According to an article on AppleInsider.com, Needham & Co.’s Charlie Wolf recently wrote that in its attempts to compete with the smashing success of the iPhone, “The smartphone industry is betting that it can meet this challenge and continue to lure feature phone users through more powerful hardware.”
“More specifically,” says AppleInsider.com, “Wolf believes the ‘misguided’ obsession with differentiation through hardware features will leave many smartphone makers treading water because ‘hardware is essentially a commodity.’
“That is, no manufacturer can achieve a sustainable advantage through hardware because the components in most smartphones are simultaneously available to all competitors.”
And Then There’s Radio.
“HD radio, that will save us.”
“Passing a law requiring all new automobiles to be equipped with HD Radio, that will save us.”
Radio is losing ground not because of inferior hardware. Radio is suffering because for decades it had a virtual monopoly on its core content (primarily music, followed by local voices).
Then came Consolidation, complete with “Economies of Scale” — which, unfortunately, the Corporate Geniuses That Be applied not just to the delivery of the product but to the product itself. They reduced Content to a commodity.
Almost immediately afterward, along came the Internet.
Having chosen to peddle an increasingly available product (homogenous music presented without a meaningful context) and having abandoned the last vestiges of “community service” and “civic responsibility,” American radio was shocked at how disloyal its previously captive audience turned out to be.
“But HD Radio Means Multiple Channels, Which Means More Choice!”
Uh-huh. Just as Consolidation meant more choice for listeners. (Hey, some of the richest, least competent radio CEO’s still publicly proclaim that without the slightest hint of irony.)
Multiple channels consisting of slivers of pre-packaged formats will not lure back the listeners Radio held in such low regard for so long.
Yes, I know glassy eyed HD proponents also promise more programming “diversity.” Just as Consolidation presented listeners with “greater choice.”
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Great article Dan… let’s hope it gets into the “right hands”….
Well said, Dan!
If they call “HD Radio” the same quality as sirius and XM radio it’s far from High Definition. In the digital CD age, that’s a priority. Commerical radio’s appeal is the local content availability, hard core music fan’s will look elsewhere because of it’s limited music choices, yet, that’s all they do with time and temp jocks.
Radio as a medium … Read Moreis very powerful and intimate. A lot of the talent on air in commerical radio has lost that concept, be it because of management above them or they just don’t get that. Until that actually is grasped, I’ll just shake my head about hearing “another 40 minutes music marathon” and hearing about some lame story they ripped off the wire and really sound terrible in reading it.
Obviously, there are a lot of Radio execs in the management and programming areas that think their premise is correct, that the content being provided via satellite radio and HD radio and even plain ol’ radio radio is superior to other entertainment media. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, NO RADIO PROGRAMMER CAN PROGRAM A BETTER MIX OF … Read MoreMUSIC ON THE RADIO THAN I CAN ON MY iPOD. Radio can (but does not) give me what my iPod cannot: unique personalities creating a show worth listening to. And even that is being done farily well by people producing podcasts.
the future of radio “FreeWireless Internet Radio Broadcasting” in your car.
I definitely don’t expect it to save us, but I do think it is the future. Whether that future includes us, is largely up to us. It is the content, stupid.
forget the exterior…..without the heart of good local programming radio cannot survive.
how has radio programming changed at all, in the last 30 years?
your note is dead-on dan. i wish more people would talk about this. i keep hearing all these hd radio ads, yet i don’t know one single person who has one.
Completely concur! However, I’m not sure radio is even capable of delivering the variable content listeners are demanding through such a fixed channel. Is Sirius/XM even delivering the variety consumers are looking for? With 100’s of channels, that is still questionable. I’m not sure radio can prosper without changing the very nature of its delivery mechanism… Pandora with ads, maybe?
Musically, Ipods are musically making radio obsolete, and even low quality mp3’s are better then satellite quality, and dare I say it commerical FM, because of the old school loudness war mentality that too many programmers and engineers have still.
Local content, basic surveillance and entertainment value in on air personality is it’s strength … Read Morein all day parts, yet outside the drive shows, it’s music with time and temp. research apparently says middays should be roll the tunes….I’m not inclined to agree. Can you hook my attention everytime you flip on the mic? You should be striving for that.
It’s not the content that’s entirely to blame. It’s the marketing. The HD radio alliance has burned tons of airtime and it’s so ambiguous that even I who have worked in this business for more than two decades am disappointed. It’s neato technology but, if for example I’m a techno fan, tell me I can get techno music if I buy the radio to get it. Fix the marketing and it’ll change HD’s fortunes.
Love it.
@ Michael Shishido: Meanwhile, at a recent radio convention some genius with a spectacular 20-year history of failure gave a keynote address in which he declared that radio has an advantage over iPods because “people don’t want to have to program their own music.”
No indication of what his home planet is.
One Billion Apps downloaded so far for iPod Touch & iPhone. I've been comparing "There's An App for That" to other wireless competitors new ad campaigns. It's like comparing the living earth to the desert moon. Those apps are developed by aspiring app developers with day jobs… developers with no promise of any reward… they create masterpieces … that normal humans can use. They do it for the love of creating a solution for a near perfect device that is elegant and beautiful. They do it because it is their 'music' inside that has to be played. The end user decides which Apps are the winners via an amazon.com style rankings & comments system which reaps instant improvements rather than calls to customer service which says "We've been working on that for _ years, please stay with us anyway." The Apple App for thAt model works. Try it.
@ Sam Botta:: Actually, some people definitely are making money with iPhone apps.
A friend of mine created one of their 10 Best Selling Apps “of all time” (meaning, like, what? two years?).
The royalty to his company from just 3 weeks of sales was $280,000.
Dan,
The choir is here. Where are the priests in this chapel?
If you have ever purchased an HD radio, please raise your hand.
I don’t see many hands.
Would I like HD radio in my car? Sure, if it was installed, but I wouldn’t pay for it, especially when I can get just about any HD station I want, if it’s worth listening to, streamed through my cell phone. Plus, in-dash internet radios are on the way.
I’m a huge believer in radio, but I seriously question the benefit of the whole HD Radio campaign. Invest that money in CONTENT that can be broadcast, streamed, podcasted (is that a word?) and most importantly, SOLD.
Dan:
If I may apply some of your well-known observations of radio advertising, if we are to make a connection with our audience, that connection must be an emotional one – something the listener feels, not just hears. Content might do that in the same sense that our High School Graduation theme song does. We hear it, we remember the context…our friends at graduation, the weather we experienced, the theme of the graduation party, the guy who got drunk on his girlfriend; by the time the song is done we have refreshed our memories.
I believe the problem with radio now is that programmers count on the music (or syndicated program) doing all the work. That would seem to be a hit-or-miss proposition. You might connect with a few, but just a few listeners won’t keep you on the air. How, then, to connect with the audience?
Common Human Experience – it’s a Dan O’Day founding principle, no? If we give the listener something he or she can relate to in their own lives – beyond the music – then the music is relieved of being the “beast of burden” in the task of satisfying the audience. And what better way to do that than through colorful language; language, words, phrases, arranged in a way that paints a picture of life?
Perhaps, concurrent with the demise of reading as the primary source of information, the spoken word has undergone a decline of depth, expression and meaning. If we all have access to the same music (content), then the only thing that will set us apart from the throng is the language with which we frame the content. We need to give our listeners an experience, not just throw music at them. Can this be done by an announcer voicetracking three stations? That all depends upon the talent and perspective presented by the announcer. Unfortunately, it would seem to me that in too many situations, the announcer has become just “another piece of content”, a commodity to be placed into the accounting formulae.
” captive audience ” a Problem.
Dear Radio Executives change your title to Listener Executives and then you will really run to work for your listeners wants not your Radio’s . Listeners pay you. Your client’s pay you because your Listeners pay you. You have a neat co-pay because your Listeners Pay you.Your car need gas? Get some because Your Listers Pay you.
Your Radio Does Not Pay You. Your Listeners Pay You.
I agree. It’s all about the content. You have to provide the listeners with something exciting to make them want to listen.
It all started one dark and gloomy day.
Suddenly the people heard a new sound it was called FM Radio.
It sounded great.
On those FM Stations were other people. People that had been thrown over to the FM side because they did not have the talent good enough to work for AM Rock Radio.(Place Reverb Here).
So those people, the FM people were determined to keep the AM Rock people away from FM.
So they made it boring, just play the hits, read what is on the lovely 3×5 cards.
Don’t give your opinion of the music. Don’t talk like a human to another human ever.
If by chance the people from AM ever made it to FM they would be so bored they would leave faster than they arrived.
To police the boredom and to insure no one would ever be happy in radio again. (reverb) There was born the RADIO CONSULTANT.
They were chosen because they had no talent, never knew anyone with talent, hell some of them had never been in radio(radio radio radio)
If you wanted to be one of the FM people you had to follow the commands of the mighty Consultant if you did not you were deemed a loser a non pro, a wannbe.
Gurus of radio sprang up everywhere. Sign up for this, order this, listen to this and you will be a pro, a success. We take cash, plastic fantastic, your first borne.( only if potty trained)
And yet radio got worse and worse. The respect, the glee and happiness the People who first heard the great sound called FM. Now ran, not crawled, not walked, but ran away from the media that played the same songs over and over. Read cards that talked down to the People. And in the boldest way possible threw away any thought of common sense.
Here with Dan we are the choir. We know what’s wrong and we can’t fix-it.
There will have to be a large number of stations go dark before anyone will really listen to what we have to say.
Barry Cole (The Nighttime Mayor)