"New Technology Is Already Replacing Radio"

By Jerry Del Colliano

My longtime friend Dan Mason, the CBS Radio President who is leading
the dramatic turnaround of the company made a statement the other day
about technology and radio.

Dan reportedly told his new media road show in New York that "$1
billion in ad dollars were telling you that the iPod or satellite
radio will lead to the death of radio. That's a myth. To say that an
iPod or satellite radio, with little or no human connection, will ever
replace radio is absurd." (from PaidContent.org).

Well, maybe not satellite radio, but iPods have already changed the
dynamic for radio. Just ask a young person who is not listening to a
Walkman and is listening to an iPod. Not radio. But an MP3 player.

CBS is moving in the direction of trying to get radio into new
technology. It revealed a new media player that will feature several
radio stations at once including Internet brands. They've jumped into
the personalized radio business with Last.FM. Have a deal with AOL.
Their own individual station streams and so on.

My experience with the next generation does not bode well for any
strategy that proliferates traditional radio onto new delivery
systems.

The next generation doesn't like radio.

Not the stations. Not the concept. There's simply less need for it in
their lives.

New technologies will not only replace radio among the next
generation, they already have. And this generation is huge -- with as
many Gen Y'ers as there are baby boomers.

I agree with Dan that the idea that new technologies will replace
radio is -- to use his word -- "absurd" if you're talking about older
Gen X'ers and baby boomers. This group loves radio and will appreciate
receiving something they already like on their computers or mobile
devices.

But that's as far as you can go.

Without the next generation the radio business will continue to hit
the wall. Once the present economic downturn ends -- still a long way
off -- there won't be enough new young listeners to help radio
continue to grow. It becomes a losing proposition. More radio
listeners die and fewer new radio listeners use traditional radio.

The next generation wants to stop, start, time-delay and delete its
programming.

This generation wants to mash it up -- have a say in what it sounds
like or how it is used.

They want to deliver it to each other -- share it -- at will.

They want community (what we used to call local radio) through social
networking online.

One of the hardest things for me to deal with in my years of working
with the next generation is that they don't like radio and don't
understand what I like about it.

When I describe it, they say what I am describing is not what they
hear on the radio.

We're an industry in denial that technology has changed the game. But
only radio people have the power to adapt and create new content for a
new generation and on the devices they use.

But to begin, we have to understand that more has changed than how to
deliver radio programming.

It's not about the technology.

It's the sociology.

http://insidemusicmedia.blogspot.com...replacing.html

Hey, Eduardo - dah ya think HD Radio will save terrestrial radio?