have to go on Amazon and order a 18650 Li-ion battery separately. Be sure you get the one with the button top, not the flat top.
It appears to be a bit lighter than my old R-390!
That was around what I paid for the first home stereo I bought that included a turntable, cassette deck, and had the option for a CD-AUX in 1989. Granted, adjusted for inflation, that would be around $325 today. It's still sitting in my old bedroom at my mom's house today. When I went to college, I decided I didn't want to haul the thing with me over 400 miles to Tennessee in my dozen year old Toyota hatchback!
I bought a new one that was more compact that didn't include the turntable when I got to Memphis. That one's sitting in my basement having never been plugged in since I moved into my current house eight years ago. The speakers are in my garage supporting one of my toolboxes!
I've had three computers but only to monitors. The first monitor came with the first computer but it was quite fancy and it didn't last long so the extended warranty was worth it because I replaced it. That's been 15 years. I won't say the monitor has performed perfectly but it doesn't need replacing. And it could be a computer problem anyway that has caused the minor glitches.
Not as long as the indifference remains. As long as much of local radio still doesn't pay attention to currently happening, publicly dangerous local emergencies. It still won't be an option. A power outage in a neighborhood is one thing, but half the city is entirely another. For locals, that matters just as much as the national EAS disasters.
At least everybody knows the phone companies will fix their problem inevitably. When will radio fix theirs?
A station i work for in WY had a freak late may snowstorm that caused downed trees/limbs and power lines and lost power to more then 1/2 the cities 30,000 residents... we were on generator power and the owner was at the studio in his PJ's on the air.
Here in AK we do absolutely pay attention to current happenings and dangerous local emergencies... complete failure of the cell or landline network, the river approaching its banks and the roads....
And the reasons behind the fact that most stations don't do news is that most listeners never wanted all that information, going back to the early days of Top 40 in the 50's. We talked to listeners and they told us that they "knew which stations to go to for news" but did not want "all those interruptions to my favorite songs."
Beyond that, the economy and the excessive assignment of stations have made fewer ad dollars available to more stations. The "average" US radio market has 70% less money being spent on ads than it did in 2000. A lot of that is inflation, but a huge amount also comes from new media taking old media destinations.
Add all that together and you don't have enough money for a station to have a news staff or even to pay news sources. The last place to place blame for radio losing nearly three-quarters of its revenue is on radio itself.
I was reading an article in Consumer Reports that showed how new appliances and home gear does not last as long as similar items from two or three decades ago. It's because all those neat new "wash your clothes at 2 AM when electricity is cheaper" features make the item more complicated. We are living in an era where many things are so complex that the average person can not maintain their owndevices.
Radio has the same issues as any technology that ages and then faces newer, better technology. Free over the air radio that is sustained by paid advertising is going to be progressively less and less popular. Even if radio stations deliver content online, the idea of ad-supported entertainment has taken on major negative perspectives by consumers, making it less and less attractive as a content delivery system.
From what I understand, even when you factor in the new media destinations, total ad spending is down from 2000 levels when adjusted for inflation. I suppose that could be due to online ads being cheaper, but seems like the Great Recession dispatched a lot of businesses that previously bought ads and saw their share of the market get gobbled up by big retail, which either doesn't advertise or advertises sparingly. I don't remember the exact numbers, but we have a lot fewer car dealers than we had prior to 2008. I was working at a business involved in automotive at the time, and we knew the country had two to three times more Ford, GM, and Chrysler dealerships than it could comfortably support. Turned out, it was probably five to six times too many. A few of those closures came back as DU's, but most just went away. We also have fewer cell phone retailers, and the mom and pop grocer is even closer to being a relic than it already had been.
I suspect it's also because more and more of those appliances are being manufactured with cheap parts and cheap labor. I realize, however, that started long before the last 20 years. Growing up mostly in the 80's, I can remember most of my toys and electronics were made overseas. I can also remember my dad griping that things didn't last as long. Despite his general disdain for products made in Asia, Dad had a 1970 Toyota, and, when we moved into the house where I grew up, we had the only Japanese car on the block.
If listeners didn’t want it (news/interrptions to music) why did top 40 stations continue newscasts into at least the 1970s? Complying with FCC public affairs requirements?
Total ad spending / revenues in the US, according to Statista, appears to be stuck at 2012 levels, when accounting for inflation. I'm sure that affects radio advertising.
In my view the main culprit is the internet. Radio folks here talk about "saturation" on the FM (and AM) radio dial. The internet is practically the definition of "saturation", and I think it also affects the overall advertising marketplace.
Also, a lot of online retailers -- and there are more and more of them -- do not advertise, or -- if they do -- they don't advertise outside their online platforms. Where does Amazon advertise, for example? Or even Walmart? There are some Walmart, Best Buy, etc., ad-like appearances on my search engine screens if I type in the name or model # of a product, but it seems that a lot of big retailers do not advertise like they used to. I think that some of the experts here have indicated as much.
And radio appears to be getting socked because of it.
In my view the main culprit is the internet. Radio folks here talk about "saturation" on the FM (and AM) radio dial. The internet is practically the definition of "saturation", and I think it also affects the overall advertising marketplace.
Also, a lot of online retailers -- and there are more and more of them -- do not advertise, or -- if they do -- they don't advertise outside their online platforms. Where does Amazon advertise, for example? Or even Walmart? There are some Walmart, Best Buy, etc., ad-like appearances on my search engine screens if I type in the name or model # of a product, but it seems that a lot of big retailers do not advertise like they used to. I think that some of the experts here have indicated as much.
And radio appears to be getting socked because of it.
People into radios will pay that much -- generally those who grew up with the device.
Today you can get a $15-$60 radio that works as well, if not better than $150-$200 portables did 30 years ago. The DSP chips have really improved radio performance.
But your point is well taken. Most people probably aren't interested in a "radio" anymore than they're interested in an Over-the-air capable "TV".
Indeed!
This reminds me, during a PG&E "Public Safety" Power Shutoff in October 2020, which lasted at least three days if I remember, much of the cellular network in the immediate area went dead after the first day or so. Didn't have cable either because we hadn't fully moved yet, not that it would've mattered as it was probably down too.
The only way we were able to know about what was going on was by listening to the radio.
As modern technologies advance and become more robust, outright failures are becoming quite rare, but, as we saw with AT&T's outage, they still happen, and for what little it's worth, radio was there to fill in the information gap, if imperfectly, demonstrating to me that radio isn't absolutely irrelevant yet.
I've heard anecdotally that all kinds of things (cars, household appliances, computers and phones, and other such things) have become notably less reliable and of much lower quality since the factory shutdowns in 2020.
Ah, "over-the-air capable" TVs. I don't really care about OTA TV anymore, because it became profoundly uninteresting when it went all digital (I was very interested in trying to catch TV stations ack when they were still analog, and for a time, I carried a portable TV with me almost everywhere so I could see what stations I could get where). I fear the same will happen to radio if and when that happens, but it seems like at the rate it's going, radio as we know it is going to slowly wither and die before anything like that happens to it. There are already signs of it happening.
c
When TV went all digital, I got the converter box and for a while I found it interesting -- the extra channels had some decent programs (stuff I missed from the early 2000's when I wasn't watching much, if any TV -- 'Monk' reruns being an example), and the higher quality picture was nice. Sometimes the reception was glitchy. But after a while I just lost interest.
I think when radio goes "all digital" it will be online based (naturally) and most stations will die off. Radio will never be able to adequately compete with Spotify, YouTube, Pandora, etc. IHeart's platform has very low listenership compared to those three platforms, and I don't think individual stations will have any more robust online-only futures than IHeart's platform is doing right now.
I could be wrong, though. At this point, it's just all guesses. The future is online, though, for all information and entertainment content. That appears to be a given.
I see TV commercials for both. In the case of Amazon it's Prime.
Agreed with vchimp on this one. I hear/see ads all the time for Walmart and Amazon - they're especially heavy around the holidays. Amazon seems to make one or a few commercials each holiday shopping season which make an impression and stick with viewers/listeners. This past Christmas it was the 3 older ladies who went sledding down a snowy hill, and just for a moment, transformed into children, showing them sledding down that same hill when they were kids, before transforming back to their older selves. Personally, for me the first time I saw it, it stirred emotion. A few years ago Amazon had the commercials with the "Can you feel it?" jingle that was quite catchy and used to get stuck in my head.
OK, I stand corrected.
But most of Amazon's "advertising" is on their website, which is almost a media platform in itself. Walmart is slightly different, but my point was that as retail has shifted away from brick and mortars that used to advertise on radio and TV and the like, so has the advertising. I shop on Amazon frequently. Often there will be 'bargains' on certain items I shop for. In the past those sort of things would have been advertised on Radio, TV, mail flyers, Newspaper ads, and the like. Sometimes it seems that nearly everything you see on the website is some sort of ad, or plug for a product.
They've already got the visibility. I think they're the biggest retailer in the world right now. A lot of eyes on their website. No need, or less need, to 'advertise' elsewhere. And a lot of online retail is undoubtedly similar.
Fair comments... I'd also add that the Amazon "bargains" you speak of are often advertised in my Instagram and Facebook feeds (along with the glut of ads from Temu). Since Amazon is an internet commerce company, they likely see FB and IG uses as a key focus for advertising, as most users of those platforms know and understand tech and many likely have Amazon's app in their phone.
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