Radio Survivor

Next Tuesday the Federal Communications Commission will reveal the entirety of its National Broadband Plan, over a year in the making. Required by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which authorized $7.2 billion in broadband stimulus spending, The Plan will weigh in on about a thousand broadband related subjects—how to help more people get it, how to help industries provide it, ways to encourage innovations that the FCC hopes will stimulate more broadband adoption, like IP video.

The chances are, though, that it won’t have much to say about radio

Oh yes, it will talk about “radio” spectrum a whole lot—in the sense of licenses from 500 KHz to 2.5 GHz that licensees use to transmit video, voice, text, audio, and whatever. But unlike every other broadband related medium, from social networking through web video, almost no one has anything to say on a policy level about radio delivered over high speed Internet, either through desktops, laptops, netbooks, or smartphones.

Indirectly, however, the National Broadband Plan will no doubt have an impact on both Internet and broadcast radio. Here are my speculations as to why and how. But nota bene, this is strictly thinking out loud stuff; as the saying goes, ‘I’m just talking.’ (more…)

There was once a time when a rare breed of radio DJ could scare up controversy and big ratings–not to mention FCC indecency fines–using just his voice, a few on-air cronies and whole lot of bravado, innuendo and hot air. Remember Howard Stern? Arguably the original “shock jock” he was one of the few American radio DJs able to make a nationwide name for himself, including late night talk show appearances and even producing an autobiographical feature film. He made big news in 2004 when he abandoned broadcast for Sirius satellite radio. But once Stern made the transition at the beginning of 2006 he pretty much faded from the mainstream limelight. CBS Radio made attempts to fill the void–such as tapping former Van Halen signer David Lee Roth, who lasted about four months. But no new jock has been found who can replicate Stern’s nationwide morning show dominance.

Chicago-based Mancow Muller was one potential candidate for the King of All Media’s throne. Just as Stern prepared to exit the broadcast airwaves Mancow was experiencing a boost in the number of station’s carrying his “Morning Madhouse” program, and was even beating Stern in the ratings in his home market. Yet only a half-year into Stern’s absence from terrestrial radio Mancow was booted from his home flagship station, Chicago’s Q101. Though the Madhouse continued to air in syndication, Mancow’s candidacy to replace Stern seemed to fade.
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So, I guess now it’s my turn. What is Radio Survivor (the blog)? It’s all about the idea that radio is a hardy, useful, practical and proven medium with a lot of life left in it. A Radio Survivor (the person) is someone who continues to believe in the medium. A Radio Survivor is not a luddite clinging to her transistor radio while eschewing iPhones and netbooks, nor is he a retro fetishist stuck in the past. Rather, a Radio Survivor recognizes the simple power inherent in broadcast audio, which can be done inexpensively and bring people together in a community.

I’ve been a radio broadcaster working in college, community and public radio since 1989, with just one year off from May 1993 to May 1994. And while I’ve had some sporadic work in radio, most recently as a college station adviser, as Matthew emphasizes, my approach is more as a listener and enthusiast rather than an industry insider. Much of what is written about radio is for the industry insider, and is therefore concerned more with profits, ratings and staffing changes than with the place of the medium in our society and everyday lives. Also often missing from insider coverage is critical analysis that challenges the business orthodoxy.

I write for Radio Survivor because I wish to challenge myself and others to consider what radio can be, not just be content or discontented with how it is. We can recognize the damage wrought by consolidation without giving in and leaving the medium for dead. We can highlight the stations and places where innovation is happening and 21st century is in the making. We can encourage new or lost listeners to give radio a new chance.

Radio, as a medium, has a great chance to survive because of the internet, iPods and mobile phones, not in spite of them. Just because Clear Channel and its mostly bankrupt consolidating brethren were too busy buying up stations, firing staff and elminating local service to notice the internet revolution doesn’t mean that the internet has to kill radio. I believe that there is still an audience that pines for local news, information and culture that is still hard to find on the internet, that doesn’t require a monthly broadband bill or data package and is there in the car, in the home or a hundred miles away from the nearest wi-fi hotspot. And as internet access becomes more ubiquitous and less costly radio can still be a complementary part of our information environment.

That’s Radio Surviving.

As I said in my introduction to our subjective and opinionated review of radio in the 2000s, I still think it was darn near impossible to predict how the medium of radio would end up at the beginning of 2010. Sure, the seeds for satellite radio, HD radio, low-power FM, internet radio and MP3s were already planted by the turn of the century. But home broadband–nevermind wireless or mobile–was a relatively exclusive luxury. MP3 players were lucky to sport enough memory to hold about a hundred minutes of music and weren’t integrated into cell phones. Satellites for Sirius and XM were launched, and HD Radio was being experimented with, but no stations were on the air. Clear Channel was flying high for more than $90 a share.

Anyone taking a broad view of the radio industry in 2000 could certainly see a lot of balls being thrust up into to the air, but it would have taken a psychic to predict where they would land. Nevertheless, for all of the churn we can say very safely that audio-focused content is alive and well.

It’s become clear to me that we Radio Survivors do consider radio to be greater than just the traditional electromagnetic broadcast medium. While we included the RF-based college radio, pubic radio, LPFM, HD Radio and satellite radio in our review, we also touched upon internet radio, Pandora and digital downloads. I believe we are first and foremost fans of terrestrial broadcast radio, but that does not cause us to ignore or discount new audio media. Nor does it cause it us to claim that they are not, in essence, radio services.

The homogenization and delocalization of the broadcast dial caused listeners to seek alternative places to hear more interesting and diverse content. At the same time the popularity of MP3 players and Pandora shows that people were also looking for customization.
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I spend a lot of time thinking about how changes in technology are affecting radio.

I worry that the “kids” (college radio DJs as well as everyday folks) are getting lazier and lazier, bypassing physical music for digital, thinking that it’s easier to find and play.

I also worry that the pleasure of enjoying an entire album is being lost; even though there are still albums being created that beg for a complete listen.

In a piece in The Boston Globe, Steve Almond nicely captures some of these fears as he takes a look at his own feelings of nostalgia for physical music as he converts his record collection to digital files. He writes:

An interesting filing from the National Association of Broadcasters in response to the Federal Communications Commissions’ call for feedback on ways that broadband can help smart grids. The NAB says let FM radio stations lend their subcarrier channels to the cause:

“Smart Grid devices, implanted in home appliances, thermostats, and plug-in hybrid vehicles, could receive data information via an FM data subcarrier channel at anytime, day or night. That data could, for example, tell appliances when to turn off or down or tell thermostats to increase temperatures by a few degrees during peak load times. The resulting decrease in demand could help save billions of dollars each year in energy costs.”

Smart Grids are electrical power sources that use computer networks to monitor their performance and serve energy more efficiently. An FM subcarrier is a signal that sends voice/data about the main FM transmission. These signals can also be used for other purposes. In the early 1980s the Federal Communications Commission deregulated them, allowing radio stations to lease them out for various commercial purposes with a degree of FCC supervision.

NAB proposes tapping into these subcarrier channels via the Radio Data System protocol, which moves bits at about 1,100 per second, not the fastest speed in the world, but “well-matched to the requirements of the Smart Grid load management application, while still allowing ample opportunity for other, simultaneous uses.”

If the idea works, it could put some extra money into the pockets of FM stations, which they certainly need at this point. But hopefully this wouldn’t divert Radio Broadcast Data Systems resources from some of the other purposes to which they are used, such as radio reading services for the blind.

Today’s highly anticipated 9/9/09 Apple product announcement brought the return of the Messiah (Steve Jobs) but not the band bigger than Jesus. Alas, the much hoped-for debut of the Beatles in the iTunes music store did not arrive, despite Yoko telling Sky News to the contrary.

The really big news today is a second coming of sorts. The new iPod Nano debuts a feature missing from all iPods so far: an FM radio! And not just any radio, but one with what Apple is calling “live-pause,” which is kind of like having a built-in mini TiVo for radio. Now, this isn’t quite a full-on PVR, in that the Nano doesn’t have the ability to schedule a recording. However you can pause the radio for up to fifteen minutes, or rewind back fifteen minutes. Seems like a feature aimed right at the mobile radio listener who might want to pause while taking a phone call, changing commuter trains or some other brief interruption. I can certainly recall many times when I was listening intently to the news or a talk show on my portable radio on public transport and had my sound drowned out by a loud noise or I needed to stop listening for a few seconds so I could hear an announcement. Being able to rewind a minute or so is a great boon for those annoying moments.

Not to look a gift-horse in the mouth, but it would be great if the pause and rewind would last for as long as you have memory left to store the audio stream. However, I’m sure the quarter-hour limit is there to keep “home taping” from taking a bite out of Apple’s lucrative Music Store business.

I think the radio in the iPod Nano was today’s biggest surprise since Jobs and other Apple spokespeople have scoffed at the idea in the past. Back in 2005, Apple’s iPod division head told the Apple Expo in Paris that,

in Apple’s experience, customers just don’t want radios on their iPods. “Believe it or not, we don’t get a lot of requests from customers” for a radio, he said. “We’re very hesitant to add new features unless we feel a significant portion of the customer base want it.”

It is true that Apple introduced the iPod radio remote back in 2006, although it seems no longer to be available. Perhaps it was killed in anticipation of the new radio Nano.

I’ll be curious to hear reviews and reports from radiophiles who get their hands on the new Nano and evaluate how good the reception is. A truly decent portable headphone radio is actually difficult to find. While $150 is a bit much to pay for one–especially one that only has FM–when combined with an 8 GB iPod and a video camera (!), it’s not a bad deal. I just wish Apple would have put the radio in my iPhone 3G, since listening to internet radio over the 3G data network kills my battery in about an hour. By comparison I have a ten-year-old RCA brand pocket radio that runs over 100 hours on two AAAs.

If we see radios with live-pause show up in the next generation iPhone or iPod Touch. Then we can anoint Mr. Jobs as St. Steve, savior of radio.

If you are looking for the bright spot in radio’s future, it’s streaming from a digital platform. The Radio Advertising Bureau’s report for this year’s second fiscal quarter makes this abundantly clear. Local and national over-the-air radio saw a 25% drop in revenue, while digital saw a ten percent boost. Digital radio’s revenue from advertising has grown from $180 million in 2007 to $298 million this year. And the Bureau projects continued growth to $908 million in 2013.

That’s in comparison to over-the-air radio, which lost almost a quarter of a billion in revenue in Q2. The Bureau’s analysis tries to put a brave spin on this, comparing that drop to Q1, when terrestrial truly and spectacularly tanked, revenue wise, declining by over half a billion bucks. “We are most likely past the Q1 low point for Radio revenues and are now on the rebound,” declared Jeff Haley, RAB’s President and CEO.

But the contrast between digital and terrestrial is pretty hard to ignore. “Digital will be an increasingly important sector as Radio continues to evolve into a cross-platform medium,” the report flatly notes. It’s unclear, however, to what degree terrestrial radio will participate in this cross platformness.

Abandoned in large part by the automobile industry, its most faithful remaining advertisers are now cheapo restaurants and fast food joints like Arbys, Dunkin Donuts, Romano’s Macaroni Grill, and Subway. “Even while they’re tightening their belts, Americans still want to reward themselves with a restaurant meal,” the report notes.

Coming in second to this slender reed are advertisers whose products will,  ironically, cause  consumers to listen to less terrestrial radio. AT&T and Verizon are pushing cell phone services hard on radio, RAB says, albeit less than in better times.  “Offsetting cutbacks by the two titans, a number of smaller carriers stepped up their spending to help buoy the category in Q2: Qwest Communications (+57%), Leap Wireless (+44%), Boost Mobile (+34%), US Cellular (+26%), and Metro PCS (+19%).”

All this, of course, will help terrestrial radio listeners discover apps like Slacker, Pandora, Last.fm, and who knows what else at an ever faster rate. It’s difficult to see how terrestrial radio is going to recover from this recession in any condition comparable to its recent past.

Cautious optimism abounds for the economic outlook, with the Federal Reserve predicting that the Great Recession is “leveling out.” Financial markets are improving, the Fed says. Household spending is “stabilizing.” Businesses are realigning inventory with sales. Thus “market forces will contribute to a gradual resumption of sustainable economic growth in a context of price stability.” Hooray!

But the prospects for  big radio continue to look pretty darned grim. Clear Channels’ second quarter report for this year is particularly gnarly. The company says that its revenue has dropped nearly a full twenty five percent from the same time last year. $692.1 million in the second quarter of 2009; 914.8 million in the second quarter of 2008.

The report also discloses that Clear Channel, recently acquired by Bain Capital, has slashed the operating expenses of its advertising company, Clear Channel Outdoor, by twenty percent.

Meanwhile Westwood One posted a revenue drop of 16.7% for the last quarter, which rather neatly translates into an actual loss of $16.7 million. “The decrease in revenue is primarily attributable to the current economic downturn and the continued decline in advertising spending,” the company notes. Network radio revenue fell by $7 million, aka 14.9%. “The decline was principally due to the decline in advertising spending in news, talk and sports programming, particularly from automotive advertisers.”

The press release continues:

The difficult economic environment continues to negatively impact revenue across the advertising industry in general including radio advertising. In early July 2009, Magna, the research and marketplace intelligence arm of Interpublic Group’s Mediabrands, released projections that concluded that the first half of 2009 will likely turn out to be the worst period of the recession for the advertising industry, with an 18% drop in overall advertising revenue versus the first half of 2008. In June, BIA Advisory Services, a subsidiary of BIA Financial Network, Inc., released 2009 radio projections, noting that “[t]he economy has affected the radio industry more this year than originally projected”, and predicting significant revenue declines in 2009 compared to 2008.

The question, of course, is whether this stark free fall is simply a result of the recession, or the decline of terrestrial radio in general. If it is both, does big over-the-air radio have any strategy for reclaiming its share of the media pie after the economic comeback?

I spend a lot of time exploring Internet radio stations. And while most of it is for fun, I’m definitely on a Diogenes/Morpheus-looking-for-Neo sort of mission. I’m searching for Internet radio that feels like real radio. What is “real radio?” you ask. It’s radio that feels like it is situated in some actual place and immediate time, with real people giving you information, playing music, and speaking to you in ways that make you relate to them and sense that you are part of something. That’s what real radio is, to me.

So far, I have not found much of that out in Internet radio-land. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy Slacker and Pandora. But they’re not radio. They’re juke box—basically very creative and effective dispensers of discrete individual songs. Beyond that, there is no sense of location. There are no DJs. Sure, there are methods by which members of the audience can communicate with each other, but no “station” to communicate with.

Bottom line: the radio part of Internet radio just isn’t there yet. Or at least I haven’t found it.

That having been said, I’m very much enjoying the new streaming site Future Perfect Radio, which is part of the AccuRadio group. Redesigned in January, the site describes itself as an “indie Internet radio station,” that is, a station that broadcasts the musics of indie labels. “Folk, dance-rock, twee-pop, post-rock . . . it’s all here,” the About page of the site declares. “Whatever your taste, you’ll find it on Future Perfect Radio.”

Here’s what I like about the site.

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