Let’s Play Music Media Trick or Treat?

Let's put on our Larry Craig or Michael Vick costumes and play this year's version of Music Media Trick or Treat.

Trick.

Buy an HD radio and you get many new channels of music and radio programming. No. Buy an HD radio and get taken for a fool. The radio operators, however, won't be taken for fools. They're investing relatively nothing in the future of HD (wisely for them) and propping up the HD proponents with a meaningless HD initiative. (HD is the equivalent of trick or treating and returning home with an Apple that has a razor blade in it).

Treat.

Roku. This is the Internet radio that allows you to&hellip

NAB Is Selling Radio Out (Again)

I don't take any pleasure having to say this, but the National Association of Broadcasters is selling radio out -- again.

I want to start by saying that there are a lot of great and good people at the NAB who care about radio and many broadcasters who serve on its board who do so for all the right reasons.

But somehow, our trade organization as powerful a lobby group as it is, is siding with big money, big broadcasters and those interested in further consolidation.

Consolidation has been a spectacular success and has made the radio industry more vital, more relevant, more vibrant and better able to compete with new&hellip

Satellite Radio Is Radio

Yesterday, I wrote a piece called "NPR Is Not Radio". You can see it by scrolling down or, if you receive my blog via email, log on.

Basically, the gist was that my young students don't consider NPR radio. Radio to them is what consolidators do. They don't much like it.

Someone sent me a copy of the Arbitron National Satellite Report for Spring of 2007 and I've got to tell you that based on the results, satellite radio is radio. Terrestrial radio. And I'm not sure&hellip

NPR Is Not Radio

There was an excellent piece by Sarah McBride in The Wall Street Journal yesterday featuring an interview with National Public Radio CEO Ken Stern.

The article highlights the success of NPR including its widely heard morning show, Morning Edition, which is the most listened to show on non-commercial or commercial radio next to Rush Limbaugh. NPR is a tastemaker in the music world. It has an outstanding reputation for broadcast news (Edward R. Murrow would approve, in my opinion). NPR has been skillful in using the Internet and podcasting as a way to extend&hellip

Media Deregulation: More Is Less

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is on a fast track to rushing through approval of an ambitious plan to almost singlehandedly relax media ownership rules

Satellite Radio is Not the Enemy

The National Association of Broadcasters spent a whopping $4.3 million dollars -- more than five times as much as XM and Sirius according to Frank Saxe at Inside Radio -- to lobby against the proposed satellite merger of the two.

XM spent only $580,000 and Sirius $230,000 (and I'll bet Mel Karmazin choked on that).

Saxe points out that even the powerful Motion Picture Association had a budget of only $220,000 for its interests.

And these figures are only for the first six months of this year!

To be fair, some of the NAB's expenditures were on behalf of the fight against copyright royalties and pushing off any&hellip

Did I Buy an iPhone or a Blackberry?

As many of you know I, like many of you, have obsessed over what kind of smart phone might enhance my business and personal life. About two months ago, I finally made a decision

Radio’s Late Adopters

Did you ever think about how long it took the radio business to fully utilize the FM band?

Some AM radios had FM back in the day, but nobody listened. There was nothing to listen to.

That is until these events occurred: automakers started including FM as an option for new car buyers and then as standard equipment.

And content was created.

Oh yes, and there was the overload of commercials and clutter on the AM dial making FM worth a listen. Previously, you

Imus’ Stock Is Higher Than Citadels

Looks like Don Imus is coming back in a few short weeks.

In August, Tom Taylor, who first broke the story in his excellent Taylor On Radio-Info, quoted Citadel CEO Farid Suleman on the possible return of Don Imus:

A USC Student Consults a Troubled Radio Industry

Some of you tell me you like for me to share my experiences, insights, outrages and epiphanies that I gain from teaching the next generation at USC.

Interestingly, most of my students did their mid-term papers on the problems of the music industry or the potential of interactive media. One addresses the decline of the radio industry. My experience has been that the next generation takes very little glee in witnessing the beginning of the end for terrestrial radio. She is remarkably candid, however, about what can be done.

I thought you

The HD Radio Lunatic Fringe

In the formative days of radio, preachers used to tell their flocks to put their hands on the radio before they asked them to put their hands in their wallets for donations.

In radio, nothing changes.

Now the forces that bring you

RIAA Loses First Copyright Trial

Yesterday, a jury convicted a Minneapolis woman, Jammie Thomas, of downloading music illegally and awarded the record labels $220,000 -- $9,250 for each of 24 songs of which the companies sought damages.

Still, the RIAA and the labels lost.

Hope they enjoy the money

My Virtual NAB Convention

It was only last week when the NAB Radio Convention was happening in Charlotte. Since then I have heard from a lot of people who were not too happy about the state of the radio industry.

In fact, if you read the trade accounts of the radio show, you might agree with me that the NAB was held the in the state of denial.

Nothing earth shattering.

No future blueprint.

Pretty depressing -- unless, of course, you are one of those radio people who think we've got everything under control. You know the type -- obsessed with an industry that isn't really a competitor (satellite). Unimpressed with the gravity of&hellip

Radiohead: We Record, You Decide

Radiohead, the internationally known band, is free from the chains of its record label and able to do anything it thinks is in its best interest.

So, they