Tag Archives: FM Radio

May 28, 2023 · 3:00 am

What’s Wrong With The Clock?

This past week the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), along with owners and operators of AM radio stations, were all taking bows when the Ford Motor Company reversed its decision to remove AM radio from ALL of its vehicles in 2024.

I don’t mean to rain on AM radio’s parade but something just doesn’t feel right about this quick change of heart. Let’s review the last five weeks.

April 1, 2023

News broke in the Detroit Free Press that Ford Motor Company planned to stop putting AM radio in both new gas-powered vehicles as well as electric vehicles beginning in 2024.

This sounded like it was an April Fool’s joke. However, Ford executives explained that “a majority of U.S. AM stations, as well as a number of countries and automakers globally, are modernizing radio by offering internet streaming through mobile apps, FM, digital and satellite radio options.” Ford said they planned to offer all of these alternatives for their vehicle owners so they could continue to hear their favorite AM radio station stations.

The Push-back

Alex Siciliano, senior vice president for communication at the NAB quickly responded to the news by saying, “we are certain that Ford does not want to alienate the nearly 48 million Americans who listen to AM radio, and we’ll continue to work closely with the Alliance for Automotive Innovation and individual manufacturers to keep this important service in cars.”

The NAB was joined by Massachusetts Senator Edward Markey and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Nathan Simington in urging automakers to keep AM radio in all vehicles, whether they be gas-powered or electric.

Then seven former administrators of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) wrote a letter to the Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, about how the removal of AM radio from cars will represent a grave threat to future local, state, and federal disaster response and relief efforts.

Ford Is Not The First OEM Who Thinks AM is Past Its Use-By Date

Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) around the world are always looking towards the future, building cars and trucks equipped with what demands will be three to five years from now.

BMW, Mazda, Polestar, Rivian, Telsa, Volkswagen and Volvo have all removed AM radio from their electric vehicles.

FM vs AM Listening

AM (Amplitude Modulation) radio was invented the early 1900s. FM (Frequency Modulation) radio was invented in the 1930s. The shift in listening from AM to FM started in the early 1960s and by the late 70s, FM radio listenership eclipsed AM.

In June 2015, I wrote on this blog about AM Radio & Streaming Radio. I completed a 3,000 mile road trip consisting of listening to AM radio for the first 1,500 miles, and streaming radio the second 1,500 miles. I wrote:

Small signal AM radio stations primarily identify themselves with their FM translator dial position (How’s that saving AM radio?). The “pups” are mostly syndicated, automated, religious, sports or Spanish. They aren’t very engaging, which is probably a good thing if you’re driving usually because you don’t care when you lose the signal. Oh, and just try to hear their translator FM signal; forgetaboutit.

The 50,000 watt signals on AM, like WOWO in Ft Wayne, Indiana, WJR in Detroit, Michigan, WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio and KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania are in another universe when it comes to radio programming.

While listening to WOWO, I heard a powerful morning show that was fun, engaging and tuned into the Ft Wayne area. WJR told me about Frankenmuth, Michigan while their midday show was broadcasting live from this unique resort town on the great lakes. WLW was talking about how the Cincinnati police were getting body cameras and how they were loaning them to the news folks in Cincinnati to wear and learn how they work. It was fascinating radio. And KDKA was a potpourri of information about all things Pittsburgh; thoroughly engaging and very enjoyable.

I rode each of these big signal radio stations for hundreds of miles and enjoyed listening to them every minute. Each was different, unique, fun, engaging LIVE and LOCAL.

The observation I made was that maybe the AM band should be reserved for these high power AM signals that have the bench strength to do great radio.

On my drive home I decided to see how easy it is to listen to streaming radio. Here’s what I wrote about that experience six years ago:

The day of my 15-hour drive home allowed me to listen to a streaming radio station through my iPhone4S, fed into my car’s audio system with no dropout, no buffering, and no disruption of any kind. The audio fidelity beats anything coming out of AM or FM terrestrial radio, and even SiriusXM.

On day two of my drive, I again streamed the Radio Tunes’ Smooth Jazz channel knowing that Jimi King and Stephanie Sales would be hosting a LIVE 3-hour Smooth Jazz show (they do this every Sunday). This turns Radio Tunes into a real live radio station, and I will admit that I love the channel mainly because of all the things it doesn’t do the other 165 hours a week. However, for three of the 7-hours of my second day’s drive, the companionship was really nice.

Again, I experienced no disruption to my listening as I proceeded from Maryland and through the state of West Virginia and into Kentucky. I carried Radio Tunes all the way into Lexington, Kentucky where I stopped to have some lunch.

While eating lunch it occurred to me how well my reception to streaming radio through my smartphone was. It offers excellent fidelity, no dropout, buffering or other disruptions.

Ford Decides to Keep AM Radio on All Its Vehicles

On May 23, just about five weeks after announcing that Ford would remove AM radio on all its vehicles in 2024, it reversed course and said it would not only continue to offer AM on both its gas-powered lineup but also its electric powered fleet as well.

That was an incredibly fast change of heart, but what really left people scratching their heads was that Ford also said it would restore AM radio to other Ford vehicles, via a software update, that never had AM radio in them to begin with.

About that clock…

I titled this blog article “What’s Wrong With The Clock?” and here’s why, Herb Cohen was called the world’s best negotiator and he wrote a New York Times bestseller called “You Can Negotiate Anything.” At a conference, I remember hearing Herb speak about his book and telling the story about a couple buying a grandfather clock.

As I remember it, Herb said this couple always wanted to own a grandfather clock but they were too expensive, until one day they found a grandfather clock in a store priced at $1,000. The couple had not seen a grandfather clock priced that low before and were planning to buy it at that price, when the husband thought he’d try and see if he could negotiate the price down a little. So, he said to the merchant behind the counter, “I will give you $500 for that grandfather clock.” The merchant quickly responded with “SOLD!”

The couple then wondered, what was wrong with the clock.

Negotiation is a process, that involves some back and forth, however when the process, as in the clock story, gets short-circuited, it’s human nature to wonder about your victory. That’s how I feel about the Ford reversal decision.

Moral Victory

What AM broadcasters have won in their battle with the Ford Motor Company is a moral victory. AM radio listening is in decline and there’s nothing in the cards that will change that.

If you say that someone has won a moral victory,

you mean that although they have officially lost

a contest or dispute,

they have succeeded in showing they are right about something.

-Collins Dictionary

Color me skeptical, but I sense that Ford has decided that with every AM radio station in America working to obtain an FM translator and then identifying ALL of their programming with their FM dial position, AM radio will put themselves out of business.

It’s not a beachhead Ford wishes to defend.

I also wonder how listenable AM radio will be in vehicles that don’t have the antenna systems and electrical shielding to insure good reception.

“It is much better to lose a battle and win the war

than to win a battle and lose the war.

Resolve to keep your eyes on the big ball.

-David J. Schwartz, The Magic of Thinking Big

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May 21, 2023 · 3:00 am

Radio’s Disappearing Act

Is AM radio disappearing from new cars the issue the radio industry should be focused on?

I think not and here’s why I say that.

WBZ 1030AM

I grew up listening to WBZ AM out of Boston on my daily college commute in Western Massachusetts. Carl DeSuze, Dave Maynard, Larry Justice, Mean Joe Green in the BZ Copter with Boston traffic reports and Gary LaPierre with the news. It was truly “The Spirit of New England.”

So, when Sue and I were headed to Boston for the graduation of our son-in-law from Berklee College of Music, I put on WBZ as we left our hotel in Spring Valley, New York, and we listened to this station on our three hour drive into Boston, we didn’t listen to it on 1030AM, but via its stream on the StreamS application (App). The station, which is now an all-news operation, sounded fabulous.

The fidelity was of higher quality than FM and there was no buffering or dropout of the signal.

Once in Boston, I tried listening to WBZ over my car’s AM radio and the quality was poor, with noise and interference emanating from our surroundings.

What Does a Radio Look Like?

Back in June of 2017, I wrote a blog article asking what a radio looks like today and the most likely answer to that question was a smartphone. I also addressed in that article of six years ago, I was noticing that hotels were replacing those cheap AM/FM radios with charging stations containing a digital clock, perfect for charging smartphones, tablets and laptops.

Car Radios & The Future

Then in September of 2020, I wrote about how radios first came to be an option for buyers of new cars in June of 1930. But today’s new car buyer wants Bluetooth capabilities more than they want an FM radio; AM radio is not a must-have in 2023 according to the latest Jacob’s Media Techsurvey. What do people connect in the car with that Bluetooth, their smartphones.

What I Recently Witnessed About Radio Use

After COVID began to fade, Sue and I took a trip out to the west coast to visit our children and grand children in that part of the country. What we noticed in every hotel room we stayed was a giant flat screen TV, but no radios, just more of those charging stations with digital clocks.

This prompted another article that same year titled, “Is Radio Up Schitt’s Creek?” Sue and I became big fans of this series out of Canada, that takes place in a fictional town called “Schitt’s Creek,” and takes place primarily in The Rosebud Motel, where the shows characters use televisions, computers and smartphones, but never use a radio.

When watching movies and TV shows, I often look to see if there’s a radio in sight, noticing in British productions they often are, but not in American ones.

Once It Was Radio

When Sue and I stayed in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania we visited the museum inside the Hotel Bethlehem and found that fifty years ago, a hotel having a radio in your room was cutting edge.

The Hotel Bethlehem opened in 1922, two years after the birth of commercial radio in the United States and in 1953, it announced that patrons would enjoy a brand new AM alarm clock radio in every room.

Now seventy years later, Hotel Bethlehem features fiber optic WiFi.

Where Are the Radios?

Last year, Sue and I took a road trip through Atlantic Canada. We stayed in hotels and Bed & Breakfasts (B&Bs) throughout our trip, and found WiFi has totally replaced the AM/FM clock radios.

In Montreal, our room at the Hôtel William Gray, had a Bang & Olufsen (B&O) Bluetooth speaker that easily connected to my iPhone. The fidelity of B&O equipment is legendary and it was a joy to be able to connect any of audio Apps on my phone during our stay.

Radio Set Ownership in the Home

In American homes today, 39% don’t have a single radio set in them, and radio set ownership gets worse for young Americans age 12 to 34, where that number grows to 57% according to Edison Research.

To put this into perspective, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), says only 6% of the population still lacks access to fixed broadband service at threshold speeds. Meaning, the internet is more accessible than broadcast radio.

Are Broadcasters in Denial?

Valerie Geller, who wrote the excellent book “Beyond Powerful Radio,” recently said

“You can sit down with a broadcaster who rails against podcasting and digital audio and artificial intelligence (AI). Then you get in the car with them, they’re using GPS, they’re listening to a podcast, they’ve got SiriusXM, they’ve got Spotify. Podcasting and radio co-exist now. That’s our truth.

Radio is its own worst enemy. We have not spent or invested in developing talent. Every other business has research and development (R&D) and they spend on it because they are investing in the future. I love radio, but I hate the state it’s in.

A lot of the voice-tracking I’ve heard already sounds like AI. There’s nothing human about it. It’s just a broadcaster playing an actor playing a broadcaster. AI is just as good as those voice-tracks because there’s nothing real being said.”

AM Radio Leaving the Dashboard

Automobile manufacturers removing AM radio from the dashboard ought to be alerting the radio industry to BIGGER PROBLEMS. The AM situation is a symptom of what we should be focused on, and that’s creating GREAT RADIO.

If you think it won’t happen to FM next, you haven’t been paying attention.

AM/FM radio sets are vanishing from hotels, B&Bs, American homes and big box retailers.

If your listeners aren’t up in arms about that, then losing AM radio in their dashboard won’t be a big deal to them either.

To paraphrase the great sales trainer Don Beverage:

Make your radio station so valuable to a listener,

that they want to hear your programming more

than you want to broadcast it to them.

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May 7, 2023 · 3:00 am

Where People Today Get Their Music Fix

As a boy, if I wanted to hear music, there were two choices: AM Radio & a phonograph player. Seven decades later, I can’t count the number of choices I have to listen to music, but most of them have something to do with the internet.

More than 64% of individuals primarily choose to play music

over the internet.

– International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI)

Growth In The Recorded Music Market

The IFPI Global Music Report discovered that the recorded music market grew globally by 9.0% in 2022, driven primarily by paid subscription streaming.

Subscription audio streaming grew by 10.3%.

And yes, Sue and I are among the folks who pay for streaming music subscriptions. Why do we pay to hear our music streamed? Well, for one thing, the musical genres we enjoy can no longer be heard on over-the-air (OTA) broadcast radio. Paying a small fee eliminates annoying content while allowing access to an infinite music library.

CD 101.9 FM – Smooth Jazz

What originally sent me to the internet to find a music streaming station was when WQCD, better known as Smooth Jazz CD 101.9, ceased programming this genre of music.

From August 22, 1988 until February 5, 2008, this radio station had been the greater New York City metro’s place to relax; till it wasn’t.

In fact, the smooth jazz format has basically vanished from broadcast radio in the United States but thrives quite well on the internet. My favorite streaming stations for this genre are curated by Radio Tunes. 

Broadcast Radio’s Challenge

While broadcasters are getting themselves all in a lather about “saving AM radio” and whether or not AI (Artificial Intelligence) can replace live personalities, maybe what the radio industry should be focused on is where people are getting their music in a 21st Century World. This graph really tells the story of today’s music consumer.

64% play their music over the internet.

17% listen to music on the radio.

Smooth Jazz CD 101.9 Returns

If you pine to hear Smooth Jazz CD 101.9, it’s back, but only as a streaming radio station. You can listen here: https://smoothjazzcd1019.com/ or you can just say “Alexa, play Smooth Jazz CD 101 9” like I do, when I stream music from the internet.

Music is personal and the internet allows all of us the ability to hear what we want, when we want to hear it. Knowing this, broadcast radio – now more than ever – needs engaging personalities that make an emotional connection with listeners beyond the music they play.

 “Without music, life would be a mistake.”

-Friedrich Nietzsche

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April 23, 2023 · 3:00 am

What Is That?

One of my granddaughters, who’s 8 years old, was at our home the other evening, before heading off to dance class, when she looked into my curio grandfather clock and exclaimed, “What is that?” I walked over to her to see what she was pointing at, and saw it was one of my miniature radios. I said to my granddaughter, it’s a radio, to which she replied, “What’s a radio?”

What’s a Radio?

We’ve all probably seen the YouTube videos of young people trying to figure out what a rotary telephone is and how to use it, along with having a good chuckle along the way. But, if you’re a lifelong radio person, like me, having your granddaughter ask you what a radio is, can be rather disconcerting.

My grandkids are all connected to audio sources via their iPads, smartphones and smart speakers. The only place they may even be familiar with a radio is when they ride with their parents in the car.

Saving AM Radio

Last week’s blog was another in a series about the state of AM radio in America and if it could be saved. You can read that article HERE

As the latest monthly radio audience ratings get released, I can’t help but notice how most markets have one big AM radio station – maybe – that’s still a dominant force. In our nation’s capital, there is none.

Recently, seven former heads of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) said “AM radio serves as a linchpin of the infrastructure behind the federal National Public Warning System, which provides emergency-alert and warning information from FEMA to the public during natural disasters and extreme weather events.” Which made me wonder if our nation’s capital is in severe peril, as AM radio listening is virtually non-existent.

However, fear not, as I’m sure that no one in Washington, DC doesn’t know that WTOP News Radio at 103.5 FM is fully staffed and ready to provide that emergency information 24/7.

AM Radio Formats

The real problem, it seems to me, is that people confuse the AM and FM broadcast bands with a particular format. The reality today is, both commercial broadcast bands are filled with music and news/talk/sports formats. What has been different, for many years now, is more people listen to FM radio stations than they do AM stations; and by a wide margin, with most of that listening taking place in people’s cars and trucks.

Car Radio Listening

Research presented this past week at the NAB Show in Las Vegas says 46% of radio listening by people over the age of 13 only takes place in the car; a number that jumps to 58% for teenagers, according to Edison Research.

The U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics says that most people’s car trips are only three miles or less, so they aren’t listening for any length of time.

When asked what they listen to on long car trips, streaming jumped to 68% and broadcast radio fell to 32%.

Today’s Youth & Car Ownership

If radio’s last beachhead is a vehicle dashboard, the future for the next generation and car ownership should also be concerning.

It was only about two decades ago that 80% of American youth (18 year olds) had a driver’s license; today that number has fallen to just 60%. Here’s some of the reasons for the drop:

  • Lyft and Uber take them anywhere they want to go
  • Cost of getting a driver’s license
  • Cost of owning a car
  • Fewer teenagers have jobs compared to past decades
  • Having a car is no longer a “virtual necessity” (which the Supreme Court enshrined in law in 1977 for anyone living in America)

What Do Today’s Youth Do?

Today’s youth have their faces buried in apps and social media. It’s all about Instagram and Snapchat, YouTube and video games.

When you can easily access everything you want, from home on your digital devices, it’s easy to understand why teenagers today have little interest in getting a driver’s license and owning a car.

Digital interaction has replaced real social interaction for today’s youth.

And that’s another fly in the ointment of future radio listening by the next generation.

In my youth, there was nothing greater than putting down the top on my convertible, cranking up the radio and driving off to explore the world in my own car.

“On some nights, I still believe that a car

with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles

if you have the right music very loud on the radio.”


-Hunter S. Thompson

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April 16, 2023 · 3:00 am

Saving AM Radio

The radio trades have been full of headlines about saving AM radio, especially in the dashboard of America’s cars and trucks. Here’s some of the most recent ones I’ve seen:

NAB launches campaign for AM radio

State Broadcasters Group Ask AM Stations for Help

Can The Industry and Congress Keep AM Radio in the Dashboard?

Detroit Newspaper Looks at Loss of AM Radio in New Ford Vehicles

The National Alliance of State Broadcasters Associations (NASBA) even put out an online survey “to more accurately craft the AM broadcaster owner’s message and to develop actionable items to keep AM [radio] in the dash.”

Let me tell you why everything I’ve read in the broadcasting newsletters, magazines and websites seems to be focused 180-degrees in the wrong direction.

What Features Do New Car Buyers Want?

Keeping AM or FM radio in vehicle dashboards has nothing to do with what broadcasters want, it has everything to do with what car buyers want. The lists from various sources I’ve found are all pretty much the same, though ranking positions may vary a little from publication to publication.  Here is what car buyers want:

  1. Proximity Key – a key fob that allows you to unlock (and lock) your vehicle’s doors and start it without having a physical key in your hand
  2. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto – smartphone connectivity is as important as a steering wheel to today’s car buyers*
  3. USB Outlets – lots of places to charge or run tablets, laptops and other electronic equipment
  4. Blind-Spot Monitoring and Rear-Cross-Traffic Alert – to keep you informed of what’s going on around your car while you’re driving
  5. Adaptive Cruise Control – systems that adjust your car’s speed while maintaining a safe distance from the vehicle in front of you.
  6. Surround-View Camera Suite – this puts the backup camera on steroids and allows a driver to see a 360-degree view of everything around their vehicle
  7. Wireless Smartphone Charging – a place you can put your cellphone to charge while you’re driving
  8. Rain-Sensing Windshield Wipers – a step-up from intermittent wipers, these blades automatically adjust to the amount of road spray or rainfall coming at you to keep your windshield clean
  9. Automatic High Beams – No need to raise and lower your headlight power manually, these systems do it automatically for you, so you always have the most light your vehicle is capable of producing shining on the road in front of you
  10. Heated, Ventilated Seats and a Heated Steering Wheel

What you don’t find on any of these lists are people asking for a radio, let alone an AM radio to be in their next vehicle.

What Features Do New Car Buyers Feel They Can Skip?

It surprised me to find that ‘Navigation’ topped lists, but then when Sue & I rented a car a couple of years ago, I learned that rental cars no longer offer a navigation system option. What they do offer is Apple CarPlay and Android Audio that automatically connects to your smartphone and displays the navigation software you enjoy using to the car’s video screen. (And yes, that arrangement worked for us perfectly, while driving cross-country.)

So, let’s look at the features car buyers don’t mind not having:

  1. Navigation
  2. Premium Audio System – most feel the hefty costs to upgrade the standard audio system the car comes with is not worth the money
  3. Onboard WiFi Hotspot – like Satellite Radio (which most new car buyers are also OK with skipping) WiFi Hotspots require a monthly subscription fee and are deemed not worth the added expense

Your Baby’s Ugly

The real problem the radio industry has is that it lives in a reality distortion field that has it thinking it’s still 1960s/70s. In other words, it needs to put on a pair of headphones and hear it for what it is.

John Frost’s most recent Frost Advisory email, told the story of a small AM radio station that broadcast a financial talk show that he occasionally tunes into hear. John says “it’s terrible radio, but the guys are really smart, they cough a lot, have lots of room noise and give insightful advice.”

On Good Friday, the show was a repeat of Thursday’s show and so what the listener heard on Friday were invitations to call in (which they could not because the show wasn’t live), announcements that Friday’s show would be a repeat of Thursdays show (but this was Friday) and commentary about the current day’s stock market prices (the market was closed on Good Friday) and nothing is more meaningless than yesterday’s stock prices.

Sadly, this kind of thing isn’t an isolated incident, but standard operating procedure on both AM and FM radio stations across America.

No one wants to hear their baby is ugly,

but for today’s radio industry, that’s the truth.

What Should Be The Focus of the Radio Industry

What keeps running through my mind is,

if the radio industry spent as much time, money and effort on producing a great product on AM radio stations across America, might their radio listeners be leading the charge with the auto industry to keep AM radio in the dashboard?

Let’s look at what fans make happen when a favorite TV show gets cancelled. The first television program to be saved by its fans was Star Trek in 1968. The franchise began in 1966 and 57 years later, it is still going strong.

More recently, fans of the FOX series Friday Night Lights organized a Facebook group with online petitions to show the network their support for this show, having it continue for five seasons despite its less than stellar audience ratings.

In both cases, it was not a television network that tried to convince an audience to watch a program, it was the audience that convinced a network NOT to cancel a program. That’s how it’s suppose to work.

AM radio isn’t coming back, so what the radio industry should instead be focused on is making FM radio the best that it can be and insuring that it won’t suffer the same fate befalling AM radio.

To win in today’s media marketplace, you must have a product that listeners want to hear;

today’s audio consumer has an infinite number of choices available.

When it comes to what new car buyers want in their next vehicle, broadcast radio is not on their list of wants, needs or desires.

That’s a real wake-up call,

if there ever was one.

*On April 1, 2023, General Motors plans to phase out widely used Apple (AAPL) CarPlay and Android Auto technologies that allow drivers to bypass a vehicle’s infotainment system, shifting instead to built-in infotainment systems developed with Google (GOOG) for future electric vehicles. It made me wonder if this was an April Fools prank, but apparently GM is that tone death. 

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May 15, 2022 · 3:00 am

Radio’s Leaking Listeners

The results of Techsurvey 2022* was presented in a webinar this week and two things about the latest data and the trend lines of the last five years struck me.

“We have met the enemy and it is us.”

-Pogo

Walt Kelly coined that phrase in a poster he made for an anti-pollution poster for the first Earth Day in 1970. He would later repeat it in a comic strip he created for the second Earth Day in 1971.

Sadly, the similarities between what needs to be done to preserve our planet and the radio industry are striking. We all know what the answer is, but aren’t applying the solution.

Personalities

Jacobs pointed out that “over the past four surveys, broadcast radio personalities have stayed ahead of the music as a key attribute of the medium.”

Yet, the big radio owners have done more to eliminate the very advantage broadcast radio has over its many audio competitors. Worse, our industry has no plan to create a farm team of new broadcasters that will replace personalities that are retiring or have retired.

Instead radio has tried to compete in areas where, at best, it’s a distant second; like music discovery.

Besides Personalities Radio’s Positives are Under Attack

Radio, we are told is easiest to listen to in the car. Unfortunately, when a person buys a new car, they learn SiriusXM is just as easy to access. Plus now everything on their smartphone easily connects to their dashboard. In fact, Fred Jacobs points out that in Techsurvey 2022 the feature most wanted in a new car is Bluetooth (76%) followed by an FM radio (70%) and having a smartphone connector or auxiliary input (57%).

My first blog article of 2022 told how even with older cars, like our 2009 Honda and 2006 Subaru how easy it was to make them connected cars. You can read that article here. https://dicktaylorblog.com/2022/01/09/why-i-stream-all-my-radio-listening/

It doesn’t take a Mensa to realize that this is another hole in the radio listening bucket.

Radio is “free,” with the tradeoff being forced to listened to very long commercial breaks, which radio listeners say is the thing they most dislike about listening to broadcast radio.

Radio’s covenant with its listeners was, you give us your attention to our advertisers, and we will entertain and inform you. Sadly, radio owners kept adding more commercials to each hour while eliminating the very programming elements that attracted listeners.

There’s nothing wrong with advertising, that is when it is in balance with programming content sought by the user. Podcasts understand this and enjoy increasing listening with advertisers seeing a positive benefit from sponsoring them.

Trends

No one called Paul Revere’s warning that the British were coming as being negative, and neither should anyone who cares about the radio broadcasting industry call those who are trying to promote positive change, “negative.”

Techsurvey 2022 should be a wake-up call to radio people with trends that show eight in ten people that can now connect a smartphone in their cars. Those who own a car with a “connected system” now spend the majority of the in-car time with digital audio or SiriusXM.

The car is the last beachhead that broadcast radio has left, and it is under Sirius attack.

SiriusXM

Techsurvey 2022, like all the surveys that have been done before, use as their database, fans of radio broadcasting. They are the core of our industry and so when we see these folks leaving us for other forms of media, it’s like seeing the canary in the coal mine lying on the floor of its cage.

One of the reasons given by people who still listen to broadcast radio, as to why they continue to listen is, it’s become a habit. When a person buys a new connected car and gets SiriusXM to listen to for free, what is happening is that a new habit is being formed. Not only do they now have access to a myriad of content options, but often their favorite radio personality might be rediscovered hosting one of the music channels.

During the pandemic, SiriusXM removed the paywall for their App as well as listening on a smart speaker, both of which had been available for an extra charge. What Fred Jacobs showed on his webinar was how this positively impacted listening at home, at work and other places for the satellite provider. The habit of listening to SiriusXM was now something that could be done everywhere, and that should keep any radio broadcaster awake at night.

The tipping point is that magic moment

when an idea, trend, or social behavior

crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.

-Malcolm Gladwell

I fear we are at the tipping point.

*Watch the full presentation of Fred Jacobs webinar on Techsurvey 2022 here: https://jacobsmedia.com/techsurvey-2022-results/  

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January 23, 2022 · 3:00 am

What Do Seniors Want?

Seniors born in the 1950s and 1960s, known as “Baby Boomers,” created a tsunami of change in the world of marketing and communications. Now, the generation that coined the phrase “Don’t trust anyone over 30” is turning 70.

50th High School Reunion Re-imagined

In fact, my 50th high school reunion was to have been held in 2020, but due to COVID19 this was rescheduled to October 2022. The committee organizing this event decided to re-imagine our Golden Reunion Celebration and are now calling it “The Class of 1970 Turns 70.”

Boomers actually began crossing the 70 year old threshold in 2016 and will be growing the 70+ demographic population until the year 2034. Over the next ten years, our numbers will eclipse 55 million with a growth rate twice that of people aged 18-49.

Boomers Are Spenders

Currently the 70+ Boomers contribute $1.1 trillion in annual spending on consumer goods and services. According to AARP, we spend on pharmaceuticals, health insurance, medical supplies, AV equipment, food at home, personal care products, apparel, entertainment, household furnishings, and travel.

Since I retired in 2017, my wife Sue and I immediately set out to see more of this world. We took a Caribbean Cruise, three cross-county road trips driving over 25,000 miles and were planning to travel abroad until the advent of COVID19 brought things to a screeching halt.

Boomers grew up in the postwar era with a sense of promise and possibility. We believed if we could dream it, we could do it.

The Senior Mindset

When I was in my early years of radio sales, I sold advertising to a contemporary of mine that was working in his family’s pharmacy. His primary focus was on developing new revenue streams for growing the business.

He was the first person I ever knew that went to Las Vegas every January to the Consumer Electronics Show; now known simply as CES. Each year he would bring new and innovative electronic products into the store.

But that’s not the point of the story.

In my 20s, when I saw these new devices – often with some pretty hefty price tags attached to them – I would say, that’s pretty amazing, but I’ve read that next year the new model will be even better.

My friend would reply, “That’s the way we think, but people who are much older than us don’t see things that way.” He explained that their view of life was, if they wanted it, they bought it now. And if something better came along, they would make another purchase. They didn’t have time to wait around for the next big thing to come along.

Retirement is a Transition from Saver to Spender

Now that I’ve become one of those people who are “much older,” I understand that perspective. Baby Boomers are now at that point in their lives where they see more of their lives in the rearview mirror than out the front windshield.

People who are 70+ are free to pursue their passions and set new life goals for this next chapter of their lives. Products and services that compliment these things will be the ones who benefit from our spending.

I’m no longer thinking of how much I need to save in my IRA or contribute to my annuities, I’m now at that point in life where it’s time to begin withdrawing from the retirement assets I’ve accrued over my working life.

Are your products or services seeing me, hearing me, understanding my wants/needs/desires?

Time Spent With Ad-Supported Media Falls

The FCC reported at the start of this new year, the number of commercial FMs, AMs, and even LPFMs all decreased in 2021. While it came as no surprise to see the number of AM radio stations sign-off, the decrease in the number of commercial FMs should have been a real wake-up call for the radio industry.

Interestingly, non-commercial FM radio stations increased in number in 2021. Could it be they are serving up content that people want to hear?

53.4% of people’s time spent with media in the United States is with consumer-funded media, according PQ Media.

I started off this year of blogging with “Why I Stream ALL of My Radio Listening,” and in reviewing the latest data I find that our household is riding the wave of consumer-funded media for both television viewing and radio listening.

Media Post says

“While total consumer time spent with media is projected to continue to expand in both the United States and worldwide through 2025, ad-supported media’s share will continue to erode due to secular, not cyclical shifts in consumer usage of media – something other analysts and economists have been pointing out.”

You Can Save Time or You Can Save Money, BUT You Can’t Save Both Simultaneously

There’s an inverse relationship between time and money; you can spend one to save the other. In our youth, we feel like we have all the time in the world and so we focus on ways to save money. Later in life, we see how precious our time has become and so we will spend money to save time.

Long commercial breaks about things of little interest to us waste our time, so it should come as no surprise that seniors are willing to pay money to eliminate them.

People will give you their time when you offer them entertainment. People will give you their money when you offer them hope.

– Roy H. Williams

Consumer-funded media does just that. It gives us the wheat and eliminates the chaff.

The average person in America today is expected to live to almost 79 years old, that’s 28,835 days. When you turn 70, that means you see the future as 3,285 days left.

What do you think means more to a senior, another dollar in the bank or more efficient use of their time?

When people are asked on their deathbed what they wished they had more of, no one says “more money.”

Willie Sutton said he robbed banks because that’s where the money was. Today, media money is in the hands of the Baby Boomers, aka seniors.

How are you serving them with your media property?

Updated 1/23/2022: An earlier version incorrectly said “Willie Horton,” not “Willie Sutton.”

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January 9, 2022 · 3:00 am

Why I Stream ALL My Radio Listening

Twelve year ago, radio broadcast engineer Tom Ray, penned these words: “Unless we give Joe Consumer a reason to go out and purchase an HD Radio for his car – until he can obtain it easily and at a reasonable cost, and a device that works – I fear HD Radio is going to go the way of FM quad and AM stereo, relegated to the scrap pile of history.”

Tom Ray wrote his article for Radio World when he was the vice president/corporate director of engineering for Buckley Broadcasting/WOR Radio in New York City. He was a strong and vocal supporter of HD Radio and his WOR was one of the first AMs on the air with an HD Radio signal. So, any broadcaster that read Tom’s article, “HD Radio Shouldn’t Be This Hard,” should have taken it as a wake-up call about steps the radio industry needed to take to stay relevant in their listeners’ lives.

Buying a New Car in 2010

Tom is a loyal Ford customer, so when his Explorer went to the automobile graveyard with 230,000-miles on it, Tom wanted to get a new Ford Escape, equipped with HD Radio. The only problem was, Ford wasn’t putting HD Radios into their Escapes, instead, they were pushing Satellite Radio. (Tom noted that his wife listened only to Satellite Radio in her car, saying “in her opinion there is nothing worth listening to in New York’s Hudson Valley, 50 miles north of New York City.)

This should have been yet another radio industry wake-up call about its future.

I encourage you to click on the link and read what Tom Ray wrote a dozen years ago about how difficult it was to put an HD Radio into a new car which, at that time, didn’t offer OEM HD Radios and how he, as a broadcast engineer, was totally frustrated trying to install an aftermarket one.

Streaming Radio at Home

Since Christmas 2017, when my wife gave me my first Amazon Echo smart speaker, our Echo family has quickly grown to four of these devices. There is nowhere you can be in our home and not ask Alexa for something.

Since 2017, all of our in-home radio listening is via streaming.

While we also occasionally streamed radio in the car, on all of our road trips from 2018-2021, SiriusXM always seemed to be offering a 3-month free listening trial that I can honestly say we enjoyed the listening to. But, I’ve never been a subscriber, because other than road trips I spend very little time in the car.

Streaming Radio in the Car

In October, while enjoying my latest free 3-month trial for SiriusXM radio, I decided it was time to bring my in-house streaming radio habit into both of our cars. We own a 2006 Subaru Forester and a 2009 Honda Accord.

The Subaru doesn’t have an AUX input, the Honda does.

Streaming in the Subaru was accomplished with a Blue Tooth receiver that will broadcast on any FM frequency (88.1 works best). In the Honda, this same device’s output was plugged into an AUX receptacle.

The result is, as soon as either my wife or myself enters one of our cars, the Nulaxy KM18 immediately pairs with our iPhones. I installed the AINOPE Car Phone Holder Mount to hold our phones, and keep them easily assessible to control whatever we would like to listen to.

Total cost for each car: $33.43. Time to install, virtually nil. I just plugged the Nulaxy KM18 into a power port and it was operational. The AINIOPE holder easily clamps to an air vent on the dashboard and holds any smartphone.

Unlike the nightmare that Tom Ray experienced back in 2010 trying to put HD Radio into his car, this installation by me, a non-engineer, was a piece of cake.

A Call to Action

I recently sat in on a Radio World webinar called “A Call to Action, radio’s existential battle for the dash.” Paul McLane, Managing Director of Content/Editor in Chief of Radio World at Radio World/Future U.S., hosted the webinar and did an excellent job. However, one particular piece of information shared during the presentation that I thought was crucial was, how Mercedes Benz was equipping their vehicles’ radio screens with the following pre-sets: SiriusXM, FM, AM and TuneIn Radio.

TuneIn Radio is the App I use for most of my radio listening, but why was it chosen by Mercedes Benz? Turns out the answer is, “TuneIn’s radio stations can be accessed worldwide in 197 countries on more than 200 different platforms and devices.” TuneIn says it “provides the displaced radio listener a connection to home with local, national, and international stations anywhere they go and on any device.”

In other words, why would any audio consumer need DAB, DAB+, Digital Radio Mondiale, HD Radio, AM or FM when they can receive any radio station in crystal clear audio via streaming?

With the exception of the proprietary content offered by SiriusXM, everything else is available via streaming at no charge.

Cellular Plan

Now it goes without saying, that streaming consumes data. Each cellphone service provider offers different plans and different price rates. My wife and I are on Verizon’s unlimited phone/text/data plan. We have no landline phone in our home and our iPhones are our lifeline to being connected with each other, our family, our community and the world.

I’ve found streaming radio in our cars provides us with audio quality that is pristine. There’s no buffering or dropout, and it’s been a more reliable signal than AM, FM or SiriusXM radio, especially when traveling through tunnels.

Streaming Apps

I thought you might be interested in knowing what streaming Apps I have on my iPhone, here’s the current list:

  • TuneIn Pro
  • Audacy
  • Pandora
  • Spotify
  • Amazon Music
  • NPR ONE
  • YouTube
  • Simple Radio
  • StreamS
  • Apple Podcasts
  • AccuRadio
  • 650AM WSM
  • Stitcher

Why I Prefer Streaming My Radio

We live far enough away from Washington, D.C. that radio signals for WTOP or WETA experience lots of noise and dropout, depending atmospherics, sometimes making them totally unlistenable. However, their streams are always crystal clear.

This fall Sue and I escaped to Cape Cod for a week and when I get on the peninsula, I love turning on WFCC – Cape Cod’s Classical station – 107.5 FM. Now with streaming radio, I can dial up WFCC on my TuneIn radio App and listen when we’re back home in Virginia.

Full disclosure, I am the midday DJ on WMEX-FM in Rochester, NH. But even if I weren’t on the station, WMEX-FM would be my #1 pre-set for streaming. Gary James, the station’s morning man and program director, puts together a music mix that I find absolutely fabulous. It’s the music of my life.

Which brings me to another important point, radio today is global. No longer is your radio station competing just with other local stations, but radio that is streaming from anywhere on planet Earth.

Streaming also makes it possible for ON DEMAND spoken word radio, also known as Podcasts, to be easily available in the car.

Simington on Streaming

FCC commissioner Nathan Simington recently addressed Ohio broadcasters saying, “content delivery power had shifted away from broadcasters – stations and networks – and toward ‘online platforms,’ something he thinks the FCC needs to recognize in its quadrennial review of media ownership regs.”

He warned that:

  1. “Online media platforms are growing rapidly and threaten dominance over traditional media platforms; and
  2. Broadcast advertising revenue has flatlined, having been siphoned off from higher margin online platforms.”

The Future is Streaming

88% of the world’s population now uses mobile broadband as its main source of internet access, and nearly 90% of homes in the United States now have internet streaming. 2021 saw an estimated 22% ad industry growth rate, which Magna Global said was “the highest growth rate ever recorded” by this agency, beating a 12.5% growth rate recorded in the year 2000. The caveat however is, digital dominated traditional advertising raking in 64.4% of the growth in ad spending.

RAIN reports “The U.S. recorded music industry will exceed a 48-year revenue record set in 1999 (based on current estimates),” all coming from revenues paid by streaming music services.

The Harvard Business Review recently published “4 Principles to Guide Your Digital Transformation,” by Greg Satell, Andrea Kates and Todd McLees. In it, the authors wrote, “digital transformation is not just about technology. We’re desperately in need of a shift in focus. Leaders must inspire and empower their entire organization to boldly reimagine their work environment, customer needs, product offering, and even the purpose of the enterprise.”

Tom Ray was the proverbial “canary in the coal shaft” back in 2010, with few paying attention. Sadly, based on the early news coming out of the 2022 CES in Las Vegas, nothing has changed.

We’re living in a communications revolution,

bringing about changes that will be both

permanent and irreversible.

Revolutions never maintain or preserve the status quo.

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October 10, 2021 · 3:00 am

Oh, The Insanity

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) submission to the Federal Communications Commission for the FCC’s 2018 Quadrennial Regulatory Review is eye-opening.  You can read it for yourself HERE. It left me shaking my head.

The NAB told the commission that “’local radio stations’ Over-The-Air (OTA) ad revenues fell 44.9% in nominal terms ($17.6 billion to $9.7 billion) from 2005-2020.” Local 2020 digital advertising revenues by stations only increased the radio industry’s total ad revenues by $0.9 billion bringing them to $10.6 billion.

The NAB’s solution to the problem is for the radio industry to become more consolidated.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over

and expecting different results.

-Albert Einstein

Say What?

Back in the mid 90s, the radio industry was telling anyone who would listen that the problem with the state of radio broadcasting in America was that the industry was made up of little “ma and pa” radio stations/groups which could not scale and if the ownership caps weren’t lifted the radio industry would perish.

Excuse me, but I’ve already seen this movie and how it ends. So, why would doing more of what didn’t work, result in a different outcome.

The Media World Has Changed

I don’t think anyone would contest that the media world we live in has changed dramatically since 2005. Facebook, the world’s largest social media company with over 1.84 billion daily active users, opened its doors on February of 2004. YouTube began in 2005 and Twitter in 2006.

Google, the dominate search engine on the internet, began in 1998 and internet retailing behemoth, Amazon, began in 1994.

The new internet kids on the block that dominate our day are WhatsApp (2009), Pinterest (2009), Instagram (2010), Messenger (2011), SnapChat (2011) and TikTok (2016).

The Top 10 internet companies at the end of 2020 raked in 78.1% of the digital ad revenue ($109.2 billion).

All Ad Dollars Are Green

While we like to break money spent on advertising into distinct categories like digital media, traditional media etc. the reality is the total number of advertising dollars is a finite number and in the end you can’t tell a dollar from digital from a dollar from analog advertising.

“You can’t handle the truth!”

–Colonel Jessup

(played by Jack Nicholson in the 1992 film “A Few Good Men”)

Since 2005, many young entrepreneurs have created a better mousetrap to capture those advertising dollars. No one ever made a regulation or a law that prevented the radio industry from doing what any of those internet companies did. The passenger railroad industry never thought of themselves as being in the transportation business but only the railroad business. That’s why it found itself challenged by other means of people transportation, namely the airlines.

The radio advertising industry was born by entrepreneurs that learned how to create a product that attracted a large listening audience, which in turn enabled them to sell audio advertising to companies wishing to expose their product or service to these consumers.

Unfortunately, we found ourselves challenged by new media competition. Initially, it was television, but transistor portable radios, along with car radios, allowed our business to reinvent its programming and flourish once again.

With the advent of the internet, radio was caught flat-footed.

If that were its only problem.

Radio Stations (2005-2020)

In 2005, America had 18,420 radio signals on the air.

  • 13,660 AM/FM/FM Educational radio stations on the air
  • 3,995 FM translators & boosters
  • 675 Low Power FM stations.

By 2020, those numbers increased to 26,001 radio signals.

  • 15,445 AM/FM/FM Educational radio stations
  • 8,420 FM translators & boosters
  • 2,136 Lower Power FM stations

18,330 vs. 26,001

That’s a 41.8% increase in the number of radio stations.

While radio folks were busy trying to steal radio advertising from the station across the street or consolidating with their former competition, the internet folks were focused on selling more advertising. From 2005 to 2020, the sale of digital advertising grew from $12.5 billion to $139.8 billion. That’s an increase of 118.4%.

But during that same time, radio grew its digital advertising footprint by $0.9 billion.

Quantity vs. Quality

When radio regulation began in America under the Federal Radio Commission (FRC) the decision was made by that regulatory body to focus on the quality of radio programming versus the quantity of radio stations they allowed to broadcast. Only people or companies with the economic capital to operate a radio station in the “public interest, convenience and/or necessity” would be allowed to obtain a radio broadcast license.

I believe you could say that the radio industry’s downfall began when we ceased worrying about quality and went with the more signals we license, the better for radio listeners mantra.

Sydney, Australia

Sydney is a major city in the country of Australia with a population of 5.312 million people. There are 74 radio stations on the air in Sydney.

By comparison, Los Angeles (America’s second largest city) has a population of 3.984 million people and 158 radio stations serving its metro.

In July 2021, radio revenues in Sydney were up 11.3% year-on-year according to Milton Data.

The Benefits of Pruning

Gardeners know that pruning is the act of trimming leaves, branches and other dead matter from plants. It’s by pruning a plant that you improve its overall health.

A beautiful garden is one where the plants have been trained to grow properly, to improve in their health/quality, and even in some cases to restrict their growth. Pruning is a great preventative gardening and lawn care process that protects the environment and increases curb-appeal.

The irony of gardening is, the more fruit and flowers a plant produces, the smaller the yield becomes. Pruning encourages the production of larger fruits and blooms.

Why do I share this with you?

I believe that everything in the world is interconnected. You can’t for a moment think that what makes for a bountiful garden would not also make for a robust radio industry.

Today’s radio industry is so overgrown with signals and other air pollution, that it has impacted its health.

Doing more of the same, and expecting a different result is insane.

It’s time to get out the pruning shears.

Less Is More

I believe that the way to improve the radio industry in America, to have more advertising revenues to support quality local services including news, sports and emergency journalism, along with entertainment by talented live performers, is by reducing the number of radio signals.

AM radio is the logical first place to start.

Elsewhere in the world we are seeing that not only the AM band being sunset but the analog FM band as well. The world has gone digital.

American radio has one final chance to get it right by correcting for past decisions, hurtful to radio broadcasting, in creating a new and robust digital broadcasting service.

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July 25, 2021 · 3:00 am

HD Radio – The Answer to the Question No One Was Asking

I was reading about how HD Radio was celebrating its 15th birthday recently and that had me scratching my head as HD Radio is older than that. In checking the records, I saw that the Federal Communications Commission selected HD Radio as America’s digital standard in 2002. By comparison, Steve Jobs introduced Apple’s iPod in October 2001, XM Satellite Radio began service in 2001 and Sirius Satellite Radio in 2002.

Radios Go High-Definition

This was the headline that appeared in the Baltimore Sun on January 7, 2004. Unfortunately, unlike HDTV (High Definition Television) HD Radio never stood for “High Definition.” And possibly that was the first mistake. HD Radio was simply a name they chose for the digital radio technology, but even today, many people still think it means “High Definition” or “Hybrid Digital.”

Sadly, by 2004, America’s digital radio was late to the party and if the industry is now marking the date of 2006 as its moment of birth, it was really late!

Remembering 2006

In 2006, Facebook opened up its social network to everyone in the world. The original requirement that you be a college student enrolled at a specific university was eliminated and the only requirement now was that you were over the age of 13 and had a valid email address.

In just 15-years, Facebook has grown to over 2.85 billion active monthly users.

Let’s look at what else was born in 2006 that competes for our attention:

  • Twitter was launched in 2006 and today enjoys 199 million monetizable daily active users.
  • Wii game system was introduced with its handheld motion controller that got families off the couch and in motion doing all kinds of sports in front of the TV.
  • PlayStation 3 came online to provide strong competition to XBOX 360. (Video gamers spent about eight hours and 27 minutes each week playing games, which is an increase of 14% over 2020. The video gaming industry predicts revenues of $100.56 billion by 2024)
  • Google bought YouTube in 2006 and now has over 2 billion users, the channel grosses over $19.7 billion in revenue and users are uploading videos at the rate of 500 videos per minute with over a billion hours/day spent watching videos on the platform.
  • The one billionth song was purchased from Apple’s iTunes, the dominate source for music lovers in 2006. (Two years later Spotify would arrive and not only disrupt how music was sold but how it was listened to in general.)

When we look at 2006, it becomes easier to understand why HD Radio wasn’t such a big deal to the average media consumer.

Solving a Problem That Didn’t Exist

What HD Radio did for FM radio stations was solve a problem that listeners to FM didn’t feel existed. No one who listened to FM radio was complaining about the quality of the sound, they were complaining about other things, like too many commercials. And for AM radio stations, it meant people buying radios for a service that didn’t offer anything they really wanted to hear or couldn’t get elsewhere. AM radio was now the service of senior citizens who already owned AM radios, who grew up with AM radio’s characteristics and whose hearing was not the best now anyway. So, HD Radio for AM wasn’t anything they were asking for and worse, AM radio stations that put on the new digital signal found it lacked the benefits of skywave and often interfered with other company AM radio stations as the industry quickly consolidated radio ownership.

Industries Most Disrupted By Digital

In March 2016, an article published by Rhys Grossman in the Harvard Business Review listed “Media” as the most disrupted by the growing digital economy. Turns out, if you’re a business-to-consumer business, you’re first being most disrupted by digital. The barriers to be a media company used to be huge, but in a digital world they are not, meaning that the business model that media companies depend on has not adapted well to the digital economy.

Elephant in the Room

But the elephant in the room remains the broken media business model. Newspapers, magazines, radio, and television – any media that is ad supported – will be challenged to find a way to capture revenue to continue operating.

Walt Disney famously said “We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make movies.”

Broadcasters of my generation had that same attitude about creating great radio.

Do the people owning and operating today’s radio stations still embrace that concept?

* In 2021, it’s estimated there are 3.78 billion social media users worldwide.

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