Technology360

Bryant Park Project - what we learned

Nearly everything you read on this almost five-year-old blog is only indirectly related to my professional responsibilities, but this is a rare post that relates directly to them  (currently interim CEO at National Public Radio).  A week ago, we announced a joyless decision to discontinue the innovative program, Bryant Park Project, produced in our New York facility across the street from Bryant Park.  The paragraphs below are a lightly edited and linked version of an email that I sent this morning to a BPP staff member in response to a suggestion that we turn BPP into a web site.  Look for another post on the Bryant Park blog from me that provides additional information (see update below). 

I've read about a quarter of the comments about the cancellation on the BPP blog and you're of course characterizing them accurately.  Obviously, you and the rest of the staff have done a great job building loyalty among your audience and in presenting news in a different way.  You have my gratitude for that.   

I'm not sure how someone who has done articles, speeches and consulting about the importance of disruptive investments (in the Clayton Christensen sense), supported the BPP initiative when I was an NPR board member, and is now trying to shape NPR into more of a digital company finds oneself on this side of a decision to end this great project.  It's not  an abandonment of young people.  Look at npr.org/music or our successful podcasting efforts.  Age demos are curves.  This is not meant to diminish BPP, but Morning Edition and All Things Considered have more younger podcast listening than does BPP, and way more radio listening, simply because wide radio carriage delivers awareness of both.  BPP's great contribution wasn't quantitative, though, it was in helping us learn.   

We've/I've learned -- or relearned -- a lot in the process.  Sustaining a new program of this financial magnitude requires attracting users from each of the platforms we can access.  In this case, radio carriage was inadequate and web/podcasting usage was hampered -- here's the relearning part -- by having an appointment program in a medium that doesn't excel in that kind of usage.  Web radio is growing very rapidly (much faster than FM did, for example), but it's almost all to music and, increasingly, to attention-tracking music.   

Perhaps the future of news on the web is in the same user-programmed direction.  I'd like to see good minds like those of the BPP staff think about how we can do good journalism delivered via the web using techniques beyond just throwing up another portal-type web site and expecting people to come to it.  Our new open API release is a great tool for that.  The realities of how people use the web, how web audiences grow through search, and technologies for tracking attention and tailoring content delivery to match how people spend their attention all need to be considered.  Portals still have a place, just as their close cousins radio transmitters do, but we can no longer put all our eggs in that basket.   

NPR will, I hope, be a leader in a new generation of news delivery over multiple platforms, including ones we've never conceived.  But we can't make those 2nd generation investments if we continue 1st generation efforts that aren't consistent with what we know about how media usage is maturing.

Updated, 3:45 p.m. Eastern:  A longer version of this has been posted to the Bryant Park Project blog. 

--Dennis
Twitter: @haarsager

Is Terrestrial Radio Destined to Die?

... asks Celeste Headlee for National Public Radio's Day to Day program.  Here's the set-up:

The Federal Communications Commission is expected to decide next week whether satellite radio companies Sirius and X-M can merge. Satellite radio has roughly 20 million listeners, but new technologies are posing a challenge to market shares.  ¶  Celeste Headlee reports on the development of portable Internet radio. Then NPR's Alex Cohen gets a primer from Wilson Rothman, an editor at Gizmodo.com on the difference between leading radio technologies and Madeleine Brand talks with Mark Ramsey, president of Mercury Radio Research, about why the emergence of new technologies won't spell the end for terrestrial radio.

And you can listen to the audio at this NPR link (0:12:24).  The interview with Ramsey is particularly good.  Thanks to Roger Johnson for the heads up.  --Dennis

Slacker Portable Player (Finally) on the Way

Hate the name (but then I'm an early boomer), but Slacker the audio service looks really interesting.  I've posted about it four other times if you want to catch up (March 15, March 29, April 22 and June 19).  Slacker is a competitor with the so-far better known Pandora and last.fm in that it uses a station metaphor, permitting users to customize music to their preferences and those of others like them.  Rick Broida did a review of the Slacker beta for PC Magazine back in July to which I failed to link at the time.  It's now taking orders for a mid-December delivery of a player that refreshes "station" content via USB or WiFi.  Earlier reports had a satellite receiver dock coming that would give it true wide range mobile coverage.  There are still references to it on the Slacker site, so even though the dock hasn't been released, I presume it's still on the way.  Tom Gideon writes about the new player this month under the title, Slacker Portable Player (Finally) on the Way.  Link:  PC Magazine.

For commentary on this disruptive technology from a radio consultant's perspective, see Mark Ramsey, Slacker's personal radio player finally debuts.  Link:  Hear 2.0. 

Updated 17 November 2007:
Also see Daniel Langendorf, Slacker Portable player is finally here as alternative to iPod and Zune.  Link:  last100.  --Dennis

Public radio audience on Sirius, XM

I just bought a new Jeep that came with Sirius Satellite Radio and that and my professional ties to public radio have led to some curiosity about audience levels for the individual public media and classical channels.  The following is from a Spring 2007 Arbitron report (pdf):

• Sirius total, 619400 AQH/6595000 Cume, TSL 11.8 hours
• Sirius 80, Symphony Hall, 2500/57800, TSL 5.4 hours
• Sirius 85, Metropolitan Opera Radio, 600/20700, TSL 3.7 hours
• Sirius 86, Classical Pops, 4000/77500, TSL 6.5 hours
• Sirius 134, NPR Now, 800/47600, TSL 2.1 hours
• Sirius 135, NPR Talk, 600/35000, TSL 2.2 hours
• Sirius 137, CBC Radio One, 100/6700, TSL 1.9 hours
• Sirius 141, BBC World News, 400/19500, TSL 2.6 hours
• XM total, 798900 AQH/10332900 Cume, TSL 9.7 hours
• XM 110, XM Classics, 6900/162000, TSL 5.4 hours
• XM 112, Vox, 600/39100, TSL 1.9 hours
• XM 113, XM Pops, 7600/174500, TSL 5.5 hours
• XM 131, BBC, 800/48000, TSL 2.1 hours
• XM 132, C-SPAN, 700/26800, TSL 3.3 hours
• XM 133, XM Public Radio, 900/48300, TSL 2.3 hours

So on Sirius, the two NPR channels have only a combined 0.2% share of its overall AQH and on XM, the single non-NPR public radio channel has only a 0.1% share!  So much for the Death Star.  There's no music on the Sirius NPR channels and I don't think there is any on the XM public radio channel, but on Sirius, the three classical channels have 5 times the audience of the two NPR channels, and on XM, the three classical channels have nearly 17 times the audience of the single public radio channel.

For an analysis of this satellite radio ratings report overall, see Fred Jacobs', Calling All Satellites.  Link:  JacoBLOG.  --Dennis

Satellite Radio Subscribers: Running the Numbers

Ryan Saghir has posted charts of the subscriber counts for Sirius and XM.  The former trails the latter by less than 1 million subs (7.7M vs. 8.6M subs) and his analysis is that Sirius has consistently trailed XM's counts by about three quarters.  Link:  Orbitcast.  --Dennis

The New Influentials - report from Bridge Ratings

Bridge Ratings head Dave Van Dyke has a good blog to which I subscribe via RSS and from which I occasionally quote, but I can't find such a feed for the company's main site.  That's too bad, because on those occasions when I remember to check it, I usually find something helpful, such as the subject of this post.  Add a feed, please.

From the press release (click for larger image):

... It is no longer a world of mass media but rather it is a world of communities of customers and consumers. In an attempt to keep up with the changing world that the Internet has brought, the media world has embraced such things as websites to reach their customers, but it isn't enough. Consumers have gravitated to social media and that is where Influence is finding a significant home.  ¶  Influencers or Influentials are a group of very active consumers involved in "conversation marketing" where word-of-mouth is becoming a significant power in spreading dialog with customers, listeners and viewers. It means creating a conversation with your consumers in which useful information is exchanged so that both parties benefit from the relationship. ...

... In the face of technology and a changing consumer experience, the term "radio" now covers not only traditional radio (AM/FM) but also all those digital audio entertainment media that compete with terrestrial radio: Satellite radio, Internet radio, Podcasting, digital music players - even cell phones.  ¶  And because the landscape is changing so quickly and shifting in ways never before expected, radio of all colors and those that advertise on those platforms, must address the problem of audience "scatter" (See Bridge Ratings study #755), i.e. audiences are moving in multiple media dimensions and capturing their attention requires more skill than ever before.  ¶  This is where the Influentials come in. This is the subset of consumer experience which radio must attract. ...

... Among the questions, we asked about the role of traditional radio in their futures. 46% thought it was "Very important" for traditional radio to change with more relatable content. Adding "Somewhat Important" brought the score to 77%.  ¶  Only 11% thought it was "Very Important" for traditional radio to remain the same as it is today. An additional 18% thought it was "Somewhat Important". By this panel of Influentials of all ages, traditional radio has some work to do if it is to remain relevant in the near future. ...

Link:  Bridge Ratings.  --Dennis

 

The future of radio will be an "experience"

Like Mark Ramsey, I've been posting about the dramatic implications of mobile WiMAX for the radio broadcasting and satellite radio businesses.  He brings a credible research perspective to the question and I think this essay is particularly important.  He writes:

... In fact, as this new Google/Sprint deal suggests, the availability of audio entertainment wirelessly and in real-time will permanently alter the very experience and definition of radio.  ¶  That's because the portable radio-like devices will be pointless unless they are much more than redundant to radio. Like the Internet itself these new gadgets will be en ecosystem, a platform for plug-ins which are produced by programmers in every corner of the world and which add an infinite variety of functionality and customization - gadgets which enhance the radio experience in multiple sensory dimensions making it, as a result, much, much more than radio alone. ...

Link:  hear2.0.  --Dennis

Confused about music royalty payments?

Then suggest you read Lee Gomes' unusually lucid explanation of the topic in his column today in the Wall Street Journal (paid subscription required or go to page B1 of the paper edition).  --Dennis

Traditional Radio to Pay for Play?

Emerging from the discussion over Internet music copyright royalty rates in the political realm is the notion now being pushed by the music industry that radio may be hurting rather than helping music sales (think back to decades of music industry payola to the radio industry).  See, for example, Olga Kharif:

... Some experts argue that radio, long seen as an industry ally, is now more of an enemy. In a study published earlier this year, University of Texas at Dallas economics professor Stan Liebowitz argues that radio acts as a substitute for music sales. "I am not disputing that radio is very good in picking which songs are going to become very popular," says Liebowitz, the director of Center for the Analysis of Property Rights & Innovation at the university. "But if radio didn't exist, we could see a 50% to 60% increase in record sales." How so? Instead of listening to the radio in their cars, Americans might buy more CDs or digital recordings, he says.  ¶  It's with such conclusions in mind that the music industry is embarking on a multipronged strategy to get all types of radio paying to play. Spearheading many of these efforts is SoundExchange, which collects royalties on behalf of labels and artists. Headed by former entertainment lawyer John Simson, the organization has emerged as a force in policing the radio side of the industry much as the RIAA has taken the lead in strong-arming illegal downloaders. ...

Link: BusinessWeek.

Liebowitz's work has received a lot of criticism in the blogosphere.  See, for example, Mark Ramsey, [1] Surprise! The music industry lies! Link: hear2.0.  And Music Industry Lies Make Radio Industry Headlines.  Link: hear2.0.  --Dennis

HD Radio ramping up competitive efforts

Bear Stearns hosted the Interep 2007 Radio Symposium from which Ryan Saghir quotes Bear Stearns analyst Robert Peck with these takeaways and more from an iBiquity presentation:

• HD Radio is planning on offering features like enhanced PAD data to show sports scores, stock tickers, and even text-ads.
• On-demand radio, including traffic and weather
• Time-shifting capabilities with pause, record and playback functionality
• The ability to purchase music
• Subscription or opt-in services ...

... And perhaps the most significant announcement was that iBiquity envisions the HD chipset built into MP3 players, PDAs, eTablets, and Smartphones. They expect to make announcements around 2008.

Link:  Orbitcast.  --Dennis