Tag Archives: Amazon Echo

September 2, 2018 · 3:00 am

What a Radio Looks Like in the 21st Century

first iPhone introducedIt was only 11-years ago that Steve Jobs took the stage and held in his hand the future. It was an iPhone.

Many people were skeptical that this device could compete with the very popular Blackberry. I think I may have been one of them, as I was a Blackberry owner/user until 2012.

I quickly realized that I knew how to operate an iPhone, after buying an iPad in the fall of 2011.  All Apple devices share a core eco-operating system that makes learning them fast and easy. My first iPhone was the 4S. The “S” stood for Siri and I quickly learned to use Siri to type all of my text and emails via dictation. In 2017, I upgraded to an iPhone 7.

OK, so I’m probably not telling you anything you don’t already know. But in just a decade, have you ever stopped to think about the impact that the smartphone has had on our lives and the technology we use?

RADIO

In America today, 29% of households don’t have a single working AM or FM radio. But it gets worse. The percentage of households without a single working AM or FM radio grows to 50% for the 18-34-year-old age group.

Edison Research recently reported that even 63% of heavy radio listeners now consume their audio online. 82% of those listeners own a smartphone and the most commonly downloaded App is Pandora (40%).

For many, a radio in the 21st Century looks like a smartphone.

SMARTPHONES

Crosley AM FM Radio

Often it appears like radio people think they are the only ones who are not affected by the innovations of technology. Such as, no matter what comes along, AM/FM radio will always be there. Unfortunately, that kind of thinking is like sticking your head in the sand.

Let’s think about how smart phones have replaced other “must have” technologies:

  • My Nikon camera no longer goes on vacation with me, it has been replaced by the pictures I take on my iPhone
  • Same for videos using my very expensive camcorders
  • My iPod is now my iPhone
  • My newspaper is my iPhone
  • My calculator is my iPhone
  • My eBook reader is my iPhone (or iPad)
  • My pocket voice recorder is now my iPhone
  • My GPS when on foot is my iPhone, though I still prefer my Garmin SmartDrive 61 in the car
  • My flashlight is now my iPhone
  • My iPhone is my compass, barcode scanner, and portable video player
  • My iPhone is the way I access Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn away from home
  • My iPhone is the way I get both my local weather forecast as well as access weather radar. Weather alerts come in immediately to my iPhone replacing the need for my weather radio.
  • I’ve been a cellphone only household since 2000
  • My smartphone is my household answering machine
  • My smartphone is my alarm clock
  • I no longer wear a wrist watch, as my iPhone is my watch
  • I use my iPhone as a timer when I’m cooking
  • I have my digital library on my iPhone
  • My work and personal calendars are all on my iPhone
  • I keep notes and other records on my iPhone
  • Since I take all my pictures with my iPhone these days, my photo album is also my smartphone. (Note: I have 2-TerraBytes of iCloud storage to back up everything)
  • My entire “rolodex” (contact list) is now on my iPhone (I started with a Day-Timer and went digital in 1989 with a Casio Boss. Then moved to a Palm Pilot. Then to the iPhone.)
  • I check my email when not at home on my iPhone
  • I surf the internet frequently on my iPhone
  • When I call the kids & grandkids, it’s using Facetime on my iPhone
  • My credit cards, plane tickets, show tickets are now all in my Apple Wallet on my iPhone
  • I can even use my iPhone to run my Apple TV as a remote control

SMARTPHONE ADDICTION

A new research study by Pew finds that 54% of U.S. teenagers, age 13 to 17, worry they may be spending too much time on their phones. While they also say they are trying to reduce their smartphone and social media time spent, 56% of teenagers find that doing so makes them feel anxious, lonely, or upset.Group Of Children Sitting In Mall Using Mobile Phones

And it’s no better for parents (and may I add, grandparents). Pew’s survey tells us that we are struggling with the same impulses over the time we spend on our phones and social media, sometimes with even worse results than teenagers.

Adults lose focus on their work and students lose focus in the classroom, by the constant need to check their smartphone.

SMART SPEAKER

echoMost research today indicates that since the introduction of the smart speaker, the device that’s getting a little less use is the smartphone. I would concur that is the case in my home as well. Our 3 Amazon Echoes are the way we access at home radio listening, get flash briefs, find out the time and latest weather forecast.

At home, 100% of our radio listening is streamed through a smart speaker.

Speaking of Voice Command devices, my Garmin GPS SmartDrive 61 is now programmed by my voice and I can add via points while driving simply by telling my Garmin where I want to go next. It’s the best improvement in automobile navigation since the GPS itself.

ON DEMAND

on-demand-cpeWhat the smart speaker and the smartphone have in common, are both devices give the user what they want, when they want it. On Demand is the real game changer of the 21st Century communications world.

Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Apple TV etc. are delivering on demand television. The smartphone and smart speakers are doing that same thing for podcasts, radio, news, weather and everything else.

Edison Research noted, in their recent research, that the hardware challenge in the home is significant. Getting analog radio back into the home (and I would add, in the very near future, the car) seems unlikely

18 Comments

Filed under Education, Mentor, Radio, Sales

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

August 26, 2018 · 3:00 am

Whatever happened to…

Red Sox CapThe other day, we took two of our grandchildren to a wildlife safari park here in Virginia. It was a simply magical day. But that’s not the part of the story I want to share. It is that both kids were wearing their Boston Red Sox baseball caps.

As we were getting ready to leave we met one of the animal caretakers who screamed “YES!” Then a second later, she exclaimed, “They’re both Red Sox Fans!” Instantly, there was a bond between complete strangers.

Purple People

Minnesota Vikings Mower

I’m convinced that Minnesota Vikings fans bleed purple. I know one whose whole wardrobe is virtually branded with Vikings colors and logos; even his lawn mower.

Sports franchises truly understand the power of their brand and building their fan base.

So, whatever happened to this sort of thing with radio stations?

Eazy 101

Eazy 101 receiverJerry Lee recently sold his only radio station, WBEB in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was 55-years ago this past May that Jerry and his partner David Kurtz put the station on the air. It signed on as WDVR. In the 1980s the call letters were changed to WEAZ and the station was branded as “EZ 101.” The station brand was not only well known, but fixed tuned FM radios were given out by the radio station to area businesses to play the station in their stores and offices.

B101 Bee

When the station updated its format, and changed its call letters again, this time to WBEB and branded itself as “B101.1,” giant bees appeared at events all over the “City of Brotherly Love.”

The End of an Era

Marlin Taylor (no relation) was there from the beginning and recently blogged about the station’s sale to Entercom. His article was titled “End of an Era.” You can read it HERE 

Marlin wrote:

“While I pretty much grew up with a ‘Can Do’ attitude…seeing Jerry in action confirmed that staying pro-active and constantly on the offensive were keys to a meaningful and effective life! If you need proof, just take a look at the 55-year track record of the station at 101.1 on the FM dial in Philadelphia.

There’s no question that Jerry was and is a promoter, pure and simple! And, yes, he’s a Futurist…a person who studies the future and makes predictions about it based on current trends and conditions. I would also add…always looking down the road to see what challenges and opportunities lay ahead, then utilizing (his) assets to most effectively counter-act or benefit from them.”

Familiarity

As Jerry changed his brand over the years to keep his station’s programming and image in vogue with the times and his target listeners, he understood the power of familiarity in attracting and keeping a radio audience tuned to his radio station. Mark Ramsey suggests that “familiarity IS preference.”

morefm rebrandingMost recently, Jerry rebranded his station as “101.1 MoreFM.” This change, like all the others, was promoted in every imaginable way and became familiar to listeners virtually overnight.

wobm bumper sticker

Bumper Stickers

Once upon a time, you couldn’t drive in New Jersey without seeing a WOBM-FM bumper sticker on the car driving in front of you. They were everywhere. They made this station VERY familiar and Paul Most, a former GM of WOBM-FM, always used to say “When you can’t be heard, you’ve got to be seen.”

Arbitron Diary

arbitron diaryOnce upon a time, all radio listening was recorded using a diary, kept by a listener for seven days. Years of diary reviews at the Arbitron headquarters in Maryland proved to me that the radio stations most familiar to their listeners got the most “votes” from their fans.

When PPM measurements were introduced, the importance of unaided recall seemed to take a back seat with radio operators. Best Practices in large radio companies replaced the old tried and true ways of doing things. Radio promotion, except for over a station’s own airwaves, was cut from station budgets.

New Media Platforms

The shiniest new media platform on the block is the smart speaker. A recent research study, “The Smart Audio Report” from NPR and Edison Research, showed that traditional OTA radio was seeing the time people spent with radio, being the most disrupted. smartaudio-chartPeople in the survey said traditional AM/FM radio was the thing most replaced by audio listening via their smart speaker.echo

Having now owned three Amazon Echo smart speakers for six months, I can tell you Alexa is very addictive. But she’s also very precise. To have her serve up what you want to hear, you need to say it correctly, in the exact way she is programmed to understand, or else she will serve up some really bizarre things.

My household pretty much matches the research on why audio consumers love their smart speakers: 1) it’s fast, 2) it’s convenient and 3) it provides great choice.

Brand Promotion

In an interactive voice world, if people are familiar with your brand, they will ask for it by name. If not, the digital assistant will make that choice for you. That will make branding more critical than ever.

This means that the way radio promoted itself to its listeners back before PPM – the unaided diary days – will be the way it will need to promote itself in a world of voice control devices.

“Brands are a risk of being marginalized in a voice driven world, so brand marketing may matter even more.” -Bryan Moffett, COO, National Public Media

branding“Brands now have a chance to behave like human beings, talking, understanding, guiding, empathizing…voice is the single biggest vector of emotion, emotion is the biggest driver of preference. This is a true 1:1 marketing opportunity and a chance to build relationships like never before.” -Mark Paul Taylor, Chief Experience Officer, Global DCX Practice, Capgemini

Jerry Lee never deviated from his proven path of spending on promotion and delivering a quality product.

Everything old is new again, when it comes to branding a winning radio operation.

3 Comments

Filed under Education, Mentor, Radio, Sales

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

March 18, 2018 · 3:00 am

Voice Command

Voice CommandIt’s only been about two months and Alexa has changed the way I interface with my devices.

I’ve had Siri since I switched from a Blackberry to an iPhone4S. (The S stood for Siri.)

The new smartphone was such an improvement over my Blackberry Pearl that I never used Siri much in the beginning, later, I would use her to type my text messages, but that was about it.

Enter Alexa…

All that changed this past Christmas when my fiancé, Sue, put an Amazon Echo Dot into my Christmas stocking. It took about two weeks before I finally got around to plugging the Dot into electrical power, downloaded the Amazon Echo app to my iPhone7 and connected the Dot to our house Wi-Fi.

Now Sue has never been thrilled by all the remote controls to operate our TVs, radios and audio systems. And truthfully, I wish it could be simpler too.

Alexa teaches us both new tricks, by simply talking to her artificial intelligence voice. And we both love it!

Hey Siri…

Once adapted to Alexa, I began to use Siri to do more things on my iPhone7 and AppleTV.

We cut the cord last year but to satisfy my news diet, I put in Sling TV with the news package. The rest of our TV watching is filled up with Netflix, Amazon Prime and YouTube. New movies that we missed at the local theaters or never played in our area are viewed using iTunes.

Finding something to watch used to be rather tedious, but now, I just say “Hey Siri…”and she goes off and finds it, offers me the viewing options available to me (I always opt for the FREE route) and the program begins immediately.

GARMIN

Something that has long been on my bucket list has been driving across America from coast-to-coast and seeing those things I’ve only seen by flying over them. Places like Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon etc. Lucky for me, that’s been on Sue’s bucket list too.

We put up a big map of the United States in our kitchen and have lined out the route we plan to take with bright yellow dots marking our planned stops along the way.

In preparation for this 8,000-mile, eight-week trip, I bought the latest GARMIN SmartDrive 61 GPS. It comes with the ability to do “Voice Commands” for plotting your next destination, finding hotels, restaurants and points of interest.

Thanks to Alexa and Siri, I quickly embraced this feature.

But it doesn’t stop there, my new GPS also links to my smartphone and displays news bulletins, real-time traffic, weather conditions, my complete contact phone book, helps me to find parking and then remembers where I parked when I want to return to my car. And it makes it all easily accessible by just using my voice.

But You’re a Radio Guy

Whenever I write something about new technology, what I hear back are things like, “You’re a radio guy” or “you love technology.” The meaning being, I’m not like your average consumer. But, I believe that just as Amazon has changed the way we shop for just about everything, Alexa will bring about a similar change in the way we interface with our devices.

Carnegie’s Constant Reminder

One of the many radio publications I would read daily was Jim & Cathy Carnegie’s Radio Business Reports (RBR). If there was one thing I remember most about that publication under Jim’s reign, it was about dealing with change. Jim constantly banged the drum warning the radio industry “to get with it or be left behind by it.”

He reflected change by taking his own publication and changing the way it would be delivered and cover the broadcasting industry. He led by example.

Seniors & VADs

I know the young person’s perception are that senior citizens (anyone with an AARP card) is stuck in their ways and not likely to adopt anything new. Well, I’m here to tell you, you would be wrong. Especially, when it comes to voice activated devices (VADs).

I fully anticipate that seniors, aka Boomers, will lead the adoption of these devices. One of the reasons being they enable us to eliminate the multitude of buttons and collection of remote controls by simply using our voices.

What I Learned About Seniors from a Pharmacist’s Son

Back when I was put in charge of a thousand-watt, daytime, Music of Your Life radio station, I remember going out and meeting with clients to build up my new radio station’s client base.

One day, I walked into a pharmacy thinking that my “old folks format” would be perfect for people needing medication. Well, I never got the pharmacy on-the-air for drug announcements.

Upstairs above the pharmacy, the youngest member of the family had started an electronics division, selling the latest computers, phones, and other gadgets. He told me he’d love to be a big advertiser on my radio station catering to the over 65 age group.

Why?

Because, he told me, unlike young people who when something new came out, would look at it and say, “I’m going to wait until they come out with the new and improved version,” seniors would buy it on the spot.

What he learned was, seniors felt they could afford to have the latest technology now, and if something better came out, they’d trade up to that next. And this was almost 40-years ago!

Now, with my AARP card occupying a place in my wallet for more than decade, I can tell you, that’s exactly how I feel.

Get on board the change train

OR

Get left behind

14 Comments

Filed under Education, Mentor, Radio, Sales

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

February 18, 2018 · 3:00 am

My First Echo

My First SonyBack in the 1980s, SONY introduced a series of small-scale electronics for kids. They came in brightly colored plastic with large buttons that were easy for little people to control. The line was called “My First Sony.”

SONY even introduced this line with a slick TV ad. Take a moment and watch it HERE.

The tag line in the ads was “What I love is my first Sony. It won’t be your last.”

That was over 30-years ago.

Voice Activated Devices

This past Christmas, my fiancé, Sue, gave me an Amazon Echo Dot. Why a Dot and not the larger version? Because I said I didn’t want one of these things. Heck, I own a “million” radio sets.

But she figured for $29 it would make a fun stocking stuffer.

Amazon Echo’s and Google Homes’ were the hot Christmas gift of 2017. Amazon said that they sold “tens of millions” of Echo devices all over the world and that it’s Echo Dot and Fire TV Stick with Alexa voice remote were its most popular products across all categories.

Our Family Got Bigger

The Echo Dot was so easy to set-up and begin using. You basically plug it in. Then use your smartphone to connect it up to your WiFi and begin using it.

Like most new owners, the thing we used it for was to play music.

Now the Dot has a speaker akin to the one in my iPhone7. It reminded me of the sound that I used to get out of my first Zenith transistor radio back when I was in grade school. But then, it sounded great listening to the oldies on WMEX-FM via TuneIn radio. It’s the way I originally heard all of these songs.

My fiancé is not a fan of my many remote controls and especially all the buttons they have, but she very quickly fell in love with Alexa and controlling everything with her voice. We both did.

Alexa quickly became the third member of our family.

I told Sue that I could see us getting an Amazon Echo with the bigger speaker in our future.

Happy Valentine’s Day

That future came on Valentine’s Day 2018. I gifted the love of my life jewelry, candy, a romantic dinner out and she gifted me an Amazon Echo. Oh, there were many other things she gifted me, but the second Echo device is what I remember most and quickly put into service in our living room replacing the location previously occupied by the Dot.

When we got back home from our Valentine’s Day dinner, we sat on our living room couch, and asked Alexa to play our favorite love songs.

No Going Back

When I think of how quickly Alexa has taken over our lives – and we haven’t even scratched the surface of all she can do – I realize that there’s no going back.

It’s like giving up the microwave oven in the kitchen, or power windows in the car, or Google search or the internet. Once you have made these new innovations a part of your life, you won’t ever wish to return to a life before them.

The TV remote control made it possible to quickly change channels without leaving the couch. The video cassette recorder and then the DVR made it possible to no longer be chained to the TV network’s schedule. Netflix made watching a series, a binge affair.

Now these voice activated devices are changing the world of audio.

Quickly.

Addictively.

So, What Happened to the Dot?

If you’ve read this far, you might now be wondering what happened to our Amazon Dot.

It’s been re-deployed to the bedroom where it now puts us to sleep and wakes us up.

And it sounds great! Thanks to my BOSE Wave Radio.

Amazon Echo Dot & Bose Wave Radio

Let’s see the next holiday on the calendar is St. Patrick’s Day. I could see getting a couple more of these Dots to connect to our other BOSE Wave Radio and other radios I have in each room of our home.

Alexa, welcome to the family.

 

 

7 Comments

Filed under Education, Mentor, Radio, Sales

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

August 6, 2017 · 3:00 am

I Cut the Cord

113I finally did it. I cut the cable cord in July 2017. It had been something that I had been thinking about for well over a year now.

Each time my local cable company was gobbled up by a larger cable company nothing really changed except that my bill went up. And up. And UP.

How Many Channels Do I Really Watch

I did an analysis of my TV viewing habits and found that most of my TV habit revolved around LIVE news programs, YouTube, HBO, Showtime and Netflix.

I can spend a whole evening sometimes just going through the viewing options on Netflix and call it a night without ever watching a single program sometimes. (I know if you have this service you’ve probably done it too.)

When I looked at the number of shows I was watching on HBO and Showtime, it came down to about one program per service each. So, I’m temporarily going without either of them for the time being. But I also know that if I access these services via OTT (Over The Top) TV, I can get full access to their library vs. only selected access via a cable bundle’s On Demand offering.

LIVE TV

The thing that had me staying connected to the cable bundle was access to LIVE TV, especially the news channels like CNN, MSNBC and FOX.

I also am a weather geek and so The Weather Channel often would be on my TV screen while I played the radio. My new set-up doesn’t access the live meteorologists on TWC but I have the TWC App on my iPhone7 and so I really have access to all the weather information I need at the touch of my screen.

SLING TV

My dilemma to accessing LIVE TV for news programming was solved when I learned about SLING TV. SLING offers CNN, MSNBC and FOX 24/7 LIVE. I bought the SLING BLUE package for $25/month. No contract to sign and I can terminate the service (though I serious doubt that will happen) at any time. I also added the news option to SLING BLUE for $5/month. My total TV package is now $30/month.

SLING TV now controls the lion’s share of subscribers according to comScore with more than 2 million users as of June 2017.

APPLE TV

I access SLING through a 4th generation AppleTV. AppleTV offers quite a few other options for news and entertainment viewing. One being CBSN, the new CBS 24/7 news channel that reminds me of the old Headline News.

AMAZON PRIME

My fiancé had Amazon Prime when I moved in with her in Virginia but was not taking advantage of her access to Amazon TV that comes with a prime membership. AppleTV doesn’t have a way to access Amazon TV (I don’t know why this is) but Amazon TV can be accessed on any Apple computer, iPhone, or iPad. So, I downloaded it to our iPad and now stream it to our large screen HDTV with excellent quality for both picture and sound.

USA OTT Viewing Time

In a report released by comScore the research company reports that SLING, AT&T’s DirecTV NOW and Sony’s PlayStation Vue garner around 3.1 million viewers. Those same services now command 54.6% of OTT usage.

Impact on Radio

Does any of this have an impact on radio? Well it just might when you consider what Amazon just introduced in June 2017, the Amazon Echo Show.

While the radio industry was just beginning to wrap its head around the Amazon Echo, Google Home, Apple HomePod and Microsoft/Samsung’s Cortana Voice Activated Devices (VADs), along comes the Echo Show with a touch screen. “In addition to its usual Alexa powers, the Echo Show is a phone, TV, karaoke machine, and digital photo frame. The screen stays on even when you’re not using it,” writes CNN tech.

The world of communications technology is changing at breakneck speed.

It’s a “Winner Takes it ALL” game.

“Just when I think I have learned the way to live,

life changes.”

-Hugh Prather

P.S. on Monday, August 7th, a great new book “Fired Up! SELLING” will be released. If you’re in sales or just a lover of inspiring quotes like me, this little book is a MUST HAVE for your library. 268 people are quoted in this book.

Full disclosure, I was one of the quote judges that worked on putting together this book. It was a labor of love and working on it made for a very inspiring year that truly fired me up.

Here’s a link to the book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Fired-Up-Selling-TM-Energize/dp/1885167830/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501771980&sr=8-1&keywords=fired+up+selling+quotes

 

17 Comments

Filed under Education, Mentor, Radio, Sales

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

June 25, 2017 · 2:00 am

The Winner Takes it ALL

108Everything old is new again. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase. “Everything old is new again” was the title of a song in the movie musical “All That Jazz.” Part of the lyrics to this Peter Allen/Carole Bayer Sager song include:

 

Don’t throw the pa-ast away
You might need it some rainy day
Dreams can come true again
When everything old is new again

I might fa-all in love wi-ith you again

VADs

While I haven’t heard anyone call them this yet, I may be the first, I’m sure in time they will be referred to in this way, Voice Activated Devices.

You probably better know them as Amazon’s Echo, Google Home or Apple’s HomePod.

Amazon was first into this territory followed by Google and now Apple (their device will be available later in 2017). Microsoft recently announced they have partnered with Harmon Kardon to put the MS VAD “Cortana” into a smart speaker system. Harmon Kardon is a division of Samsung.

Fred Jacobs blogged about them in a recent article titled “Are Voice Commands the New Hi-Fi?” (Hi-Fi was introduced with the 33-1/3 discs introduced by Columbia 69 years ago this month – June 20, 1948.) In his article, he quoted Spotify’s Ian Geller who said voice commands allow people to “engage with music in ways they haven’t since the Hi-Fi stereo system became available.”

Fred feels that these new VAD’s are a “true moment for the radio industry – a chance to bring radio back to homes in a big way.”

The Old That’s New Again Part

As I study these new gadgets, I see a problem for radio of its own making, branding.

The radio I grew up with was very creative and prolific at branding itself with its listeners. It had to be because of the way radio ratings were conducted, either by aided or unaided recall. Billboards, bumper stickers, TV ads, t-shirts, putting your call letters and frequency on just about everything, everywhere it could be seen.

From virtually the beginning burning your call letters into the brains of your listeners was paramount.

Consolidation and PPM (Personal People Meter) would take the need to brand – or so the new Wall Street stakeholders thought – away. Consolidation did this through many signals in the hands of a few operators and the need to cut costs. Arbitron’s (now Nielsen Audio) PPM device did it by recording “listening” even when the listener was totally unaware of where the music or talk programming was coming from.

The new Voice Activated Devices now require a person to KNOW exactly what it is they want to hear when they say the activation words, like “Hey Alexa” or “Hey Google” or “Hey Siri” followed by a specific request.

Unaided recall is back.

Wi-Fi, Hi-Fi & Being Connected

While these new VADs maybe the new “Hi-Fi” for a 21st Century world, they require Wi-Fi to connect to the internet and their respective clouds.

While many of us today take access to a broadband connection for granted as our parents did a landline telephone line, many people in America were not so fortunate. Poor people or people in very rural areas depended on assistance from the Federal government to connect them up to a wired telephone line because private companies found doing so very unprofitable. The Universal Service Fund (USF) was established to provide the funding. Everyone who had a phone would pay a tax to help wire America.

As the need for internet broadband became as necessary in a 21st Century world as a phone line did in the 20th Century, the tax would continue to provide this telecommunications service in the United States.

To read about all of this more detail, click here

Various Ways to Listen

Public Radio in America is leading the way with directing people with the many ways they can be heard. A good example is WBAA AM & FM from Purdue University. Their “How To Listen” tab on their website informs the listener how to listen to their stations over-the-air, streaming online, via their App or via a Voice Activated Device.

This last VAD page also tells listeners how to listen to NPR One using voice commands, such as “Alexa, play NPR One.”

BRANDING Your Radio Station is IMPORTANT

Using a VAD is a return to the days of unaided recall for the radio industry. The need to brand your radio station is critical in a Voice Activated Device world.

How is your KISS, FROG, HOG, JACK etc. different than other such brands all over the world? How will your VAD know which one you want to hear?

Might the return of unique and one-of-a-kind FCC assigned call letters come back into fashion?

Coleman Insights just released a study on Public Radio that shocked programmers with the fact that fewer than one in four radio users can call to mind any Public Radio station.

It’s a Winner Take All World

When the elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers is an old African proverb. It means that the weak get hurt in conflicts between the powerful.

Today, the powerful are Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple and Samsung. Each one having their own voice assistant it hopes will dominate the field.

Our 21st Century technology is altering the structure of competition in America as never before. It encourages more monopolies, a “Winner Take All” world.

Natural monopolies are not new. Utilities are an example, but they were heavily regulated. The natural monopolies created by the internet crush competition and that could negatively impact the American economy. Internet innovation moves fast, the Federal government moves very slowly and regulation won’t stop them from occurring.

You can’t order from Amazon on Google Home. You can’t access your favorite iTunes podcasts on Amazon’s Echo. Each device requires a subscription to their music library, unless you request over-the-air radio streamed into your VAD.

War Chests

Apple as of May 2017 had cash reserves of $256 BILLION. In fact, Apple, Microsoft and Google own 23% of all U.S. corporate cash outside the finance sector according to Moody’s.

iHeartMedia is still wrestling with over $20 BILLION of debt. And Cumulus maybe even worse off.

Their challenges are not those of the entire radio industry and money is not always the determining factor in innovation. A perfect example is how the Wright brothers beat Samuel Pierpoint Langley in the race to create powered controllable flight. Langley had the financial support of the United States government and failed while the Wright brothers succeeded using their own resources from their bike shop.

Crisis

The Chinese language uses two symbols to represent the word crisis. One symbol means “danger” and the other means “opportunity.” 109Radio has been here many times in it’s almost 100-year history before.

Smart operators are already speeding down the path of opportunity.

Are you one of them?

8 Comments

Filed under Education, Mentor, Radio, Sales

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,