Jeffrey M. McCall, professor of communication at DePauw University, published an essay blasting the satellite radio industry in the Indianapolis Star. It's not necessarily an inaccurate piece (mostly about the hurdles of 2006), just one riddled with spin and snide comments that are meant to lead the reader to a theoretical conclusion.

Curious too. Because even though he uses words like "struggling" and "dismal" to describe the satellite radio industry, he doesn't seem to have a problem with boasting about regular radio's "local identity" and how "powerful" the NAB is.

Interesting, because only a year ago Professor Jeffrey M. McCall said this about terrestrial radio, "They need to go back to their strengths, having somebody local there. Think about the stations that don't have [a] word of local news anymore." But but... I thought that was one of their key strengths? Did terrestrial get back that "local identity" in the past year?

Of course, in that same article, McCall hints that the FCC should impose indecency regulations on the satellite radio industry. And only a few months later Jeffrey McCall is quoted as saying, "I don't know that radio is important enough in people's lives to pay for."

Hmmm... anyone get the feeling he doesn't like satellite radio? Naahh.

Oh look, here's another device that allows you to record AM/FM radio and then upload the recordings to your PC.

The Pogo Radio YourWay LX not only let's you record à la carte, but also lets you schedule recordings - up to 10 events - for when you're not around. Up to 8.5 hours can be saved in MP3 format even. All for "only" $199.95.

Funny thing is that the Inno doesn't let you copy the songs to your PC... unless you pay for them (which, to me, might be considered a good thing to the record industry). So why doesn't the RIAA take issue with the Pogo Radio YourWay? Oh right, because it's ripping free radio... and I guess that's ok. 

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Thanks Russell!

 

 

 

It looks like PopCatcher has come out with a new device, dubbed the PopCatcher MusicDock MD-601, which allows you to rip over-the-air radio, chop it up into separate tracks, and convert it to MP3 for your media consumption desires.

Similar to the TimeTrax TraxCatcher, the neat thing about the MusicDock MD-601 is that it includes a dockable 1Gb MP3 player. Once the MP3 player gets filled up, simply download the tunes to your computer, and continue to rip straight from the radio.

Obviously this device differs greatly from the Pioneer Inno - in that it's a bit more blatant in it's interests of "stealing" music - but somehow I don't see it causing the same stir with the RIAA. Of course, if the RIAA wins their lawsuit against XM, devices like this will go the way of the Dodo bird.

[via Engadget] 

HD Radio was just launched in 17 new markets as part of the HD Radio Alliance's national rollout. With the addition of these markets, this brings the tally up to 85 new markets in the past year.

"That means there are now more than 600 new radio stations on the air with HD2 programming that is unique, diverse and local to each market," said HD Digital Radio Alliance President/CEO Peter Ferrara.

Yep, that's 600 new stations broadcasting HD2 programming, with 320 stations in 81 markets owned by Clear Channel. Programming that, as MediaWeek points out, requires station owners to "research and program, in earnest, the HD stations that today are not getting serious attention."

Serious attention is right. Some of HD2 stations in my area only seem to broadcast the same exact thing as the HD1 stations... or just the lovely sound of silence. Only a handful provide unique HD2 content.

Not exactly the best way to attract an early-adopter audience.

According to a recent study by Bridge Ratings, the percentage of respondents who would be interested in purchasing an HD Radio has dropped in the past six months.

As a result Bridge has reduced their original projections for full year 2007 HD Radio sales from 2.1 million to 1.5 million total HD Radio units sold. The study also shows that "awareness" of HD Radio is on the rise, something that terrestrial radio fanboys trade publications would rather focus on, though they are completely ignoring the reduction in full year sales estimates.

Oddly enough, while "awareness" of HD Radio is climbing, knowledge of what exactly HD Radio does is on  the decline. This most likely has to do with the brand confusion between HD Radio and HDTV. Everyone knows what HDTV is, so it's a pretty simple jump to be aware of HD Radio - so perhaps general awareness of the term "HD" is just on the rise itself.

One thing I'd like to kindly point out to the boys at Bridge Ratings. In their 2nd question they asked respondents: Do You know what HD or High Definition Radio is or what it does? - this question in syntactically incorrect. The fact is, the "HD" in "HD Radio" doesn't stand for "high-definition" as it's television brethren does.

As Peter Ferrera, president and CEO of the HD Digital Radio Alliance said, "Quite honestly, it [HD Radio] doesn't stand for anything. The concept was somewhat of a steal from HD television, where viewers know it means better quality"

And Bridge's study punctuates that point.

Here's an interesting bit from Jacob's Media, regarding some analysis by Katz Radio Group showing that, wait for it, satellite radio is insignificant to terrestrial radio's listener penetration. I'm not going to fault Fred Jacobs for giving props to Katz (it's his M.O. afterall), but rather let's take a look at the report itself.

The December 2006 issue of Katz Radio Group's newsletter "Radiowaves" (PDF) focuses on trying to debunk "myths" about Old Media vs New Media (are we really still having this argument?). So of course as a key feature they show a neato chart that illustrates satellite radio's penetration versus terrestrial radio's penetration in the Top 25 U.S. markets.

Now, let's ignore the genius editorial copy in this newsletter (which proclaims that while XM and Sirius will have "disappointing" Christmas sales, HD Radio will have "very robust" sales). Let's just examine the data itself, afterall it's data that Jacob's feels should go out "to the advertising community, as well as media outlets like The New York Times."

First off, the Total U.S. Penetration number. This is probably the most relevant since XM and Sirius have no localization capabilities. See, the data that Katz is showcasing is meant to prove to the world that advertising with terrestrial radio is a smarter choice than advertising with satellite radio. But any advertiser who signs with Sirius or XM would be advertising on a national basis, so examining the penetration in each individual market makes little sense. If "Bobby's Used Car Sales" in Minneapolis wants to talk up this Saturday's midnight bonanza, why would he advertise on a national scale?

But I digress, back to Total U.S. Penetration.

The data, which is provided by Simmons, shows that Satellite Radio penetration is at 4.1% for Sirius and XM combined. Hmm, interesting... 4.1% of what? The Katz feature doesn't say. But since the words "total U.S. penetration" are being used, let's assume they mean the entire U.S. population of 300 million. Ah, so that's 12.3 million people. Sort of close to the combined number of subscribers between XM and Sirius (not counting Q4 subs I assume). That ignores the fact that there's more listeners than subscribers. (Simmons, by the way, is partnered with Sirius).

Next to the 4.1% number, Katz shows where satellite radio would be "ranked" among local terrestrial radio stations. This is an average of the local rankings, based on - Arbitron numbers. Not based on the 4.1% figure. So we have two different figures, from two different research firms, on the same line item. Nice.

But how is that possible since Arbitron has postponed the listing of satellite radio in their books? Ah, that's because Katz used individual market penetration data from Scarborough Research, to determine the rankings among local terrestrial radio. So it's really just an "assumption" more than an actual ranking.

So let's break it down. This "eye opening" data is the combination of data from three different research firms, with different methodologies, and different audience measurements - yet they're combined on associated line items. Brilliant.

Yet again, none of this really matters. Not because satellite radio is a national media - and so comparing local marketshare is just plain silly. And not because a majority of the channels on satellite radio don't even have commercials, so this information serves useless to the advertising community. It's because the satellite radio business model isn't dependent on advertising dollars, like terrestrial radio's is.

Do yourself a favor Katz, and leave the apples and oranges alone. Everybody knows that terrestrial radio has more listeners than satellite does. The real question is, if satellite radio is so insignificant... why do you care?