Exploding Radio (continued)

Competition is great, isnt it?

I just read yesterday's WSJ piece on radio.

Here are some quotes from leading radio execs:

"The industry did not invest in its future," says Joel Hollander, Infinity's chief executive since January. "If we had invested three to five years ago, people would be thinking differently about satellite" and other competitors.

"The Internet and iPod are not challenges -- they are business options for us," says Mr. Hogan of Clear Channel, which pipes more than 200 of its stations over the Internet and plans to start allowing listeners to download programs to their iPods, a hot trend known as podcasting.

Those are the words of executives who get it, realize that they need to move now, and are embracing the new technologies to transform their businesses.  And that's a big change from where the radio execs have been over the past five years.

Last July, I wrote a long post on radio called "Radio in 2010" where I laid out what I'd do if I was running a radio business.  Looks like the guys who are in fact running radio businesses have the same game plan now.  That's great.

The reason I am so sure that the iPod isn't going to kill radio is the same reason I love podcasting.  The iPod is great but I often have no idea what to play.  I want someone to program my iPod.  Podcasters do that.  Radio programmers - good old fashioned radio programmers - which is what we are headed back to now that there is real competition, do that better than anyone.

Comments

[David Corts]

I agree wholeheartedly that radio executives need to embrace HD radio not simply for sound quality but rather for the advanced services that will allow them to compete with other digital media from satellite radio to cell phones. I’m a strong believer and have been for the last six years since I’ve been involved in IBOC, that digital is all about more services, more choice, and more control for the listeners. That has been the natural direction of almost every other medium that has moved to digital and, I believe, where the actual value of HD Radio lies. I founded a company on it. Like you, I’m encouraged to see radio executives saying that out loud (because they’ve had a hard time in the past.)

Nevertheless, I’m not at all confident that these services will ever emerge under the current structure created by NRSC’s IBOC standard setting process. If the standard is approved by the NRSC in April (fairly likely) and a rulemaking enacted by the FCC thereafter(not so sure), then access to create these new services will be controlled solely by iBiquity. I know that such an arrangement probably sounds good to an investor, but I’ve read your blog enough to know you realize that without a competitive environment for entrepreneurs (not to mention other established companies better suited to deliver these new services) to innovate and compete, it is highly unlikely that data services will evolve much beyond some secondary audio services and song title / artist information. The standards process has many problems about which I only care in principle, but the fact that it will retard and probably kills radio’s chances to evolve into a competitive digital medium is really a tragedy.

I know iBiquity management uses Microsoft as a model and I applaud their ambition. They have worked long and hard to create a revolutionary product. But they’ve overreached by using a standard setting process to guarantee market share for products that extend beyond their expertise and their intellectual property rights. No matter how brilliant they are, you can’t leave all the control or especially all the innovation to one company. It won’t work. How much would the Internet have evolved in the last ten years if anyone who wanted to create an application for the web – web-based email apps, e-commerce, mp3’s, blogs, etc. -- had to go through Microsoft?

I’ll tell you this much, I wouldn’t be reading you’re blog right now.

Enjoy your commentary. Thanks and keep it up.

[just.a.guy]

check out www.radiotime.com

and the radioshark from griffin

both cool ideas of what could be RadioNext