Radio Survivor

Ever since radio lost its prominence to television as America’s number one form of entertainment, it has been in the background of American life. The primary place where many people listen to radio has been in their cars on the open road. The audience for traditional AM/FM forms of radio is shrinking, but the market for personalized Internet radio services such as Pandora radio continues to grow. Drivers have sought to bring Internet radio with them on the road since mobile smartphones such as the iPhone, Blackberry or Android phones started offering mobile Internet radio applications.

The problem is how to do this. Launching the radio apps on phones and then connecting them to a car stereo’s auxiliary port has so far been the only way to take Internet radio to its fullest potential. But this creates further distractions for the driver and can contribute to driver error and traffic accidents. This week the Ford Motor Company announced their solution to this dilemma.

A new upgrade to its SYNC systems named AppLink will natively and wirelessly use radio applications such as Pandora or Stitcher radio from smartphones, allowing the driver to use these applications hands free. After Ford rolls out the new software update later this year, all SYNC enabled vehicles will be able to use AppLink. The system works by syncing smartphones to Ford’s SYNC systems and then the user navigates Pandora or Stitcher using voice commands. (more…)

Ofcom's latest poll on how Britons get their weather news

The latest poll taken by the United Kingdom’s Office of Communications (Ofcom) indicates that almost as many Britons get their updates about weather and travel conditions from websites as from TV and radio. 43 percent identify the web as their favorite source in response to the question: “How have you been getting your weather/travel information during the  recent snow.”

Meanwhile 26% percent clicked “National TV/radio” while 19% clicked “Local radio.” So it’s 43% web versus 45% radio and TV.

Makes sense, of course. You get a lot more detail and data from one of those local traffic/weather sites than you do from the occasional radio update. Still I like listening to the latter more than I do looking at the former.

The Ofcom poll is obviously directed towards the moment, with heavy weather warnings in London, Wales, the West Midlands, and southern England. 50 schools in Gloucestershire closed on Wednesday.

The rest of the  respondents say they get their weather intel from smart phone apps (7%), Twitter (4%), and phone information lines (1%).

As described in their pitch video, NowPlaying.fm will soon offer a new music service integrated within the popular social site, Twitter. In yet another move to push audiences towards specialized Internet streaming, the service will allow users to listen to specific songs online, tweeted by them or their friends.

Within Twitter, topics are emphasized by users and tracked through the use of a number sign (#) in front of a single word phrase. These are called hash tags. For example, #threewordsforyou and #spacejams were the second and third most popular trends on Twitter on December 23, 2009, right behind #nowplaying, the popular term used to indicate what twitterers are listening to. Nowplaying.fm will allow users to search for a song title and artist name on their website. The website will then create a tweet formatted with #nowplaying, the song title and artist, and a bit.ly link to a page where users can listen to that specific song, adding a new dynamic to the popular tag.

While Pandora has been a major player in Internet radio, NowPlaying.fm allows users to do something fairly new. I wonder, though, if it will be legally compromising. With the main difference between Pandora and NowPlaying.fm being the latter’s ability to play specifically requested songs, the issue of copyright infringement might arise, depending on how the service’s database is structured. Sites such as Pandora and Lala have had to wheel and deal with record companies since their inceptions to be able to stream copyright music for free online. With the NowPlaying.fm service though, it is unclear which database the bit.ly link within the tweet will take users. (more…)

Wow. A childhood musical hero has died. My Twitter, Facebook, and email accounts have been buzzing with the news of Michael Jackson’s death today and my Generation X agemates are understandably freaked out. As MTV said this afternoon, he was the “soundtrack for a generation.” Many of us remember spending hours of our childhood watching music videos in the 1980s and Michael Jackson’s were particularly iconic. Hearing songs of his from a particular era will always fill me with nostalgia for junior high roller skating parties.

So, I suppose, many of us will now remember when we heard of Michael Jackson’s death, where we were, and how we heard about it. I found out on email (how retro!) from a fellow college radio DJ. Our radio station’s staff email list is actually the place where I’ve gotten the first word about many music-related deaths.

From the posts I’ve seen on Facebook, it would seem that many people heard about the news via that social networking site. And, I wouldn’t be surprised if Twitter has functioned the same way today (after all, it’s the new college radio!).

But what about radio? Did any of you find out about Michael Jackson’s death today on your local radio station? On your college radio station?

In the days to come, radio will be the place where fans might congregate to celebrate Michael Jackson’s life in song. If you have special programming planned, post it here. Also, I’d love to collect stories about how people heard about his death and if radio played a role in spreading the word.

I’ve got to go now and settle in for MTV’s Michael Jackson tribute tonight at 9pm EST to memorialize the King of Pop.

When I was a kid in the 1970s my parents would try to pry me away from the television, warning me that it was going to “rot my brain.” Yet, my dad also admitted to me that his parents made the same pronouncements to him about the dangers of listening to too much radio. Each generation seems to fear the latest technology and it’s almost cliched when parents demonize TV, video games, the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, and texting, when in fact these are all just new ways to communicate the same old stories, news, and entertainment.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how Twitter and Facebook are the new “radio” for the younger generation. It’s almost hard to believe that way back when we got our breaking news from the radio because today radio is often overlooked as a news source.

WHRC Studio 1987

A few weeks ago I was at my college reunion and revisited the campus radio station WHRC. During my visit I talked to a lot of people about the station and the role that it played on campus in the 1980s. Everyone had bits and pieces of nostalgia to pass along, but what really amazed me was that several people had distinct memories of first hearing about the Challenger disaster in 1986 while listening to WHRC. At the time the campus-only station was piped in to the dining center and, in fact, the main WHRC audience was during meal times. So all of the people who I talked to were probably eating lunch in the dining center when they heard the news together about this tragedy.

Similarly, when Kurt Cobain died in 1994 (another defining tragic moment for my generation), the first people to mention it around my office had heard the news over the radio. However, this was also the first time that I remember hearing that the Internet was actually breaking news, as it was buzzing over word of Cobain’s death. This was during the early days of the Internet (I’m not even sure if we had email at my office yet), when those participating in online communities like The Well were trailblazing true hipster geeks. I’m pretty sure it was my friend’s sister who worked at Wired (a hip magazine about technology? Crazy!) who was getting some of these early reports on Cobain and passing the news along to those of us in technologically-deprived offices. (more…)

This past Saturday I attended the Chicago Media Future Conference, which was an unofficial follow-up to the Chicago Journalism Town Hall held in February. Both events intended to address the current perceived crisis in journalism as evidenced with the closure of papers, reporters getting laid off and a sharp decline in ad revenue. One attendee I spoke with characterized the proceedings as “journalism group therapy.”

The Town Hall revealed some tensions between the new and old media camps, with most of the bad feelings on the old media side. The somewhat less well attended Media Future Conference didn’t dwell on this divide, focusing primarily on the online world, including dead tree and television online internet initiatives.

Entirely missing from this weekend’s conference was any mention of radio by any of the panelists or audience. To be fair, I didn’t stand up to speak, and so share some part of the blame for the oversight. What’s even more notable about the omission is that many folks who work for Chicago Public Radio were present in the audience, if not on the panels.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised. Radio went through the big journalism purge nearly a decade ago as the consolidation-frenzy spurred by the 1996 Telecom Act sank in. Indeed it was nearly nine years ago when Chicago went from having two commercial all-news radio stations to just one. WMAQ at 670 AM signed off on August 1, 2000 to become all-sports station WSCR, leaving just 780 AM WBBM holding the all-news mantle. Only recently have newspapers really started to catch up with the carnage.

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