Radio From Space!

Sources: sdradio.net, laradio.com, Orange County Register, NC Times, wires, etc.

Coming up this month: Radio to the power of X!

No, this is not a Spanish Inquisition of Mexican radio stations invading the United States.

Starting this month: a radio band from outer space is heading this way....right here....to San Diego!

Where is the X-powered radio coming from? A 26,000 mile geostationary broadcast antenna that can see the entire North American continent. Where does the X-powered radio go to? A small antenna to capture the subscription-based service!

Already, billboards and TV ads are publicizing the invatsion of Satellite Radio, courtesy of XM Radio. The ads featuring stars such as David Bowie. Oddly enough, the ads are also appearring on local radio, but you have to understand that one of the financial backers of the company happens to be Clear Channel Communications (8 percent), owner of some 1,200 radio stations across the states. XM Advertising Sales is represented Premiere Radio Networks, part of Clear Channel Communications.

XM's motto is: "It's beyond AM; it's beyond FM. Radio to the Power of X."

Sure, there are enough radio stations on the AM and FM bands to switch to and from on your car radio. Do they wish pay $9.99 a month for the priviledge to add some 100 more stations from the XM band to also switch to and from as well? Bruce Springsteen might have to retool the song about cable TV he did in 1987 "57 Channels and Nothing On" for radio "317 Channels and Nothing On", and for today's TV "2,763 Channels..."

The cities of San Diego and Dallas-Ft. Worth have been picked as the first test markets for high-tech car stereos that will pick up nationwide audio feeds with fewer commercials than regular radio.

San Diego was chosen because "there's a strong tendency for people in your area to be savvy about technology, there are fairly long commutes and a lot of loyal music fans," said XM spokesman Charles Robbins.

Why San Diego? "One, it has a high demographic reputation and enthusiasm for music, and second, the area historically has been quick to adopt new technologies," said Chance Patterson, vice president of corporate affairs, at XM's 150,000-square-foot facility in Washington, D.C.

XM plans to start its service Wednesday, Sept. 12, offering 100 channels, with 71 for music, and about 30 of them commercial-free, like HBO, and 29 for news, talk, sports and entertainment. There are five for country (including something called "progressive country"), 15 for rock and pop (including two just for Christian music), five for Latin music, four for classical, and 12 for news. The XM channel lineups and content are available at the company's Web site, http://www.xmradio.com

The suppliers of the programming come from many recognizable names: ABC Radio, CNN, USA Today, BBC Radio, Fox News, Radio Disney, MTV, Discovery, Weather Channel, C-SPAN, even KIIS-FM Los Angeles, owned by, you guessed it, Clear Channel! The XM channel listings include KISS-XM, based off of its Los Angeles station "KISS-FM", and Mix-XM, based on the Mix format that is heard on many CC stations across the country. That version of Mix was based more on a Mix format that was heard in San Diego until last year, not the better "renegade" Mix that was heard on Anaheim's 95.9 FM until last year.

The company reports that "XM's carefully constructed channel lineup is designed to satisfy every imaginable musical taste as well as introduce a stellar lineup of news, talk, sports and entertainment programming from the most popular and well-known media brand names today."

XM Radio has recruited more than 200 of the best radio people to create the XM sound according to an XM Radio spokesman. Among them: Rick Dees, who works for Clear Channel, a major XM investor.

"Local radio has a great history. But we are going to be national. We are going to congregate people who have similar music interests and have nowhere to go today," said Patterson.

The reception is supposed to be Crystal Bernard-clear and reach everywhere in the continental U.S.

The service is expected to expand in mid-October to the entire southwest part of the U.S.

One of two slated satellite services from the skies above, XM radio tells you that "It's a new audio experience on your radio dial with the unmatched clarity of all-digital sound from coast to coast. It's our passionate commitment to program quality that will give you more of the listening you enjoy most. And it's freedom - from static, from distortion, from that frustrating feeling when you drive out of range in the middle of an exclusive interview or a new song you've been waiting to hear."

How does it work? Let me show you. The programming all begins in the XM Radio studios in Washington, D.C., with relay points in Nashville, Tennessee, and Los Angeles. The signals from the 85 state-of-the-art-studios are beamed up with the two huge earth-station antennas to the broadcast satellites nicknamed "Rock" and "Roll" some 26,000 miles above Earth in a geostationary orbit, then are beamed back to Earth, completing a 52,000 mile journey through outer space!

The strategic positioning of the two satellites are designed to help cover each of the two halves of the entire contiguous U.S., spreading the 100 channels of satellite radio from coast to coast, as well as portions of Northern Mexico and Southern Candada. [XM service area is limited to the 48-states at the present time].

In addition, to help the downward satellite signals complete their journey to your XM car radio, some 1,100 repeaters are proposed to fill in the signal holes where the satellite signals cannot reach such as behind tall buildings and mountains. Some repeaters are in the San Diego area like many other cities planned later on.

What radio do you use? Well, you need a new radio that can get AM, FM, and XM, about the same size as your current car radio, priced at $199 and up to $499 depending on the features you want, and doesn't include the cost of their special antenna. If your radio is "XM Ready", then the equipment would cost some $200.

The initial systems will receive only XM feeds (as the first Sirrus systems will receive only Sirrus feeds). Later models will be able to receive signals from either XM or Sirrus as desired.

Alpine, Pioneer, Sony will sell the receivers. If you have Pioneer, all you need is a compatible black box installed in your trunk. If you don't have one of these models, you can buy a black box FM modulator which plays XM on a radio frequency not used in your area, similar to those old FM radio converter boxes that you plugged in between the car antenna and the AM car radio.

Sony's "plug and play" unit connects to your car stereo through a cassette deck. Sony's is the only device to also work in the home. It would connect to the auxiliary jack of your home stereo. A V-chip feature allows buyers to control access to adult channels.

Other financial backers of the company includes GM, and Honda.

XM Satellite Radio isn't alone. Another company, Sirius Satellite Radio, plans to offer a nearly identical service nationwide, starting in the late fall or winter. The Sirius service will cost $12.95 a month, but the 50 music stations will be commercial-free.

XM and its rival - Sirius Satellite Radio - are aiming their appeal at motorists who may not find on local radio what they really want to hear, i.e. adult standards, reggae, Tejano music or even comedy. But XM is out of the starting gate first, and starting Sept. 12, receivers will be available in the San Diego area in electronics stores, including Radio Shack, Circuit City, and Best Buy.

Satellite radio isn't the only threat to terrestrial broadcasting. MP3's on CDs can be played in newer MP3-capable car radios, some CDs storing about 10-30 hours of music. There's also mobile broadband Internet radio that lasted a year from Ricochet until it ceased operations, but it may come back in the future with a better plan, as well as unlimited streams of Internet radio to choose from.

The affluent can afford to say Bye Bye Bye to commercial radio and pay a monthly fee to hear a fresh programming mix directly from Satellite or to pop in a MP3-filled CD in some of the newer special MP3-playback car stereos, and those MP3's can store 10-30 hours of music depending on the sampling rate. Once radio loses those affluent listeners, then they would have to either adjust their mixes to bring back the XM listeners, or simply program for what's left of the radio audience that's mainly the poor and middle class, and advertisers are going to have a field day with these undesirable demographics while radio broadcasters will have some problems charging top dollar for their intended target audiences that have deserted broadcast for XM or MP3.

San Diego is a prime target for XM radio, as well as Los Angeles (XM Radio coming in 2002 or whenever). A lot of people commute on the freeways, spending a lot of time in the car listening to the radio or CDs or whatever (watching old Charger games on VHS?). XM Radio seems to have chosen a pretty good target, though Los Angeles has far more freeways and might have been a better place to roll out the XM Radio first.

Following are a ton of past articles that have been publised over the last two years for your reading convieience.

Messageboard Chatter: Satellite Radio in Your Car (July 1999)

By next year there should be 2 Satellite Radio Services up and running that will be alternatives for motorists to the advertiser-driven stale unimaginative formats presently available on the Radio Dial. Both CD RADIO http://www.cdradio.com, and XM RADIO http://www.xmradio.com, plan to have 100 channels that can be picked up from Coast to Coast.

Do you think that this is a technology whose time has come?

Stefan Daystrom:

Whether their time will come will depend at least as much on the programming they put up as on the technology itself.

The first wave of radio alternatives (now called DMX and MusicChoice) was much more hype than reality IMHO. It turned out to be not any form of radio at all but rather automated jukeboxes. A real radio station is more than a bunch of songs playing in a row. If all those newer satellite "radio" services turn out to be nothing more than more automated jukeboxes, I'll pass. If they find the most unique over-the-air stations of various types in the country or even the world and make them available to me live in my car, I'll sign up in an instant. If it's something in between, I'll have to see.

Anonymous:

If satellite radio has minimal or no chatter (read: NO DJs), and sounds like a jukebox, I'll definitely sign up.

If it ends up sounding like conventional radio (i.e. personalities trying to "entertain" the audience), I'll pass.

If I'm paying that much money, I am going to want to hear MUSIC, not people talking!

I sure as hell don't pay big bucks for CDs to hear someone talking over or in-between the music!

Stefan Daystrom:

re: If satellite radio has minimal or no chatter (read: NO DJs), and sounds like a jukebox, I'll definitely sign up.

No problem with that, except that if it's a jukebox, it's no more a radio if it's heard over the airwaves than if it's heard in a diner, is it?

My problem is not with somebody marketing automated jukeboxes (some of them are good, like some of DMX's specialty channels I've heard), I only have a problem somebody calling them "radio" and on the basis of having renamed them that saying they fullfill the exact same function as local radio stations. They don't. They have less in common with any radio station I've heard (except 830 KPLS last summer perhaps [vbg]) than with every jukebox I've ever heard.

re: I sure as hell don't pay big bucks for CDs to hear someone talking over or in-between the music!

I don't either. But CDs are CDs, and radio is radio. I consider them two completely different experiences. (I consider live concerts to be yet another completely different experience, even tho all are music.)

re: If it ends up sounding like conventional radio (i.e. personalities trying to "entertain" the audience), I'll pass.

In certain isolated places in the country, the personalities CHOOSE the records to play to create sets that FLOW, and then TELL YOU ABOUT the music they played. This to me is far superior to some computer shuffling tracks among a 500-CD player (which is how the typical automated jukebox works). Sure, except for an hour or two I don't hear that here in SoCal, but that's my point: There is far better, more intelligent, radio, in almost every format SOMEWHERE in the country (or at least somewhere in the world), and if I could have access to all those stations it would be a far far far better experience than radio here. That's why I'm not comparing automated jukeboxes to typical SoCal radio, I'm comparing them to the best radio anywhere.

And meanwhile, if all I'm going to get is a 500-CD changer for $$/month, why don't I just buy a 500-CD changer, stock it, stick it in my trunk, and be done with it? (If you want to hear lots of new music most radio doesn't play, the best stations in the country will expose you to more of that than most automated jukeboxes. If you just want to hear KRTH's 300 oldies without the patter, might as well just stock your own jukebox instead, and then you'll REALLY have all your favorite music forever and ever amen.)

XM Satellite Radio Update (Oct 1999)

Almost a century since the birth of radio broadcasting, the next generation of radio is on its way, bringing you the ability to listen to almost anything you can imagine whenever you want.

XM Satellite Radio will open a new world of audio entertainment, launching radio into the next millennium with as many as 100 brand-new radio channels of digital-quality music, news, talk, sports and children's programming from coast-to-coast. XM will transmit these channels from its studios directly to consumers nationwide via the two highest-powered commercial satellites ever produced. Imagine driving from New York to Los Angeles without ever losing a channel!

XM will transmit directly to car vehicles, homes and portable radios across the country that are XM ready. With an XM-capable radio and a small antenna, subscribers everywhere in the continental United States will be able to enjoy their favorite XM channels.

XM Satellite Radio announced in mid September, that it has opened an office in Detroit, MI, (motor city) to support its quickly expanding relationships with automotive manufacturers, including General Motors.

George Lynch will be the Director of OEM Sales (original equipment manufacturer), and Kent Brodsho will join XM as Regional Retail Marketing and Distribution Manager.

With XM's Detroit headquarters present, there will be a stonger relationship being developed between XM and the automotive companies who could help build and support XM's OEM and automotive partnerships.

XM is not only partnering with the auto manufacturers, they're also partnering with the car stereo manufacturers to assist in the designs and standards of XM radio. Among the car stereo manufacturers, Alpine, Delphi Delco, Pioneer and Sharp are among the consumer electronic firms that will design, manufacture and market AM/FM/XM radios.

So far, General Motors has signed a long-term agreement to factory-install and market XM service in new GM vehicles with more to follow soon.

Hughes and Alcatel are building XM's satellites, the most powerful commercial satellites available. That will help bring the XM radio signals down to earth better.

George Lynch, as Director of OEM Sales, will head the new Detroit office. Mr. Lynch will be responsible for expanding the distribution of XM services in new vehicles manufactured for the US market. He will handle the company's key automotive manufacturers and their respective OEM radio manufacturers.

Kent Brodsho spent more than than four years with U.S. Satellite Broadcasting (now part of DIRECTV), most recently as Director of National Accounts responsible for key national consumer electronics accounts including Circuit City, Radio Shack, Sears and Wards.

XM Satellite Radio is a subscription-based radio band service that is scheduled to start during the first half of 2001. For $9.95 per month, subscribers will receive the XM signal in their cars and homes using small car phone-sized antennas and XM-capable radios. These radios will be manufactured by the leading names in consumer electronics and available at retail stores nationwide or as an option with the purchase of a new car.

You will be able to sign up for XM's subscription service through thousands of different national, regional and local retail stores, over the Internet, and through automobile dealers.

You will be able to buy XM-capable radios at thousands of consumer electronics, auto accessory and other retail stores, on the Internet, and at automobile dealerships across the U.S. and at select automobile dealerships.

XM Satellite Radio will be available across the continental US; it will not be available in Alaska or Hawaii or internationally.

The system will use direct satellite-to-receiver broadcasting technology, same way as DirecTV does for home TV viewers, to provide listeners in their cars and at home with crystal-clear sound, seamlessly from coast to coast.

XM's programming will feature the best music, news, talk, sports, entertainment, and children's programming available anywhere, with something for everyone, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Every XM channel will have a distinct name and personality, with the attitude, on-air talent, and the promotional support it takes to develop not just listeners but fans.

Along with their selection of commercial-free music channels in popular formats, XM Radio's limited-advertising channels will carry less than half of the advertising of a traditional AM or FM station. That way, you’ll have more of the music, information, and entertainment you seek with minimal interruption, while advertisers will have access to a cost-effective means of reaching national niche markets like never before.

XM has signed programming agreements with a number of content providers such as USA TODAY (hey, you get to listen to McPaper on the XM!), BBC, Black Entertainment Television, Radio One, C-SPAN, CNN/fn, Sports Illustrated, The Weather Channel and many others to come.

XM is looking for star radio talent of the next millennium. Is that you? Send your stuff: resume, tape, etc., to:

XM Programming
XM Satellite Radio
1250 23rd Street, NW
Suite 57
Washington, DC 20037

XM does not offer brokered programming on our channels. However, if you are a program supplier or syndicator and would like to tell XM Radio about your offerings, you can send them a press kit and sample program addressed to XM PROGRAMMING. They will review your show(s) and respond promptly.

Just as the cable TV networks redefined television, XM will radically redefine the world of radio by offering the choice of up to 100 new channels, the convenience of nationwide reception, and the quality of digital sound.

First there was AM, then FM, and soon XM. It's the next generation of radio: XM Satellite Radio!

For more information, visit XM's website: http://www.xmradio.com source: newswires

Satellite Radio on the Horizon (Jan 2000)

I originally edited several articles about the coming of XM Radio way back at the beginning of the last year of the previous millenium. Here is my original piece with some revisions where necessary.

Some day soon, your car radio may have AM, FM and XM buttons.

By the end of the year (2001 that is), there is hope that your car radio, starving for a wider variety of music that corporate commercial radio is just not giving you (blame it on the biased radio music programmers), will be making your driving trips a lot more entertaining.

The 21st century auto accessory requires you to forget about improving the bass or buying a 100-CD changer, and instead, to look up...way up.

Serious satellite radio broadcasting on the XM band wishes to give drivers a new list of listening choices.

Sure, you can still have the old-fashioned AM/FM band alongside the XM band. But instead of settling for the usual futile search for intelligent life on commercial radio, dealing with weak signals of your favorite stations, or trying to figure out where you favorite stations are when you drive to city by city, you can just press the "XM" button for the satellite radio band.

Satellite radio promises digitally clear radio programming with a signal range spanning the entire USA. This is the first serious threat to conventional radio since the FM band was introduced as a threat to AM radio in the 1940s.

While satellite broadcasts of digital music are already available to some homes via programming providers like DirecTV and Primestar, they've had little impact to date. Mostly because they are not portable like a car radio. Digital Cable Radio has been around for a long while, but unfortunately, most people at home watch TV and VCR movie rentals instead of listening to music.

Digital satellite radio for your car is due to start late this year, just when a time when corporate radio conglomorates are destroying the diversity of radio music and replacing them with cookie-cutter formats and short playlists guaranteed to drive you nuts.

The mobile segment of the market needs a welcome relief from this kind of poor uninnovative music prgramming. Some observers feel that, like high-definition television's impact on broadcasting and cable, satellite radio delivery to cars and Walkman-like units will shake up the status quo.

It will be the first big time that conventional radio is going to be attacked in the place it's most successful, in the automobile. For a long time, car commuters needed to bring cassettes and CDs in order to hear music radio isn't playing, and then again, the cassettes and CDs can ruin in your car's hot interior in the afternoon, thus, ruining your music.

Satellite radio is allegedly the best sound that's ever come out of radio speakers and it's going to offer people a ton of options.

As originally stated in January 2000: There will be 50 channels of commercial-free music and 50 channels of news, sports, and entertainment programming that you cannot get anywhere else. This has since been adjusted.

You will be getting seamless national coverage. You can drive from New York to L.A. listening to any of the channels on the XM band and never lose the signal.

Among its gimmicks: the ability to display song title, artist name and record label on a lighted panel, much like station numbers are now displayed.

Eventually, users may be able to purchase the music from their car by pushing a button, or listen to a conventional New York radio station's broadcasts while visiting Phoenix.

Conventional radio broadcasters have to take it very, very seriously. Already, fed-up listeners are tuning out repetetious radio programming in droves and installing multi-CD changers in their autos.

Sure, some of the local radio stations may claim that "it's the personalities that you want to listen to." Some stations chat endlessly with talk that has NOTHING TO DO WITH MUSIC, as well as maintaining a small playlist accomating the tastes of the simple-minded radio listener with a short attention span.

And the music you're hearing on several stations are often biased in selection, that is, some programmers will not play a certain artist, even if it fits the format or if many people like it better than some of the hits they're playing.

Sets 102.1 FM in San Diego disagrees with what most radio stations are doing and are already programming and talking about music. One of their spots states that "if it has nothing to do with music, it doesn't get on the air." I wish more radio stations in town would adopt this philosophy, the way it used to be.

If you wish to listen to satellite radio and get away from local radio hell, you will initially require a purchase of a small radio "card" that will fit in the cassette or CD slot on a conventional car radio, and a silver-dollar size satellite dish with an adhesive back to attach outside the car. The total cost of equipment is expected to be around $200 (now at least $199 without the antenna). Walkman-like devices or car radios that have satellite capability built in have not yet been developed but are expected.

Users also will be required to pay a monthly subscriber fee, envisioned at around $9.95 a month. Not bad, considering it's the price of a low-end CD and a small expense to pay for a more enjoyable radio experience in your car.

Most of the radio listening occurrs in your car, about a 1/3rd of the time, but with the choice of Satellite radio added, there could be a major drop in the ratings to a point where the broadcasting musical directors would have to resort to actually programming and talking about music instead of the gibberish that they're employing nowadays.

But the automobile gives radio something no other medium can match -- a captive audience estimated to reach 110 million commuters by 1999, all with limited entertainment options in their vehicles. It's a market segment advertisers covet. "Radio is to the car what television is to the home," says David Margolese, chairman/CEO of CD Radio, one of two companies licensed by the Federal Communications Commission in 1997 for satellite radio delivery to the automobile.

It's also an audience digital satellite people feel is vastly underserved by today's AM and FM programming selections. They claim conventional radio has devolved into a formulaic mix of news, talk and tightly formatted music stations, each only slightly different from others across the nation.

A good example is San Diego, California, where I live and there's a bunch of stations programming "their" ideas of country, adult pop, jazz, dance, top 40, rock and alternative music, all of which stink up the heavens with too many ballads, sleepy songs, high repetition, unintelligent music directors, lazy programmers, distractions, and a high degree of cross-listing, playing songs on one station that is heard on another station with a different format. Local radio has become, in a nutshell, a living hell for music lovers such as yours truly, shunning the concept of programming innovative musical directions and exciting beats in favor of programming the same old junk that sounds like the old junk I already heard before.

Thus, listeners anxious for such niche music genres as reggae, jazz, opera, funny music, 70s-90's dance, techno, disco, classic punk and new wave, classic rock spanning into the 1990s, real country music (as opposed to the slow ballads) in the old country-western flavor I prefer, big band, show tunes, better versions of adult contemporary, or a wider selection of rock than currently programmed must "wait until Sunday night at 11 p.m. and turn to a college radio station," says Lee Abrams, head of programming for Washington, D.C.-based American Mobile Radio, the other FCC-licensed satellite broadcaster. "We'll have enough channels to serve pretty much every imaginable niche."

Both American Mobile Radio and New York-based CD Radio will be launching their first satellites early this year (not sure which is now renamed XM and Sirius). Service for both is expected to begin soon after.

There are questions about the satellite radio business plans. Will drivers make the investment in equipment? Will they spring for a subscription fee of $10 a month? And once satellite radio is launched, will enough of an audience listen to its shows so that they can make a ratings impact, key to attracting advertising? I know I will. Goodbye boring local radio forever! Can't hardly wait!

But there may be some problems along the way to the utopian radio heaven we've been waiting for. Some observers aren't sure the technology will work. Gary Shapiro of the Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association (CEMA) has stated that the XM-band portion of the spectrum won't easily transmit to cars moving at 70 mph. Heavy cloud cover, trees, or other obstructions can create dead zones, Shapiro claims, although terrestrial tests of the technology have been successful.

Conventional radio people also contend broadcasting's strength is its ability to transmit traffic reports, news and regional sports, something national satellite services can't do.

I think in most cases local radio is pretty much dead. Every market used to have a selection of stations that sounded different than those from nearby cities. Now, it tends to be more of a cookie-cutter sound market to market.

Radio used to be more aggressive in playing the new hits, often having large playlists as recent as 1989. Nowadays, the playlists are short and narrow in selection, resulting in high repetetion of songs whether you like the songs or not.

For instance, 91X back in late 1980's used to sound so cool I could listen to it all the time when they once played a lot of new music. Now, word has it that 91X is so biased in music selection that the soul is gone and 91X is now the laughingstock of the music industry. 91X plays relatively fewer new modern rock selections, ignoring some bands or even labels altogether, and ignoring the local music scene altogether. The fuhrer determining the music direction of the station has simply got to go!

Star 100.7 plays too little new music. KGB 101.5 and KPLN 103.7 forget that classic rock fans enjoy hearing new music too. KYXY is dull when compared to the more exiciting adult contemporary format of KBIG 104.3 in Los Angeles. Mix 95.7 doesn't add anything new; just what you get when you bounce from station to station from boring song to overplayed song again and again.

Even the oldies stations just aren't getting it right, overniching the period-piece formats to death with narrow playlists, shafting the fans from getting the complete experience of listening to the wide variety of genres they were enjoying back in the 50's, 60's, and 70's to name a few decades.

Most of the local radio staions have become middle age rock stations that play those fab hits from the 60s through 1988 or so, rather than programming into the 1990s. This poor rock programming sounds worn and tired because the listeners have heard them over and over again everyday, decades after they have peaked and rolled off the Billboard charts.

But with Satellite XM band radio, we hope the companies programming the channels will not play any of those kind of games local radio is playing on the listeners.

Instead of using cheap prize giveaways to lure music, XM band radio will be luring listeners with the wide variety of music they really demand to hear, but the difference in audio quality is that they will all be in digital stereo.

Under current technological standards, the 12.5 MHz of the spectrum allocated to American Mobile Radio and CD Radio should allow approximately 19 to 44 audio channels each.

However, as compression technology improves, up to 100 channels of CD-quality programming may be possible in the year 2000, all of it ostensibly delivered without fades, interference or other distortions common to conventional radio broadcasts.

From Ben Shaton off the Rolling Stone Messageboard:
http://yourturn.rollingstone.com/scripts/webx.dll?13@^133318@.ee70913/0

If Satellite Radio lives up to it's potential, however, FM radio is in big trouble. If you have been reading the local Arbitrons over the years and adding up the scores of the stations, you'll notice that people are leaving radio in droves.

And no wonder. The quality of FM programming is actually worse now than AM was in the 70's when the Music Audience made that Great Exodus away from the AM Band as soon as access to FM became widely available.

The choice of music on FM is much worse than it was in the 70's, despite there being more FM Stations on the air now. Narrow formats, tight playlists, and frequent interruptions are major turnoffs.

My prediction is if Satellite Radio turns up to be all it's cracked up to be, and provides Commercial-Free Programming at a reasonable price, it will become the new standard for Music Lovers. Because FM has allowed itself to become so innovative poor, the very people that adverisers count on to sell their products will use their dollars to obtain access to this New Technology. FM Radio will be forced to change when their dwindling audience becomes mainly made up of listeners who can't afford the sponsor's products. Their revenues will be way down because the advertisers won't be willing to pay out the big bucks if they aren't reaching the people with disposable income.

Auto Maker Plans Satellite Radio (Feb 2000)

DaimlerChrysler also said Tuesday it would use Sirius technology to develop other services, such as navigation and security systems. Other automakers have been pushing such services, such as General Motors Corp.'s OnStar system, as a potentially huge source of future revenue.

Satellite radio uses the science behind satellite television to beam up to 100 channels of CD-quality sound to specially built car radios for about $10 a month. Sirius and its competitor, XM Satellite Radio, are the only two companies licensed to offer satellite radio service in the United States. XM Radio has a deal with GM, while Sirius has also signed up Ford Motor Co. and BMW AG.

But satellite radio has more possibilities than just beaming music. GM Chairman Jack Smith said last month that researchers at Hughes Electronics Corp. had found a way to use several satellite radio channels to carry video.

Analysts estimate that 30 million vehicles will have the receivers in eight years, creating $5 billion in revenue.

Under the terms of the deal, DaimlerChrysler will exclusively use Sirius receivers in vehicles it sells in the United States. That includes all vehicles from the Chrysler division, as well as cars and trucks from Mercedes-Benz and commercial trucks from Freightliner and Sterling.

Telesat To Operate XM's Two Satellites (Feb 2000)

Source: rronline.com

XM and Sirius Agree On Unified Standard (Mar 2000)

Source: http://www.rronline.com/

Sirius and XM To Cover Each Other In Outages (Mar 2000)

Source: http://www.rronline.com/ Sears To Sell XM Receivers The national retail chain has more than 2,200 outlets and is among the top car-stereo retailers, which XM hopes will give it an edge in marketing its receivers. Both XM and Sirius have entered marketing deals with major national electronics retailers such as Circuit City and Best Buy, both of which are reconfiguring their store layouts to include satellite radio retail sections.

Satellite Radio Getting Sirius About It In Orbit! (July 2000)

The first satellite for beaming CD-quality radio nationwide is now in orbit. Two companies hope digital radio subscriptions offering 100 channels will render local stations obsolete.

Sirius Satellite Radio wants to revitalize an industry that has remained mostly unchanged for decades by getting people to pay for radio.

The Sirius-1 satellite rocket blasted off last week from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the same launch pad used to send Sputnik into space in 1957.

Within two hours of the launch, Sirius successfully communicated with the satellite, which will be joined in orbit with two others to provide coast-to-coast digital radio to motorists starting in 2001.

There will eventually be three satellites launched into orbit that Sirius will use to broadcast its 100 CD-quality music, news, sports, and talk radio channels for a monthly charge of $9.95. In addition to the satellites, Sirius will also deploy 100 terrestrial repeaters to provide coverage in areas where structures could interfere with the broadcasts.

But will those 100 niche channels be enough? With broadband mobile Internet radio still being developed, will XM be rendered obsolete within five years?

Sirius and competitor XM Satellite Radio believe that, like cable TV, customers will pay for niche channels that match their interests and include little or no advertising.

The companies are readying reggae, jazz, classical, and world music channels that will challenge the AM and FM radio stations analysts say aren't serving the 200 million car owners desperate for something else to listen to. But will these be enough varieties to lure away the listeners from their free over-the-air commercial radio stations?

"Traditional radio isn't doing the job in servicing customers," said William Kidd, satellite analyst at investment firm C.E. Unterberg, Towbin.

Most traditional radio is stuck into programming a handful of niches such as classic rock, teen pop, soft love songs, light country, and early oldies.

Kidd said 80 percent of all listening today in the car is radio, and that the industry -- which hasn't seen substantial change since FM was invented more than 60 years ago -- is ripe for innovation. "It's hard to imagine that the status quo will be preserved," Kidd said.

In order to receive the digital signal, new digital receivers costing around $280 or so must be installed into automobiles. Kidd said adoption should be rapid compared to other industries, since 24 million car radios are sold every year. He projects that by 2007, 15 percent of all U.S. cars will have an XM or Sirius-compatible receiver.

Both companies have lined up auto makers Ford, Volvo, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Saab, and Cadillac to make receivers as options or standard equipment in 2001 model-year cars, and have also signed up many of the leading car stereo manufacturers to create components.

The first Sirius and XM receivers will not be compatible, however, so customers will have to choose which service they prefer. That could pose a serious problem similar to the Betamax/VHS wars in the early 1980's with tape recorders and the two incompatable AM stereo schemes in the late 80's. The companies did agree to cross-license their technologies so that future receivers could access both signals.

In addition to carmakers, XM has recently made agreements with trucking industry companies Pana-Pacific and Freightliner, car rental agency Avis, and boating supplier Marine Audio to provide compatible receivers.

Jim Stroud, an analyst with the Carmel Group, said that although there will eventually be portable and home digital receivers, XM and Sirius were smart for going after the auto market first.

"At home people can watch TV, movies, or listen to the radio, but in cars, radio is the only broadcast entertainment available," he said. "You really have a captive audience."

Aside of radio, automobile commuters have CD's and cassettes, which can warp and melt if left in the car during a hot day. XM Satellite Radio won't eliminate the need for a CD player, but it's a step in the right direction.

The broadcasters believe that customers will leap at the chance to pay for quality radio for the same reason cable TV has proven a success: better variety and fewer commercials. Radio listeners frustrated by the exclusionary and repetitive practices of the FM stations that have driven listeners to online services will identify with their specialty channels.

Former DJ Tom Versen, Sirius's director of production and creative services, said traditional radio only plays one-third of the music released each year (where does he get that figure from? It's more like 1/100th of the music released). He said ad-supported radio has stagnated towards repeating old standards instead of taking chances on new content.

"If I hear 'Dust in the Wind' one more time, I'm going to run my car off the road," Versen said.

And providing national distribution should create enough ears to support the niche channels.

"An opera station may not be a valid market in Missoula, Montana ... but when you have so many cars as part of the national market, you can create a lot of valid niche markets," Stroud said.

He said indie bands and leading artists also will be attracted a national audience that can hear them promote tours or new albums with a single interview or live performance.

To attract the big-name artists and produce the continuous programming, XM, and Sirius are in the process of creating the world's largest audio production studios.

The Sirius studio overlooks Rockefeller Center and has $40 million worth of recording and networking equipment, including 5 terabytes of storage and 150 miles of cables. The 100,000-square-foot facility features 20 sound studios that will be used for artist interviews and exclusive live performances.

Sting, former lead singer of The Police and successful solo singer, who has been largely ignored by today's traditional and classic rock stations as of late, has signed with Sirius to do a world music program, and the company expects 10 artists per week to be in its studios for interviews, to guest DJ, or for live performances.

XM's 60,000 square-foot Washington facility will house 80 studios connected via a fiber-optic network. It is scheduled to open this fall.

Sirius and XM are building custom databases of digital music even larger than the MP3.com database that got it into trouble with the RIAA. Unlike MP3.com, however, both companies signed licensing agreements with the music publishers before compiling the databases.

Sirius currently has 30 engineers and former DJs ripping CDs into the music archives, which can be pre-programmed into daily shows for its 50 music channels.

Sirius programming director Ken Spellman, who set up radio stations in Korea and England and is in the process of building a 5,000-song database for the six R&B channels, is happy to be free of the constraints of commercial radio.

"College and high school students are turning off their radios and turning onto the Internet and downloading music because they can't find what they want," he said.

Alternative rock stations aren't playing real alternatve rock music. Classic rock is stuck in a time warp of the 1970's. Top 40 is stuck serving the teen niche. Adults have to select between wimp pop and lite jazz radio. Country lost its edge when radio went soft. XM radio will change all that.

Spellman will help design the database that will include track notes and descriptions that will be sent to the receivers.

"What can I do to get people to hit the buy button on their radios?" said Spellman, referring to the company's long-term goal of providing instant purchasing of music.

In addition to its contemporary music channels and live performances, Sirius will offer several classical and opera channels, a Broadway music channel, and even serial dramas. Versen said that cable TV's Sci-Fi Network is currently producing a series of 15-minute short programs at the Sirius studio.

XM's programming costs $9.95 per month, and will similarly include content from a variety of news and sports services including CNN, Bloomberg, USA Today, and NASCAR.

Both companies are in talks with professional sports leagues to obtain national broadcasting rights so that, for example, Red Sox or Bears fans could listen to their team no matter what town they're driving in. Analyst Stroud said he wouldn't be surprised if one of the companies developed "home team" packages similar to those offered by satellite TV broadcasters.

Both XM and Sirius have had successful IPOs, thanks in part to their unique FCC licenses. In 1997 the two companies paid a combined $172 million for the only FCC licenses to broadcast a nationwide digital signal.

Getting Sirius About Satellite Radio (Sep 2000)

On Tuesday (Sept. 5), Sirius Satellite Radio, the satellite radio broadcaster, launched its second satellite, Sirius-2, into orbit from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the former Soviet state of Kazakhstan.

In-orbit testing is expected to be completed within 45 days, according to a statement from the company.

Sirius-2 is the second of three satellites Sirius is launching to broadcast its 50 commercial-free music channels and up to 50 channels of news, sports and entertainment to motorists throughout the country. The company's third satellite, Sirius-3, previously scheduled for launch in October, is likely to be rescheduled for November due to congestion on the Proton launch manifest.

Sirius-4, an on-the-ground spare satellite, was damaged during construction last month.

From its three orbiting satellites, Sirius will directly broadcast up to 100 channels of digital-quality programming to motorists throughout the continental United States for a monthly subscription fee of $9.95. Sirius will deliver 50 channels of commercial-free music in virtually every genre, and up to 50 channels of news, sports and entertainment such as CNBC, NPR, SCI FI Channel, Classic Radio and the BBC.

Currently, Sirius has alliances to install three-band (AM/FM/SAT) radios in Ford, Chrysler, BMW, Mercedes, Mazda, Jaguar and Volvo vehicles. In addition, Sirius has alliances with numerous manufacturers to furnish radios to automakers, as well as adapters to electronics retailers that will allow radios in existing vehicles to receive Sirius broadcasts.

Discussion: How XM Will Affect Broadcast Radio (Sep 2000)

Here is my question:

With the coming of wireless broadband Internet delivering speeds of at least 128kbps to notebook computers in your car or outdoors, you can easily see that it is possible to listen to streaming audio on the Internet by launching Winamp, WMP, or Real Audio.

In about 10 years, portable Internet radio players would converge the streaming audio with the ease of a simplified portable unit allowing people to tune in any streaming audio signal they choose, whether it's a homemade signal from live365.com, or a radio station streaming from 12,000 miles away, or even a local station's stream whose terrestrial signal doesn't reach where you're at.

Also, XM is coming around 2001 to car radios as a subscriber service.

Question: How will XM radio's 100 channels and wireless Internet radio's almost unlimited channels change the course of broadcast radio?

any comments?

Here are two comments from our San Diego radio representatives:

Greg Cook - Magic 92.5

My Reply:

While XM satellite will be best suited for niche genres and formats, broadcast radio will have to get their station van out on the road and appear in malls, concerts, restaurants (open a Magic 92.5 steak house, a 91X mosh pit, farfetched, but possible), or other means to get their brand of music out to the public's ears for sampling. That's one thing satellite radio may not do, among other things, to connect with the listeners on the local level. At worst, XM could be like cable's digital radio service: no announcements and a bland presentation...kind of like most channels that sound like your own CD changer.

One thing nobody in the newsgroups talked about is how radio could adopt a satellite format that literally breaks out in popularity (New Orleans Jazz? European Techno? Soft Soul?) and research if the format would be popular with the listeners on the local radio level. Some formats might apply to just the people who bother to pay for the service and would not work on the local radio level, such as most of the cable TV genres would never work on broadcast TV.

Although there are a lot of cable choices out today, out of 80 cable channels, I regularily watch just five of them. Broadcast TV still gets attention with local news, big sporting events, and, of course, free blockbuster theatrical movies for some of us cheapskates during sweeps. Satellite radio might have just 5 that appeal to me (I'm guessing comedy, electronica, old school, modern rock, and dance en espanol) while I use local radio for information and a local connection not available on the satellite level.

Madison - Sets 102.1

As to the potential ramifications for radio, who knows? The average person listens to perhaps five radio stations per day, can only remember the name of one of their favorites with any authority, and has a couple of secondary stations they listen to but can only remember them with prompting. Add a million new e-radio or x-radio stations for that guy or gal and you get what I call the "Phone Book" phenomenon.

Millions of people are in the phone book. Unless one knows them or has need to call them, one is only vaguely aware that they exist.

For me personally, I know my family's telephone numbers, they're on the auto-dial. But I'd be lost if you asked me to try to find a good sushi place in Mobile, AL. I'd have to whip out the old phone book. (And then how am I going to know just how good the sushi is unless I eat there.) Of course, I can tell you about a few great restaurants here in my city.

Since the car radio's pre-sets are the auto-dials radio users depend on and since local radio is part of a local radio listener's extended "media" family, I feel safe to say that unless we do a terrible job in listening to what our audience wants, we'll still be here.

Because there is no way a radio station in Mobile, AL can give me local content.

And thank God for that!

'Nuff said.

Newsgroup Responses

Jake

Add that to a local flavor comment or two, or perhaps a local concert announcement and you can see that one service will be very different from the other.

Whether it draws enough listeners away from local radio to be significant depends on whether they apply enough money to make a program so interesting that it beats "local flavor" hands down.

It's possible, but I'm not holding my breath...

Lee Kent

Your tag line is the key to the answer of this question... Support good music don't buy bad music. The internet snobs all believe it is a matter of delivery.... and it is not... so did the makers of CD's... and cassette players in cars...

it is the product not how it is delivered... radio is free to the listener.. any form of internet based radio will cost money.. and it will never be free... content may be free but it will cost access to get it .... and a most important point: Internet pundits live in their own little world and completely ignore the reality that the majority of people do not now have and will never be able to afford wireless internet connections... those people listen to radio for the same reason people have always listened to radio.. companionship, diversion and fulfilling a need that has nothing at all to do with the music....

I have spent the last 2 years as one of those internet snobs living in my own little techno-world and it was like graduating from a 12 step program to escape it ... freedom from intellectual compression....

Bill Blomgren

They are rapidly carving up the spectrum up as far as infrared... and it won't all be going to wireless internet. Look for most of it going to services that the government wants... Point to point (since the very high end spectrum tends to work well in that arena)... And perhaps some for wireless IP. Now the problem: any time you get up in the high gigs.. you have problems with moisture. Like fog, high humidity and so on... The higher you go, the less reliable it gets for anything more than very short distances.

People listen to radio in cars for a personality at the other end, and information. If the information is not useful (traffic etc) it gets tuned out.

Looking at the technogeek types I work with, do they listen to radio if they want MUSIC? No. They turn on the CD player. They turn on the radio for humor/news/traffic/sports/talk... not to hear someone playing his favorite record of the moment.

The problem of capacity on the wireless internet will be with us forever. There is only a finite amount of spectrum, and people looking for a free ride won't get it.

Are -you- willing to spend $100 a month for wireless internet in your car? Salesfolk will do it for email and possibly research. The average housewife? No way.

Charles Hobbs

If everybody gets wireless Internet, etc., then I'd expect conventional broadcast to be affected in much the same way that AM was affected when FM became more popular, or how radio programming changed with TV came along etc. Some types of programming simply moved from one format/service to another...but that didn't mean, for example, that radio stations went out of business when all the old drama programs moved over to TV. Radio just found something else to play (more music, etc)

TV Man

Besides music, there will also be ad supported channels with all types of entertainment and sports shows which will not have such heavy commercial clusters which we are assaulted with now on AM/FM. Sirius plans to start their delivery to cars but will also move into the home and walkman type recievers as well.

AM/FM will become the service for the peasants and gheto dwellers (the no money crowd). Upscalers will latch on to the service with the more refined nitch formats available from the satellite services. The internet MP3 and streaming will always be limited to bandwidth which is constantly dwindling. Satellite radio will be the real deal.

I expect to see Satellite radio take down AM & FM even more viciously than the FM slaughter of AM.

Followup: Ray Whitworth

Followup: Arnold

If you consider that radio stations have mega bucks behind them, you have to believe those guys will do something to protect and improve their investment. I believe that's a far more likely outcome than the elimination of AM/FM radio.

One thing SM and Sirius cannot do is offer local news,weather, talk and sports. Those are listener benefits that far outweigh any good music format on a satellite delivered venture.

Furthermore, music formats cannot be "one size fits all" for the entire country if they are to be successful. A locally produced classic rock station that's #1 in Pennsylvania might be #200 in a Texas market. Music tastes are different.. Station programmers work to appeal to the local audience. SM can't do that.

In the long run, I believe these satellite stations may wind up being a benefit to local stations if owners feel they need to invest more in local programming to improve their investments.

Followup: Ray

Vince

Case in point: cable. It used to be that you bought cable to get programming that you couldn't get on the over-the-air services. Guess what? Most of the cable programming is actually worse. And you unfortunately can't cherry-pick. I'm carrying forty or fifty channels' worth of vacuous junk like MSNBC and EWTN just so I can get a weather radar image every ten minutes. Cable companies do this because they know that if I were allowed to pay for only what I use, they'd make about forty cents per month off of me instead of forty dollars.

Am I stupid? Probably. If it wasn't for my wife (who never watches the damn thing but insists that we need it), I probably would have dropped the service already. Q.E.D.

Vince

Followup by Ray

Robert Heathcote

I miss what I call the "left hand side" of the fm dial. Not to be confused with the political spectrum, I am decidedly conservative, but a little bit quirky.

I enjoy listening to the "88 and 89" on the fm dial to hear real live people talking about the music. Ok, I am lost in 1972 or something, but when I drive my car 10 hours, I want to hear people now and then, I can burn out my cds and cassttes too early.

I put up a huge antenna to pull in LA stations just to hear the idle chatter and eclectic patter. I miss it . You people in the big cities with a variety of local stations owe it to yourselves to turn off the computer and the tv, and listen to those gals and guys who are talking to YOU, the private listener. Ok I have spoken my peace......I like "people" radio.

Jake Brodsky

I'm 37 and I have lived within range of two big-city radio markets most of my life. This sort of happy "dumb-blond" talk turns me off so much that I leave the radio off more and more during my commutes. You'd think advertisers would be interested enough in my demographic group that they'd say something to the program directors. But if they are, it's not helping.

I'm not trying to start yet another "why radio sucks" thread. I'm merely pointing out that this is a fact of life which seems to be chasing more and more away from the otherwise desirable local content of radio and on to other mediums such as books on tape.

Would people listen to satellite delivered radio content? Maybe. I think it's worth noting that if it does succeed it will introduce enough competition that local radio stations will be forced in to spending better money on better programming talent.

We'll all benefit then.

Lee Kent

1: Most Internet based muzak service clones will go out of business within a year no matter how much their proponents espouse their elegance and superiority over broadcast stations.

2: Commercial broadcasting stations having embraced the Internet to stream their stations will continue to serve their local sales clients and more and more ignore the world audience as their clients still see no benefit to them in such wide area distribution.

3: Streaming companies who offer multi format music only channels to be placed on radio station web sites will be toast within 18 months when local clients start asking why the account exec is touting their being on the web too while the station gives listeners a chance to change channels on line.

4: Almost all (but not all: that would be a perfect world) pundits of Internet based music services will eventually realize that technology for technology's sake is fine on the drawing board but never succeeds in the living room unless it provides a real benefit to the consumer. Venture Capitalists have already started to learn this and have slowed down the rush to invest in anything with an I or an E in the name. Internet Radio is a pure play business and pure play businesses are simply not working no matter how much passion has gone into defending them. People are interested in a new thing until they find nothing new in benefits to them. The Internet is in the mode now. The public (make that consumers) are becoming jaded regarding the world wide web even while those who are trying to make it a delivery medium for streaming music alternative to local, client supported radio are just becoming vicious in their defense of it.

5: Mega corporation commercial radio stations are going through a phase most businesses go through in a buying frenzy: Too much, too soon requires assembly line management to control while assembly line production quality and services results in bland acceptance by consumers eventually and will force the mega corporations to divest stations to re-coup cash flow as they are so far into the load of debt that a single serious downturn in the economy will cripple the ability to borrow more.

6: So far mega corporations have been quite good at managing their resources by cutting costs but cutting costs has never made profit. Making profit itself implies growth and that little gem of business acumen will catch up soon.

7: An EEO issue is looming in the background at the commission after the release of the most recent rules on EEO for broadcast and cable stations and depending upon the outcome of the upcoming national election: properties will be forced to actually do more than give lip service to equal opportunity and post their mandated reports.

8: The real talent in the industry will begin (have already done so) to become disheartened with the previous geography hopping career patterns that no longer lead to career growth and drop their geographic market bigotry by joining small market locally owned stations just to enjoy working in radio again.

9: Disco will return as the format of choice for mega corporation owned properties. (OK I had to have one that would not come true).... lk

Mark Jeffries

http://www.suntimes.com/output/feder/feder31.html

The news/talk/entertainment programming that will fill up the other 50 channels of XM and Sirius will be in many instances live and I think could be considered "people" radio.

I don't pretend that satellite radio will be the answer to all of radio's woes, but it has the potential to give the listening audience an alternative by offering underepresented formats and present formats without the potential annoyance factors of today's radio. If it gives its conventional broadcast competition fits, good. It may just make those stations better and less complacent (and may make them rediscover that being local gives them a competitive edge over the satellite guys).

Pooch 101

D.T.

Satellite XM and wireless broadband Internet radio are services for the paying subscriber (with Internet, you pay for the ISP fee) in search of a special niche that broadcast radio will find unmarketable to use full time. Like cable TV, you might find 7-8 special niche channels that you would tune in again and again, while on long commutes or while you're servicing your car.

Mark Howell

re: while cable and satellite remain niche servers that are kept on the air with the help of subscriber fees and carriage fees passed on to the consumer.

This is a tremendous economic advantage to the cable nets. It's why NBC is porting more and more of its content to cable. Bob Wright has been quoted as saying he'll move the whole network to cable if the stations don't start paying for shows, instead of being paid to run the spots within them.

Broadcast TV, especially outside large markets, is under tremendous economic pressure these days. Radio is next.

Team Goon

Rich Wood

I don't care what the delivery system is, you just can't please everyone.

Team Goon

I've reviewed the channels. The channels I'd primarily be interested in (active rock & heavy metal) are VERY well programmed. only a few news & info channels and a select few local AM & FM stations Sirius MIGHT pick up will have commercial programming.

Adma

http://www.radiodigest.com/toronto/2000/tor_082200_weisblott_4.phtml

Team Goon

Dennis

The internet and perhaps XM will deal a cruel blow to many of these stations because they won't be needed.

Joel Reagan

What do you think?

Hutchison-Pritchard

Deregulation has done the radio listeners of the US a terrific disservice for all of the reasons you mention. That's why I disagree with the FCC's R&O relaxing ownership rules after the first couple of years of LPFM service. Even with all of the options that will shortly become available to listeners, people still want to know what's happening across town.

I speak not only of news programming, but also of the jock who says " Joe from Center City just gave us a buzz on his cell phone. He says there's a hell of a tie-up on the Washington Expressway at exit 29. If you're heading south you might want to get off at 28 and take the I-35 bypass out of town."

The Savior of radio, in whatever form, will have a local face. ----Larry Pritchard

Rich Wood

In contemporary radio that "buzz" from the cell phone could be a hoax, part of a comedy schtick no one annouced was comedy and wasn't funny enough to be obvious.

The Saviour of radio will be entertaining, regardless of where he or she sits.

Greg and Joan

Try explaining to both professors about the plight of the cross-country truck driver, or the all-night gas station attendant in East Podunk, Montana!

Hutchinson-Pritchard

By way of clarification, I am saying that in my opinion it is precisely the corporate owned multple outlet formula stations that may have the most to fear from content delivery like satellite. I was certainly exaggerating a bit when I used the words "the Savior of radio". I think radio, local radio, has a future though, for exactly the reasons I mentioned earlier. The freeway tie-up example was an illustration. I would hope that air talent would first get multiple confirmation of such info before they announced anything to the listeners. What I was trying to illustrate is that people want and need local information like that, and that local radio is a fast, effective way to get it.

I absolutely agree that no one is out there listening to their radio for only that reason. If the programming is not good they will change the station. Before returning to college I worked as a "one man band", doing writing and reporting of local news at a little AM in a small town outside of New Orleans. This was the only station in our area that did local news updates. I'm trying to think of a generous way to say this... let's just say that the programming wasn't that good and listenership was very small. Good entertaining content has to be there, or there will be no listeners. I understand that very well. No one will listen simply on the power of a local orientation. I am however a great believer in the idea that radio should serve the public, inform as well as entertain, and that information must be locally driven to fulfill that mandate.

My hope for the future is that the new technologies and the advent of community based LPFM service will help people responsible for program content to see that we are a nation of diverse communities, not only political but cultural ones, and that more individualized local content will begin to appear on local stations, to the benefit of all.

Market fragmentation is only lamentable to those big corporations whose primary interest is in profit rather than service. Nothing wrong with profit, but I believe that corporate cookie cutter mentality does contribute to the loss of community identity. There is no reason why radio cannot be local, entertaining, and informative. For all of our benefit, I hope to see that balance achieved.

rec.radio.broadcasting discussion: How Will XM Change the Future of Radio? (Oct 2000)

Back when FM was still fighting with AM radio to be the king of the Top-40 hill, Tom Merriman and the folks at TM were producing Tomorrow Radio.

These were highly produced radio shows that accompanied demo reels for their jingles. Tomorrow Radio was a look at where radio was headed, and its predictions remain accurate even today.

We've already seen so many of its prophesies come true, from the breakup of AT&T, KHJ going country, and the first indecent exposure by picturephone. We call them webcams and its damn near a national industry.

Where Merriman and the visionaries at TM saw this business going, is toward narrowcasting. You had a "template" that acted as a filter on a big information stream. You heard the music you wanted, the stories you were interested in, and the sports scores and sports news for the sports you follow.

The change that TM may have missed, is how tecnology-smart the average consumer would become as this kind of technology bubbled up in the listener-base. It probably won't be radio that delivers this kind of service, but the service is the natural progression of the way we're increasingly wired.

Radio's biggest problem in tomorrow's world, is its a narrowbandwidth modulation scheme in a broadbandwidth world. If it changes its ways and goes some form of digital, it loses the very installed base that makes it powerful; if it doesn't, it fades away against competing delivery schemes.

I think audio-only services do have a future, but analog terrestrial radio is going to be adrift in such a sea of connectivity, even wireless connectivity, in the next 10 years, that the concept of a little real-time analog signal with no indexing, isn't going to cut it.

Broadcasters have gone the wrong way. They've built juke-boxes that in many cases are less sophisticated than power users have in their laptops. They've eliminated the people who added value to music, or who localized their service. Now, even if the money were there, they don't have the staffs to produce the kind of material that elevates them above Windows Media Player.

Terrestrial analog radio faces some really tough choices in the next 10 years, and I am very happy that I won't be called upon to help make them.

Max Cacus

After posting up the link (and some of my own comments) on the Wash. Post article on Satellite Radio in this Sunday's paper, I also thought about the on-going threads I've been reading about the "future of radio"...and thought I'd offer some of my own ruminations.

We've had this discussion many, many, *many* times on this list. Hell, good old Bill, God rest his soul, used to look forward to them when they surfaced, about every year. It seems to be an evergreen. But its more important and vital than ever, now that satellite radio is on the horizon, perhaps the first *real* competition over-the-air radio has had since, well, the advent of television.

My general feeling is that the way things will work out will inevitably fall somewhere between the blatant apologists ("nothing is wrong, we're making money hand over fist right now, all is calm"), and those who make *empty* statements like "the Internet is going to be the death of radio". Neither side seems to look back at history, and see its never as good or as bad as everyone would seem to paint the future.

- Radio did not kill newspapers. It didn't.

- Television did not kill radio, or newspapers. It did not. (Ted Turner arrogantly claimed that CNN and cable would kill off newspapers when he started his 24-hour cable news service. He was wrong.)

- The Internet has not killed newspapers. (Bill Gates made the same arrogant claim that the 'Net would kill newspapers that Turner did, and Gates did this at a time when he barely understood the Internet. He was wrong.) Newspapers are doing as well as ever, and will likely become the content providers for those surviving Internet news sources after the Drudges of the world are out of the 'news' business, and instead, are picking up the day's refuse.

New technology *never* has killed the old. The old simply adapts...if it can...which leads me to my other point.

Jerry Trowbridge, in his post recalling TM's very precient "Tomorrow Radio" presentation of the mid-70s, said:

>Broadcasters have gone the wrong way. They've built juke-boxes that in >many cases are less sophisticated than power users have in their >laptops. They've eliminated the people who added value to music, or >who localized their service. Now, even if the money were there, they >don't have the staffs to produce the kind of material that elevates >them above Windows Media Player.

Jerry hit it right over the head (thank you, Jerry!), and this is why the apologists from the NAB have it wrong when they say everything is fine, our billing is higher than ever, etc., etc. Terrestrial/over-the-air radio might have had its chance if it had 'stuck to the knitting', and stayed "local and live".

Instead, you have station after station playing the same thing town to town, or even within a market.

You see a business where consolidation and "clusters" have become more important than localism and public service. ("Clusters" only serve the Clear Channels and Viacom/CBS/Infinitys of the world, no one else.)

You see one dark control room after another where computers have replaced people; the ones who are left voice-track a "show" to be dumped onto a computer;s hard disk, where the announcer probably never gets to hear the music he/she is introducing, and where the voice-tracked program is followed by 12 hours of something coming in from the satellite in a studio thousands of miles away. And then the defenders of the status quo have the nerve to complain that "we just can't get good talent anymore"?

And forget about local news, they say gleefully, we got rid of *that* arcane requirement years ago, and its perfectly all right for the burden of delivering the news on radio to fall on the only all-news station in town (if there is a station in the big markets), or the public radio station. The only thing we care about anymore is "traffic and weather". Or so they claim.

Besides, Metro is *so* much cheaper than having to hire someone to do the news. Who cares if the licencee of a radio station palms off its editorial control over the news to a 'vendor'? Certainly not the listeners... And of course, they can always get some news reader willing to giggle like Robin Quivers at the latest stupid thing the voice-tracked morning show team will say, of course...

So, where is this all going? As I said, the future hasn't been written yet. I don't believe the "_(fill in the blank new technology)___ is gonna kill _(the fill in the blank old technology__" crowd anymore than I believe the "all is well" crowd. And I think that's how most thinking people feel.

I think I'm gonna just be like everybody else, and wait and see what happens. Meanwhile, I'm gonna price one of those dish TVs to replace my increasingly inferior cable TV service, and keep my eye out for a retro-fit AM/FM/satellite radio to give me more choices in my Honda when the time comes.

Thanks for listening. And, by the way, I'm speaking for myself, and no one else, including my employer. Anyone who doesn't understand that never will.

David Eduardo

I only have a moment tonight, given the time and the wealth of commentary that Max has added.

I'm quite in agreement with his viewpoint, and would only add one comment now.

I'm using the term "terrestrial Radio" since, in the interest of disclosure, I'm involved with the XM project. And I'm also involved with old-regular-AM/FM-radio. Things will change. And one of the reasons why satellite radio will change is the lack of a need to satisfy the very precise requirements of Arbitron. Most stations in rated markets program for diarykeepers, not listeners. This is a fact that drives the business side of radio: getting people to write you down correctly. And getting people to not go away. And getting people to never spot a negative.

Satellite radio offers 100 channels on a captive, one service only, receiver. If you go away, so what. You still pay the $9.95 a month. You have many choices. They want you to enjoy many of them. That is the idea. And the idea is very different form terrestrial radio which is all about being inoffensive so as to not lose quarter hours.

There is a different dynamic, a different system and a captive audience. An unrated captive audience to a great extent.

If anyone is at fault for "safe" or so-called "corporate radio" it is the advertisers and their messenger, the ratings services. Stations are not at fault for looking for the best ways to look good in the ratings as to do otherwise would be to fail. However, not everyone is a diarykeeper... and some of these new alternatives will serve disaffected batches of them. As Max mentions, satellites will not kill terrestrial radio. Just as the current deadly fallout on the net shows that there is a lot more hype there than reality. All the pieces will eventually fit together, once we use the same scale of magnification on each one. Right now, we just don't know the proportions. But we do know that terrestrial radio is advertiser driven and thus fits the model determined by the survey methodology.

If there is blame to be placed, look elsewhere than station owners. Oh, and remember that the "great stations" of the 50's and 60's were not rated by Arbitron. Hooper and Pulse, anyone?

Doug Smith

Who pays for the ratings services? (this is a question, not an answer!)

Obviously, the stations and the advertisers both do, but is one side pulling the majority of the weight?

If it's the stations, shouldn't they have been pushing the services to make changes so that diarykeepers and the general audience are closer to the same group?

Either way, doesn't adjusting radio to serve a subset of the total public reduce the overall value of the medium? (by creating ears which cannot be reached by any station)

Jake Brodsky

On 11 Sep 2000 02:19:25 -0400, Max Cacas wrote:

>New technology *never* has killed the old. The old simply adapts...if it >can...which leads me to my other point.

No, but the time the typical person spends with a particular technology *can* decrease.

Before radio, everybody read newspapers. Before TV, everybody spent many hours listening to the radio. These days, newspaper readership as a fraction of the general public, is way down from what it was just two decades ago. And my opinion is that terrestrial radio services are "peaking."

No, radio isn't likely to be displaced. However, expecting solid growth at even single digit rates isn't a sure thing either.

>Jerry hit it right over the head (thank you, Jerry!), and this is why the >apologists from the NAB have it wrong when they say everything is fine, our >billing is higher than ever, etc., etc. Terrestrial/over-the-air radio might >have had its chance if it had 'stuck to the knitting', and stayed "local and >live".

True, but we can't go back to such regular broadcasts of "local and live" any more than we can go back to doing regular live radio show broadcasts as there used to be in the 1930's. It's too labor intensive and the market is too small.

The pie of public attention is being split by yet another new media. You can count on only so many hours of a person's time before they do little else but listen/watch/read stuff made by others. Yes, new media open opportunities for a person's time in places where it may not have been practical before. But a person has to go and live a life somewhere in that equation too.

When XM satellite radio happens, we'll have short circuited that content source which local radio stations used to have all to themselves. If they don't go to locally generated content, they'll lose listeners. If they go to locally generated content, it's going to cost more. I predict that many financially weak local stations are going to lose, just as the number of newspapers in major cities began shrinking as other media took hold.

Frankly I think the market is over-due for a shake out. It will be about as enjoyable as watching a wreck on the side of a road as you slowly drive by. You know it's going to be ugly, but you can't help looking at the carnage. Electronic Media: http://www.emonline.com/ Satellite radio at the Shack: XM Satellite Radio has signed an agreement with RadioShack's Franchisee Dealer Division to promote its products and services at RadioShack franchisee dealer stores across the country. The deal will boost XM's retail reach to more than 4,000 outlets.#

Satellite Radio Orbits For Profit

In a research paper titled "Satellite Radio: Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car," Webnoize Inc. estimates that 19.1 million Americans will subscribe to either the XM Satellite Radio or the Sirius Satellite Radio service by 2005, representing 9.3% of the adult population in the United States.

The numbers represent $2.3 billion in subscriber revenue -- more than enough to ensure the success of both companies.

Sirius and XM each intend to provide 100 channels of satellite radio, mostly to American motorists who pay a $9.95 subscription fee.

Due to delays with getting working radios into stores, delayed XM satellite launches, and slow negotiations with automakers, both Sirius and XM are lowering subscription expectations for this year by about 80% (Sirius's new figure is only 20,000 subs!)

Sirius and XM will offer some commercial-free channels and some with about six minutes of commercials per hour. Traditional, terrestrial radio features about 22 minutes of ads per hour.

Investors in Sirius include Ford Motor Co., DaimlerChrysler and venture capital firms. Investors in XM include Clear Channel Communications, Honda, General Motors, DirecTV and venture capital firms.