When Jeff Smulyan throws in the towel on his NextRadio smartphone FM project, you know the radio industry is calling Dr. Kevorkian.
No one has been more adamant and perhaps even too optimistic about unlocking smartphones to become ready FM radios than Smulyan.
And in the end, his efforts were thwarted by a small handful of incompetent radio CEOs that can somehow find the money to pay for other non-consequential things they want.
I’m thinking of $55 million to buy an unproven podcasting company, wasteful “advertiser” cruises in the south of France, an investment in the cannabis magazine High Times and pissing away millions on Nielsen.
The repercussions for a radio industry that is publicly showing such disregard for activating the FM chips in radio will be great.
Some of the trouble starts immediately.
Read the full article now.
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