Will internet radio become the choice of listeners in our lifetime?

[FRR]

If anyone listens to the radio in the future, it will be satellite because FM and AM are going to die a slow death,

 

[joshzz]

FRR, I don't think satellite with ever gain popularity with mainstream America unless it is offered free of charge. More people than ever before are cutting cable television. I suspect HD radio will help with the demise of satellite radio. Satellite radio is too much of a boutique service.

 

[Chuck]

My radios stations stream local sporting events. I've noticed from comments on social media sites that a lot of people like to listen to the broadcasts while they are at the game. Almost exclusively, they choose to do this on their cell phones. I guess it is convenient, but it seems odd to me. The problem is when you get 50-100 people trying to use the same cell site, the drop outs get really bad. That's not taking into account all the other people who are tweeting, posting on Facebook, or emailing pictures to friends. There is only so much bandwidth available from a single cell tower.

I've asked people, "Why don't you just bring a radio?" From one team's home stadium, you can actually see our tower, so almost any portable radio would work fine. All I ever get is a lot of blank stares. The idea of a portable radio doesn't seem to be on most people's radar screens. I suspect that is the future...

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

That is classic, Chuck.

Listen to radio.... on a radio.....! what are you... a communist or something.

What are you going to come with next.... go to a theatre..... to watch a movie?

I can't wait to run down stairs and explain something to my wife.

Honey: this is a kitchen..... you can actually cook meals in here!

 

[PTBoardOp94]

What are you going to come with next.... go to a theatre..... to watch a movie?

Honey: this is a kitchen..... you can actually cook meals in here!

And think: Many people don't go to movie theatres to watch movies, nor do they cook meals in their kitchen (one contemporary playwright: "the kitchen is for storing kitsch") . These trends have taken decades to advance to where they are now, and I would imagine that internet radio is on a similar slow trajectory. Maybe it won't happen in GRC's lifetime, but I suppose it will take hold in mine.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

These trends have taken decades to advance to where they are now, and I would imagine that internet radio is on a similar slow trajectory. Maybe it won't happen in GRC's lifetime, but I suppose it will take hold in mine.

I guess some of us push back when people say audio-on-the-internet or internet-radio 'as we know it' will eventually become the dominant audio resource. People don't normally include the words 'as we know it' but the implication is there. "I'm going to run back to my room and implement my Internet stream tonight and I'm on my way to being part of the new trend. Maybe I will be one of the winners and you will read about me and my Internet station in Billboard or Broadcasting Magizine or maybe I will be on the cover of Time magazine for being so innovative."

That's a great dream... but, yes, I perceive it has much too long of a time-line for me. Maybe your's will work well.

BUT. If I can add a footnote to your prediction, I will join you in it. Right now... for me to crank up my very own audio feed, no mater what we choose to call it, is a bit cumbersome on the receiving end. When my daughter comes to visit the Gingerbread Cabin in the hills, she sets up shop somewhere and does her workday. Wintertime? My dining room table. Better weather? Under the gazebo out on the deck. And her iphone is laying someone within reach, and on the last visit, her Jawbone or something like that was laying some where else within reach. The iphone has been listenable, but it was a tiny little speaker voice... kind of like having a crystal set receiver 80 years ago. Now the iphone sends Bluetooth over to the Jawbone and now the sound is like a small chamber music studio or something. Once the spectrum goes through a couple of changes/additions, and iphones and andoids and things we haven't heard of before go through a couple of changes, something we today call 'internet radio' will become maybe The Norm.

So, if I owned a small home-town radio station like I often dreamed of, what year should I plan on having the bulldozer in and having my local undertaker cremate the remains of my traditional radio station? 12 years from now? 26 years from now? Or maybe year after next?

 

[Small Market Guy]

I suspect HD radio will help with the demise of satellite radio. Satellite radio is too much of a boutique service.

Thanks for the laugh. HD radio being the demise of anything is pretty funny.

 

[Kent T]

Until bandwidth caps go bye bye and data is unlimited on cellular and PC on all plans, not reality.

 

[Chuck]

Until bandwidth caps go bye bye and data is unlimited on cellular and PC on all plans, not reality.

You'd think so, but I've noticed a lot of the "cell phone addicted" don't seem to care about the bandwidth costs. It is a strange situation, but a lot of people seem perfectly happy to pay for something they could get for free..... Go figure.

 

[stevensonair]

There's still major coverage gaps. It remains to be seen if cellular companies will consider building these areas out to be worth it. In the meantime, local radio is still there, free of charge.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

There's still major coverage gaps. It remains to be seen if cellular companies will consider building these areas out to be worth it. In the meantime, local radio is still there, free of charge.

Now comes the subjective evaluation of those areas compared to objective facts. We can assume that most places that have no cellular coverage have a pretty think population. People who choose to live in such areas know that some things in life are not down at the corner convenience store.

Now the radio coverage: In areas of wide open space, mountain ranges or thick forests where few people live thus few cell towers are to be found, just how much broadcast radio is found there? Typically maybe two to four stations. Are they worth listening to? If you have lived in that space all your life you never had much 'audio' available and your taste, your brain adjusts accordingly. You listen for exotic bird singing, or try to identify the airplanes flying over by the sound of their engines. But if you have this great thirst for the kind of sounds that broadcasting and streaming can provide... what are the chances you are going to like the one or two stations that are local enough to receicve?

For all practical purposes.... radio is NOT everywhere.

 

[joshzz]

GRC, The way the US is growing I doubt there are very few areas with just two stations. There is a population boom going on and its being mostly caused by the illegals flooding the country.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

GRC, The way the US is growing I doubt there are very few areas with just two stations. There is a population boom going on and its being mostly caused by the illegals flooding the country.

Hoss.... you been out west where the sagebrush and tumbleweeds grow?

You been to southern Appalachia where the Ground Conductivity is almost a negative value?

"illegals" are flooding(really?) markets that are already flush with people where they can get jobs. There are very few available jobs in a lot of the "blue sky, big horizon in your windshield" country.

I think this thread arrive here with commentary that cell phone streaming would replace broadcast radio,
another commentary that some parts of the country have no coverage or thin coverage by cell phone signal
and then this "mini-debate" broke out as whether the no-cell phone areas might also be no-broadcast areas.

We ain't talking about New Jersey. We ain't talking about The North-east Corridor. We are talking about areas from South Texas to the Montana-Canadian border. We're talking about some areas that might welcome some "illegals"... anybody ready to do some hot, back-breaking work.... even people from New Jersey who are legal.

 

[TheBigA]

For all practical purposes.... radio is NOT everywhere.

Depends on what kind of radio you're talking about. Sirius comes in pretty well out there.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Depends on what kind of radio you're talking about. Sirius comes in pretty well out there.

I just went back and read the entire thread again. Some people are sure that some future development variation of the Internet via some futuristic replacement of the cell phone; others are convinced satellite.. ie. Sirius will be the dominant factor.

I wonder what new technology that isn't even on our visible horizon will come along and be a surprise to all of us. And will it be practical for popultions... thick and thin?

We have for some time been a nation where entrepreneurs are all clustered around the heavily loaded fruit trees. Our founding father's could see that commercial for-profit delivery of mail was not on the horizon for rural areas so we developed the postal system that we are now trying to dismantle.

We found out that power companies and phone companies were allergic to sage brush and tumble weeds so government developed the R.E.A. Rural Electrification Administration.

And now we see airlines only find it practical to fly fully loaded planes from big-city to big city. If you live out in the boonies... you know the territory... the one with cities of 100,000 on down, lots of luck when you need to quickly fly to Grandma's Funeral in another part of the country.

 

[TheBigA]

I wonder what new technology that isn't even on our visible horizon will come along and be a surprise to all of us. And will it be practical for popultions... thick and thin?

I think that's a good subject. I've been involved with the internet for a long time, and when I think how it's evolved in that time, especially in the last 5 years, it's amazing. I think ten years from now, we'll look at today's platform as being very quaint and old fashioned.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

I think that's a good subject. I've been involved with the internet for a long time, and when I think how it's evolved in that time, especially in the last 5 years, it's amazing. I think ten years from now, we'll look at today's platform as being very quaint and old fashioned.

I'm sure that in my fits-and-starts I puzzle people and some have made it clear I can irritate now then. I really hate that!!!

I have been a student of '(b)leading edge technology' for a long time, but not always able to afford the implementation. So I have a feel for the mind of the people out in front of the parade and enjoy carrying the flag for them, and yet to make sure I don't run out of money to far ahead of the day I go "toes up".... I wallow in what my son sometimes calls 'trailing edge' technology.

Not too many years ago you could jump on "the new" and maybe have one big ride in your entire lifetime. Think of the guys who began retailing TV sets back in the 50s and 60s. Some of them were able to run a Mom n Pop retail and service operation well into the 70s and 80s.

They are trying to revive it, but how short has the run been since the beginning of the Blackberry and what appears to be it's recent demise. Product lifetimes do not match what happened 50 to 100 years ago.

I feel sorry for the folks who invented and produced the little "electric eye" that sat on the dashboard of cars 50 years ago, automatically dimming the high-beams as you drove the two-lane roads of rural America. In this day and age of freeways and city dwellers, I don't know if you can even buy that device on a car today. But you can have GPS, you can have that thing that beeps and puts on the brakes when a vehicle two or three vehicles ahead of you begins acting like an accident has happened or is about to happen.

So some new technology will deliver audio here there and everywhere in ways we cannot imagine... and it could be as near as 3 to 7 years from now. So will that technology offer a local franchise like the old 250 graveyard AM stations of the 1940s and 1950s, for local news and local advertising... or will it's model be more like centralized origination a'la satellite radio.

I wish them well... but over at my house I haven't adopted a Tablet or Smart Phone yet. Last year I went out and found myself a computer keyboard that emulated the feel of pounding on an old Selectric typewriter of 40 years ago. I'm sure the developers of this nifty futuristic way of delivering audio communications will come looking for me to be their marketing director.