Mark Ramsey has a great presentation on the future of radio that was shown at the NAB Radio Show a few weeks back. It's an eye-opening presentation, and while it is meant specifically for terrestrial radio executives, it shows a lot about satellite radio's potential.

One very interesting aspect is the listening preferences of the personas that Mercury Research established with this study ("Greg" and "Marsha" - watch the presentation to get a better understanding of them). MP3 player and satellite radio listening actually eats into regular radio listening - surprising because I would have thought that MP3 players would eat into CD listening. But according to this study, its terrestrial radio that suffers.

View the Presentation or you can also download an easy-to-run version of the presentation here.

[via Hear 2.0] 

Looks like a great documentary, and one that personifies why the growth of satellite radio is so important to the music industry as a whole. The funny thing is, I don't think the music industry (the industry mind you, not musicians) realizes it yet.

[Before the Music Dies via the Lee Abrams Blog]

Speaking the National Press Club in Washington, DC, NAB President and CEO David Rehr felt that it was appropriate to attack the satellite radio industry again. Further solidifying that the NAB is not all threatened by the growth potential of satellite radio, Rehr deferred to the numbers in hopes to prove his point:

"...let’s look at the facts. Satellite radio says it has at most 12 million subscribers. By contrast, 260 million people listened to local radio last week." 

The difference here is that satellite radio isn't saying they have 12 million subscribers (12.2  thankyouverymuch). This is fact. This number isn't based off of any extrapolated numbers based on a written diary, but on actual paying subscriptions.

If we want to compare extrapolated numbers, there are on average ~2 listeners per satellite radio subscriber, meaning the true number of comparison is over 24 Million listeners. That's roughly 10% of terrestrial radio's audience. Not bad when you compare an industry that's been around for 5 years, versus one that's been around for 80+ years.

Rehr goes on to bring up the "upwards of 500,000" satellite radio subscribers that "are in empty cars that sit in dealer parking lots." This is the same old song that Rehr has been singing. It's funny that an industry that dominated the 20th century and holds the ear of the majority of the U.S. population, is so concerned with such a relatively small number. It's in fact, very telling. Threatened? No, not at all.

You can read his speech here, or if you're so daring watch the video (RealPlayer) but honestly, it's not really worth it. 

On October 4, 2004, Opie and Anthony started broadcasting on XM Satellite Radio, marking the first time that a major radio show made the move to satellite radio.

Opie & Anthony originally started broadcasting on a premium channel (High Voltage ch 202) that required an additional $1.99 monthly fee (XM was $9.99 a month at the time). In April 2005, the O&A virus was released to the rest of the XM Nation when the premium channel was made available to all subscribers and XM's monthly fee was upped to $12.95.

To celebrate their two-year anniversary, O&A are teasing a 'special announcement' that will be made today for XM listeners. While speculation abounds, it is known that XM registered "The Virus" trademark in late August, so a channel name change could very well be in order.

Opie and Anthony are under contract with XM until 2010, and currently simulcast on 24 terrestrial radio stations. According to FMQB, there is mounting pressure to expand their terrestrial show by 1-hour to 10am in order to better suit Arbitron's morning drive ratings system. Currently terrestrial radio stations are losing out on 1/4 of O&A's ratings when lower rated mid-day programming go on the air (WFNY's audience drops in half when JV & Elvis air).

If you listen to Howard Stern, you're well aware of Sinus Buster. Recently Sinus Buster has decided to utilize the power of uncensored radio and include dirty-dirty language in their latest ad spot. Normally I wouldn't think it's such a big deal, adult-language channels = adult-language commercials, so who cares. Most satellite radio listeners, at least after a couple months of listening, don't take adult-language all that seriously.

But the NAB does apparently.

The cheerleaders trade publication Inside Radio turned to the NAB for comments on this, because who else would YOU turn to for comments on a "no threat" industry? NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton said that "this is a fairly predictable development, and serves as Exhibit A about why Sirius and XM should withdraw all devices in the marketplace that bleed their programming into over-the-air-stations."

Ugh.