DenverDXer
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![[*]](./images/iconic/default_icon.gif) posted on 6-4-2010 at 06:37 AM |
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NPR CEO says Internet Radio will replace Terrestrial Radio within 10 years
From FMQB.com:
NPR CEO: Internet Radio Will Replace Terrestrial Within 10 Years
June 3, 2010
Speaking at the D: All Things Digital conference in California, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller predicted that Internet radio could replace traditional,
terrestrial radio as soon as five years from now. Schiller said that over the next 5-10 years, Internet radio will take terrestrial radio's place, but
for now, it is adding to their total audience. According to Barron's, Schiller said that online listening is not cannibalizing their on-air
listenership and the idea is to simply have the widest reach. She added that she expects all cars to offer Internet radio in some form.
Schiller also noted that the company simply calls itself "NPR" now, not National Public Radio. NPR has no plans to charge listeners for online
content. If the content becomes profitable online, stations could possibly be charged at some point, but the end user will never be charged.
Schiller revealed that the NPR app for the iPad has been a huge success, downloaded almost 300,000 times already. This is an impressive number,
considering Apple just revealed that two million iPads were sold in the past two months, putting NPR on almost one in seven iPads out there.
Schiller also said that while she doesn't like doing pledge drives, and that no one really likes them, the tactic works and NPR raises $300 million a
year from them. Only ten percent of NPR listeners currently contribute financially.
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Chriskmusic
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| posted on 6-4-2010 at 08:59 AM |
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This is the entire session
http://d8.allthingsd.com/20100602/vivian-schiller-session/#more-489
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Boondocker
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| posted on 6-4-2010 at 09:19 AM |
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| Quote: | Originally posted by DenverDXer
NPR CEO Vivian Schiller predicted that Internet radio could replace traditional, terrestrial radio as soon as five years from now. ... She added that
she expects all cars to offer Internet radio in some form. |
It won't happen until then.
Until then, there will remain a great digital divide between the rich and poor, the technically savvy and unsavvy. Until that level of access reaches
your mom and dad in Podunk Center, Iowa, terrestrial radio will still be more economically viable. I'm afraid that the wine-brie-and-Ph.D. social
circles in which an NPR CEO turns might leave her with somewhat unrealistic optimism about the advance of technology and what will survive
economically when.
This was the same mis-estimation of which investors in FM music radio were guilty in the '60s and early '70s. FM never became the dominant broadcast
band until the late '80s, when AM-FM finally became standard equipment in mass-market motor vehicles.
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DenverDXer
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| posted on 6-4-2010 at 09:49 AM |
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Good point about the digital divide Boon, but the fleeing of those tech-savvy people away from radio will continue to make it tougher for radio as we
know it today to survive. And it will lead back to the fact that there are too many radio stations on the air. Terrestrial towers won't all
disappear like Schiller says, but maybe some will have to come down.
Wine, brie & PhD ? How about brie, chablis & PhD?
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radioPete
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| posted on 6-4-2010 at 09:54 AM |
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Good points.
What about localism, especially in places with a vibrant music and arts scene?
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Chriskmusic
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| posted on 6-4-2010 at 10:30 AM |
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| Quote: | Originally posted by radioPete
Good points.
What about localism, especially in places with a vibrant music and arts scene? |
AS I've increasingly learned being involved with OUR vibrant music and arts scene - people don't care in general, and those who do are more interested
in newer technologies, than sketchy terrestrial broadcast signals.
That said, I think a window of 5-10 years is a reasonable timetable, with the exception of deeply rural and technologically isolated communities,
where terrestrial can hold out for another decade (give or take five years).
Major auto manufacturers like Ford are installing things like Pandora now, as OEM in dash appliances. That corresponds to about 1983, when I saw FM
begin to emerge in the Nissans and Toyotas, and other foreign makes and models I was selling back then.
Technologically advances and acceptance happen much faster today, and the Internet as a broad band application is much more ingrained in our culture
today - at this point - than FM was in the 70s.
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Boondocker
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| posted on 6-4-2010 at 10:40 AM |
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True, Chris, but it won't be economically dominant until it gains mobility in low-end cars as well as NPR listeners' Volvos.
DXer, touche'! I like your "brie, chablis & Ph.D" better!
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Chriskmusic
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| posted on 6-4-2010 at 10:51 AM |
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| Quote: | Originally posted by Boondocker
True, Chris, but it won't be economically dominant until it gains mobility in low-end cars as well as NPR listeners' Volvos.
DXer, touche'! I like your "brie, chablis & Ph.D" better!
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Volvos, etc have been on the front line of implementing advancing technologies --- and those brie & wine loving public radio people are where the
money is as well.
The money and therefore the development and acceptance of this technology is not about those who drive KIAs etc - though they too are on the leading
edge of convergent technology deployment.
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Boondocker
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| posted on 6-4-2010 at 11:20 AM |
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Perry said it better than I did.
(Click here for original column)
R Is For Reinvention
By Perry Michael Simon
Editor, AllAccess.com
he Letter"
"The Letter," June 4, 2010
Radio as we know it was pronounced dead this week, or close to it. Again.
This time, it happened right in my own neighborhood, over at the resort where a cup of coffee costs more than a reasonably equipped Hyundai, where the
D8 All Things Digital conference was taking place. That's the one where Steve Jobs showed up being all Steve Jobs-y and resolute in his opinion that
he knows more than you about what you want, which is very likely true, and the FCC Chairman talked broadband and everyone who IS anyone in the upper
echelons of technology paid several thousand dollars a head to gather and congratulate themselves on being able to afford several thousand dollars to
be there.
I don't have several thousand dollars to sit in a conference room listening to anyone, so I stayed away, but I did pay attention to what was going on,
and, as I said, radio - the kind you get over the air, on a, you know, radio -- got a grim prognosis again, this time from one of our own, Vivian
Schiller, the President and CEO of NPR, who said that your present garden variety broadcast signal is going to be dead and buried in five to ten
years. Internet audio, she said, will replace terrestrial broadcast radio in that time.
She seemed pretty sure of it, so sure that, she noted, NPR isn't calling itself "National Public Radio" anymore. None of that archaic, passe "radio"
stuff for them. The "R" in NPR stands for nothing. NPR's the brand, and its future is as a "super network" to bring local, regional, and national news
and programming producers and affiliates together. Radio, the medium, is beside the point. When she speaks about NPR's future, "radio" as we've
defined it in the past isn't really the focus.
I think Schiller may be off on the time frame, but she's right in a critical sense: The delivery medium's not what matters for the future. It's what
I've talked about here before. If you paid a lot of money for a license and equipment and tower lease and all that, you're probably not looking at
blue skies from now on. It doesn't mean there won't be growth again, and it doesn't mean that for the immediate future (longer, I think, than
Schiller's projection), terrestrial broadcast radio won't remain the primary audio delivery system for in-car use.
With all the attention given to the growth of online listening, the mass audience still uses radio. There's still value left in that. But when
streaming is common and easy in cars -- and assuming that mobile providers don't find a way, with pricing and usage caps (hello, AT&T), to make people
hesitate to stream lest they go over their maximum -- the audience will be more fragmented, the ad market will be even more problematic, and the
future for FM and, especially, AM will be... interesting. Yeah, let's call it interesting.
On the other hand, if you produce content, we're back to what we've discussed here many times before. The delivery system doesn't matter for you. What
WILL matter is how to turn what you create into enough money to pay the mortgage. That'll come.
In the meantime, there's still radio, there's podcasting, there's streaming, and there are more pipelines needing to be filled with material. On a
creative level, there's a lot of opportunity. Will the economics support it? Maybe the people at the conference can answer that, but I don't think
they can. I don't think anyone can, not yet.
As for me, I'm hopeful we'll see ways to make money creating compelling audio content, whether it's advertising, subscriptions, sponsorship tie-ins,
ancillary business and marketing, or something creative that we're not seeing quite yet. There's a demand for what you do, there's a market, and when
the general economy starts to more aggressively grow... let's hope good things will happen.
The thing that's missing from all these conferences and all this deep thinking about the future, though, is exactly WHAT content will work for the
next generation of delivery and content and listeners. And as for that... well, I think I'll hold that for another column. (Ah, yes, the art of the
tease).
---
I hope that subsequent column talks about being live and local. Knowing Perry's work, I think it will.
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Chriskmusic
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| posted on 6-4-2010 at 01:31 PM |
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Perry seems to be thinking in the present and near-present tense in this letter, as I read it. Anyone see it differently? Maybe Schiller's timetable
is off, but certainly, it cannot be off by very much --- and even if that's the case, in the dash boards of cars of those who listen to NPR
programming, I would think the timetable may be pretty close to reality.
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Gladiator
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| posted on 6-4-2010 at 05:45 PM |
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Maybe Obama will cough up $360 billion* a year to make it all happen...
(* Personal TV, mobile phone, and internet access for 300 million people x $100 per/month x 12 months/year)
Might be too expensive...
Wait... I know!!! Make it part of health care!!!
(That way EVERYONE will have it because the IRS will SEND YOU TO JAIL if you don't buy a plan!!!)
"""Doctor, If I don't get to hear and see Mudflap and John Boy masticate
their funny words every day I get sooooo... depressed... (sigh...)"""
Yep, it will happen... It's "The Change We Need using the change you use to think was yours to spend"...
Then again, three reasons it won't happen...
1. The mobile networks can't handle the traffic now... Steve Jobs' ground breaking $30 per month unlimited AT&T plan for the iPad lasted ONE month...
Getting somebody to foot the "last mile" cost of hooking everybody up to the internet has been the stumbling block since before the dot.bomb days...
(And we still had a robust financial market back then...)
2. All those content servers and cell towers suck juice from coal fired electricity... If you don't care about the CO2 and Global Warming, then worry
about the mercury power plant emissions ending up in your water cress and arugula salad... (Yeah I know... But cows, chickens and pigs all eat veggies
too...)
3. The microwave radiation off all these new tethered (always turned on) devices in everyone's pockets will fry your nads...
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