Terrestrial Radio:

• AM/FM radio is offered free of charge to all consumers and comes as a standard feature in virtually every vehicle, home stereo, and clock radio sold to U.S. consumers.
• Nearly 14,000 radio stations exist nationwide.
• Approximately 230 million Americans choose to listen to terrestrial radio each week.
  

HD Radio:

• Over 1,200 HD Radio stations broadcasting across the nation.
• Recent FCC decision allows radio broadcasters to provide HD Radio subscription services on an experimental basis. This allows HD Radio to compete not only for listening time, but also for subscription dollars.
• HD Digital Radio Alliance—a consortium of broadcasters including Clear Channel Communications, CBS, and ABC Radio—the terrestrial radio industry has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to promoting this technology. 

Internet Radio:

• 2006 Arbitron study found that weekly listenership is up 50% in one year, and now approaches 1-in-5 Americans among key demographic segments.
• Internet radio broadcasts have no geographic limitations and can provide listeners with radio programming from around the country and the world.
• Mobility coming soon. For example: Slacker will allow users to listen on a portable devices, including in their cars.
• Various Internet radio offerings are already available on mobile phones, and Internet radio is expected to become widely available on portable devices, including car radios, by 2008. 

iPods and Other MP3 Players:

• More than 116 million MP3 players have been sold.
• A variety of accessories available to play MP3 players in cars, through the vehicle’s FM radio or tape deck.
• Apple has teamed with Ford, General Motors, and Mazda to provide iPod integration in more than 70 percent of 2007-model US automobiles.

Mobile Phones:

• Approximately 75 percent of all Americans currently own a mobile phone.
• Several major carriers are now offering audio entertainment options (e.g., Sprint, AT&T, Verizon Wireless)
• Approximately 23.5 million wireless subscribers currently own phones with integrated music players.
• AT&T and Apple make the Apple iPhone available for sale this summer.

Adding to the above, there's a number of other companies have announced plans to deliver broadcast audio and video content through mobile phones and other wireless devices. Three companies - MediaFLO USA, HiWire, and Modeo - have acquired nationwide or near-nationwide spectrum to deliver audio/video content through existing wireless service providers and are in the process of implementing, testing, and launching service. A joint venture of Sprint and several cable companies is implementing a similar mobile entertainment platform.

Here's a key takeaway: products need not be identical, to be substitutable. If they are substitutable, then consumers have a choice.

Arbitron and research provider Telephia have released a new study on the mobile audio market - that is audio entertainment provided for mobile phone users - and found that it is a major growth opportunity for terrestrial radio providers.

According to the study, 6% of mobile phone subscribers have used one or more audio features in the last 30 days. Over-the-air song downloading has the largest awareness, followed by subscription-based streaming radio and FM radio reception on cell phones.

Interestingly, the majority of these mobile audio users believe that commercials "are a fair price to pay" for free content on their phones. Over 75% of those surveyed who download content to their phones and listen to FM radio agreed they would be open to commercials.

Do you think terrestrial radio programmers are looking closely at this market? You bet they are.

"Most current mobile audio users prefer the ad-supported model over paying a subscription fee. And this group is a very attractive demographic for advertisers to target as it’s comprised mainly of affluent, tech-savvy early adopters." said Wayman Leung, senior product manager for Telephia.

"For broadcasters looking to expand their platforms beyond terrestrial radio, mobile audio represents an untapped marketplace that they can exploit in partnership with mobile phone networks,” said Neal Bonner, Arbitron product development manager. "Radio broadcasters are uniquely positioned to deliver programming for these promising new audio services."

So, when a major terrestrial radio company like Clear Channel, partners with mSpot - a mobile audio provider with over 1 million subscribers - do you think that constitutes a "nationwide multichannel mobile audio service"? You bet it does.

[FMQB]
[Download The Mobile Audio Media Study (PDF)]

XM Canada and Rogers Communications have inked a deal to provide XM Canada content across the Rogers Wireless, Cable and Internet platforms. Remember, the CRTC gave Rogers the ok to provide satellite radio services to their customers late last year.

The new Rogers-XM Canada service launched this week as part of the Rogers Vision package which provides the incredible ability for wireless video calling as well as YouTube, ET Canada, CSI, CNN and Mobile Television.

Along with all these services, Rogers is offering customers up to 25 channels of XM music, comedy, sports, entertainment and talk programming.

"This is an incredible opportunity to expand the reach of satellite radio," said John Bitove, Chairman and CEO of XM Canada. "With Rogers products available throughout Canada, we will now reach more Canadians than ever before, and this agreement provides us new avenues for awareness and revenue growth."

This is a pretty significant development, and its good to see that XM Canada is getting their foot in the door for these mobile wireless services. These are media companies, and they should be doing everything they can to get that media heard as much as possible.

[Broadcaster Magazine]