Category Archives: Radio

Radio “in a broad-band, wirelessly networked world”

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I mentioned in an earlier post that our company operates networks that provide statewide news to radio stations (Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin and Nebraska). The thing we do best is covering state government, with an emphasis on the legislature. And because our medium is radio, we do a lot of sound. Here’s the way it worked in 1975:

Our reporter covered some event at the state capitol. Debate, a hearing, news conference…whatever. They recorded the event, asked some questions and returned to the newsroom where they wrote their stories and edited the audio. Once an hour, they produced a five minute newscast and “fed” it to affiliated radio stations over phone lines (later, via satellite).

We provide stations with programming (we’ve started calling it content) and they “pay” us with commercials on their stations which we, in turn, sell to advertisers. It’s been a good business model. It’s still a good model. But I wonder how current technology might affect that model. As silly and pointless as it sounds, let’s forget the economics for a moment and think about how this process might work in a broad-band, wirelessly networked world.

Our reporter (we’ll call her Lois Lane) is sitting in the back of a hearing room at the state capitol where a heated discussion on same-sex marriage is underway. She’s connected to the Net and posting almost-real-time updates on what’s happening to her network’s weblog. When a fight breaks out between two of the state senators, she snaps a picture with her Treo 600 and posts it to the weblog. Things heat up, security is called. Lois IM’s the webmaster and says she wants to stream live. Takes only a few minutes to get the encoders going. Order is restored and the hearing adjourned. In the hallway, Lois interviews the participants and records it on her small, hand-held video camera. She Blue Tooth’s it over to her laptop…does a quick edit…and zaps it straight to the website. Scattered across the country (and in a couple of other countries)…a few thousand folks receive a fresh RSS feed on their news aggregators. Holy shit! A gay activist kicked the shit out of a state senator in Missouri. And there’s video!

I’m not sure, but I think all of the technology for the above exists. We’re just not there on the business model. Yet. Oh, and there were no radio stations in my scenerio. Will there ever be a time when people can receive text, audio and video on some mobile device that is not a transistor radio? Uh, yeah. We call it a mobile phone or PDA today. I’m not sure what we call it tomorrow but it probably won’t be a radio. Before you start looking for a rope and a limb, know that I love radio. I grew up in a radio family. But I don’t believe the essence of radio is transmitters and towers and FCC licenses. It’s music and news and sports and interesting people with interesting things to say. How it gets from A to Z is less important every day.

The O’Franken Factor

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The highly-promoted debut of author and comedian Al Franken’s talk show, “The O’Franken Factor,” on the new “Air America” radio network apparently set a record. Air America’s VP/Marketing Leon Colaco says the network’s website handled nearly 500,000 unique visitors in the 22-hour period between 7PM Wednesday and 5PM Thursday. (final numbers from Air America streaming provider RealNetworks will not be available until next week.) This might be the largest number of simultaneous listeners that Real had handled since ABC News’s coverage of the 9/11 attacks on September 12, 2001, which hit 86,700 concurrent listeners. [More at RAIN]

Air Left

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I listened to Air America several times –for a few minutes at time– today. Not enough to form much of an opinion. Initial impressions: Sort of spooky hearing a talk show host wailing on the Republicans. After all these years of Rush, it just felt strange to hear someone so openly bashing the Republicans and Bush. (I know, I know, the liberal media blah, blah, blah). But I can’t say I was much impressed with the execution. But, it’s early. Sounds like Jeff listened more, and more thoughtfully, than I. (By my count, Jeff is on his third name for his weblog. I like this one.) Politics aside, Rush does radio very well. I suspect that has as much to do with his success as his views. I’ll be surprised if the Air America folks can measure up. We’ll see (hear).

New XM channel?

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In a post titled The Death of Broadcast, Jeff Jarvis writes about Howard Stern, broadcast radio and government regulation and where it’s all headed:

– Stern will engineer his firing from Viacom.
– Stern will sign with satellite, giving satellite the boost it needs to become a viable business.
– Buy satellite stock now. Sell radio stock now.
– Broadcast radio will quickly falter, losing attention to MP3s, satellite, and cellular broadcast. Broadcast radio will die. Consolidation won’t kill it. Censorship will.
– Satellite will grow rapidly, getting more consumer revenue and ad revenue.
– Broadcast TV will suffer similar blows.
– Cable and satellite TV will grow.
– The bottom line: Any medium that can be government-regulated will shrink; any medium free of government regulation will grow.

XM Radio will provide local traffic and weather

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On March 1, XM Radio will provide local traffic and weather in 21 metos, including St. Louis. The Weather Channel is doing the weather and a company called TrafficPulse is doing the traffic. You can listen to a sample on the XM site. Since I got my XM Radio, my friends in “traditional” radio have dismissed it as an expensive juke-box service. “Besides,” they pointed out, “they can’t do local stuff like traffic and weather.” Now when I drive in to St. Louis –or before I even start for St. Louis– I can check the traffic situation. Any reason they couldn’t hire some reporters in each market and provide local news?