R Is For Reinvention

Radio as we know it was pronounced dead this week, or close to it. Again. This time, it happened right in my own neighborhood, over at the resort where a cup of coffee costs more than a reasonably equipped Hyundai, where the D8 All Things Digital conference was taking place. That's the one where Steve Jobs showed up being all Steve Jobs-y and resolute in his opinion that he knows more than you about what you want, which is very likely true, and the FCC Chairman talked broadband and everyone who IS anyone in the upper echelons of technology paid several thousand dollars a head to gather and congratulate themselves on being able to afford several thousand dollars to be there.

I don't have several thousand dollars to sit in a conference room listening to anyone, so I stayed away, but I did pay attention to what was going on, and, as I said, radio - the kind you get over the air, on a, you know, radio -- got a grim prognosis again, this time from one of our own, Vivian Schiller, the President and CEO of NPR, who said that your present garden variety broadcast signal is going to be dead and buried in five to ten years. Internet audio, she said, will replace terrestrial broadcast radio in that time. She seemed pretty sure of it, so sure that, she noted, NPR isn't calling itself "National Public Radio" anymore. None of that archaic, passe "radio" stuff for them. The "R" in NPR stands for nothing. NPR's the brand, and its future is as a "super network" to bring local, regional, and national news and programming producers and affiliates together. Radio, the medium, is beside the point. When she speaks about NPR's future, "radio" as we've defined it in the past isn't really the focus.

I think Schiller may be off on the time frame, but she's right in a critical sense: The delivery medium's not what matters for the future. It's what I've talked about here before. If you paid a lot of money for a license and equipment and tower lease and all that, you're probably not looking at blue skies from now on. it doesn't mean there won't be growth again, and it doesn't mean that for the immediate future (longer, I think, than Schiller's projection), terrestrial broadcast radio won't remain the primary audio delivery system for in-car use. With all the attention given to the growth of online listening, the mass audience still uses radio. There's still value left in that. But when streaming is common and easy in cars -- and assuming that mobile providers don't find a way, with pricing and usage caps (hello, AT&T), to make people hesitate to stream lest they go over their maximum -- the audience will be more fragmented, the ad market will be even more problematic, and the future for FM and, especially, AM will be... interesting. Yeah, let's call it interesting.

On the other hand, if you produce content, we're back to what we've discussed here many times before. The delivery system doesn't matter for you. What WILL matter is how to turn what you create into enough money to pay the mortgage. That'll come. In the meantime, there's still radio, there's podcasting, there's streaming, and there are more pipelines needing to be filled with material. On a creative level, there's a lot of opportunity. Will the economics support it? Maybe the people at the conference can answer that, but I don't think they can. I don't think anyone can, not yet. As for me, I'm hopeful we'll see ways to make money creating compelling audio content, whether it's advertising, subscriptions, sponsorship tie-ins, ancillary business and marketing, or something creative that we're not seeing quite yet. There's a demand for what you do, there's a market, and when the general economy starts to more aggressively grow... let's hope good things will happen.

The thing that's missing from all these conferences and all this deep thinking about the future, though, is exactly WHAT content will work for the next generation of delivery and content and listeners. And as for that... well, I think I'll hold that for another column. (Ah, yes, the art of the tease)

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Hey, what's going on at All Access News-Talk-Sports this week? Just the usual cavalcade of show material called Talk Topics, the column to consult when you want ideas for what to talk about. This week's entries include the woman who claims she was fired for being too attractive, how moose (mooses? Meece?) are overrunning Connecticut, how to get rich working on the subway, a really expensive iPad, the push to revive the Hartford Whalers (Bring Back "Brass Bonanza"!), how coffee allegedly DOESN'T really wake you up, the end of Mercury (the car company, not the planet), how Crocs saved a child's life, a buncha naked guys, some frat boys who got burned blowing stuff up real good, a fat kookaburra, and many more, including "real news," too, like the oil leak and the perfect game that wasn't and whatever else is going on.

You'll also want to check out a very interesting "10 Questions With..." KRMG/Tulsa Morning News host Joe Kelley, then peruse the rest of All Access with the news, resources, columns, forums, and features upon which you've come to rely, all free.

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And that's all for the week. At least this didn't cost thousands of dollars like that conference. Please refrain from the "you get what you pay for" comments.

Perry Michael Simon
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All Access News-Talk-Sports
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