I have been reading with great interest the pieces written recently by two of my favorite thinkers

Two proud industries have hit the skids -- radio and the high end coffee business.

Radio is finding that there is no future without the next generation. They lost that long ago and there is little chance of getting it back.

Starbucks has lost its way by over charging and under serving.

Radio has competition from new technology.

Starbucks from McDonalds and Dunkin' Donuts -- two corporations looking to sell "joe" for less.

But that

Two proud industries have hit the skids -- radio and the high end coffee business.

Radio is finding that there is no future without the next generation. They lost that long ago and there is little chance of getting it back.

Starbucks has lost its way by over charging and under serving.

Radio has competition from new technology.

Starbucks from McDonalds and Dunkin' Donuts -- two corporations looking to sell "joe" for less.

But that

Al Gore wrote a book about global warming

Al Gore wrote a book about global warming

I

I

This political season you can

This political season you can

I love Oprah Winfrey.

I

I love Oprah Winfrey.

I

Even Custer knew he couldn

Even Custer knew he couldn

Fourteen years to make an album is too long.

Now the rumors are out there again that Guns N

Fourteen years to make an album is too long.

Now the rumors are out there again that Guns N

It

It

I know what you

I know what you

Johnny Carson used to do a sketch called Carnac The Magnificent in which sidekick Ed McMahon first fed him the answers and "Carnac" then supplied the questions.

McMahon: Anheuser Bush

Carson: Where do you grow Anheuser berries?

Carnac's character was a seer and soothsayer. I thought of him when I received one of the most astonishing emails recently in which a radio executive provided both the questions and answers back before consolidation.

But this email was no laughing matter.

Many of you ask me what I think the industry will look like in the next five or ten years. It

Johnny Carson used to do a sketch called Carnac The Magnificent in which sidekick Ed McMahon first fed him the answers and "Carnac" then supplied the questions.

McMahon: Anheuser Bush

Carson: Where do you grow Anheuser berries?

Carnac's character was a seer and soothsayer. I thought of him when I received one of the most astonishing emails recently in which a radio executive provided both the questions and answers back before consolidation.

But this email was no laughing matter.

Many of you ask me what I think the industry will look like in the next five or ten years. It

I was impressed to see C.L. King radio analyst Jim Boyle tell it like it is in his latest analysis of revenue projections.

Boyle said July's 6-7% projected drop in revenues will be radio's 15th straight monthly decline.

Boyle laid out radio executives when he asked the question "what are radio leaders doing to change direction". Here's his response:

Not much, it seems to us. The industry

I was impressed to see C.L. King radio analyst Jim Boyle tell it like it is in his latest analysis of revenue projections.

Boyle said July's 6-7% projected drop in revenues will be radio's 15th straight monthly decline.

Boyle laid out radio executives when he asked the question "what are radio leaders doing to change direction". Here's his response:

Not much, it seems to us. The industry

There is something seriously wrong when Pandora

There is something seriously wrong when Pandora

New Arbitron People Meter information for July in several of its markets shows some impressive listening by affluent and educated people on the job at their workplace.

The Internet may be responsible for about 3% of the midday listening Monday through Friday and according to Radio & the Internet Publisher Kurt Hanson, that

New Arbitron People Meter information for July in several of its markets shows some impressive listening by affluent and educated people on the job at their workplace.

The Internet may be responsible for about 3% of the midday listening Monday through Friday and according to Radio & the Internet Publisher Kurt Hanson, that

It says a lot when The National Enquirer (known as tabloid trash to former presidential candidate John Edwards) gets it right and The New York Times (known as the paper that gives you

It says a lot when The National Enquirer (known as tabloid trash to former presidential candidate John Edwards) gets it right and The New York Times (known as the paper that gives you

Next year BMW will introduce the Internet to its upscale car buyers.

That

Next year BMW will introduce the Internet to its upscale car buyers.

That

You remember the music industry.

You hardly hear anything about it these days. Even radio gets lots of publicity

You remember the music industry.

You hardly hear anything about it these days. Even radio gets lots of publicity

While I was away last week one of my readers posited that if I was so smart, why don

While I was away last week one of my readers posited that if I was so smart, why don

Radio and Newspapers -- joined at the hip.

I just concluded a week at the Jersey shore

Radio and Newspapers -- joined at the hip.

I just concluded a week at the Jersey shore

Radio and politics make strange bedfellows.

Or, do they?

I don't know what it is with Citadel CEO Farid Suleman.

The more you see him in action, the less impressed you are.

Take his latest sideshow -- the quarterly earnings report for his 78 cent stock.

Suleman reported yesterday that Citadel revenues were down 9% in the second quarter. And some blame was put on Paul Harvey being away from his radio show causing some national ABC Radio Networks advertisers to pull back. The economy -- advertisers.

Blah. Blah. Blah.

Oh ...

Farid proudly reported $20 million in cost savings. (I'm getting&hellip

Radio and politics make strange bedfellows.

Or, do they?

I don't know what it is with Citadel CEO Farid Suleman.

The more you see him in action, the less impressed you are.

Take his latest sideshow -- the quarterly earnings report for his 78 cent stock.

Suleman reported yesterday that Citadel revenues were down 9% in the second quarter. And some blame was put on Paul Harvey being away from his radio show causing some national ABC Radio Networks advertisers to pull back. The economy -- advertisers.

Blah. Blah. Blah.

Oh ...

Farid proudly reported $20 million in cost savings. (I'm getting&hellip

This is one of the toughest pieces I will ever write.

It

This is one of the toughest pieces I will ever write.

It

Katz Radio in conjunction with numerous radio groups is launching an online platform soon that will allow terrestrial stations to be sold along with Internet streams. Only a small amount of their programming is Internet only content. National, regional and geographic targets will be made simple for advertisers when it goes into operation shortly.

The service will also allow for in-stream audio spots, pre-roll audio and video, synchronized banners and display and video ads.

Radio groups on board for the launch include Clear Channel, Cumulus, Cox, Emmis, Entercom, Greater Media, Journal, Nassau, Salem, Saga and Bonneville.&hellip

Katz Radio in conjunction with numerous radio groups is launching an online platform soon that will allow terrestrial stations to be sold along with Internet streams. Only a small amount of their programming is Internet only content. National, regional and geographic targets will be made simple for advertisers when it goes into operation shortly.

The service will also allow for in-stream audio spots, pre-roll audio and video, synchronized banners and display and video ads.

Radio groups on board for the launch include Clear Channel, Cumulus, Cox, Emmis, Entercom, Greater Media, Journal, Nassau, Salem, Saga and Bonneville.&hellip

I want you to know that the word discovery and the concept that it embodies is emerging as a key factor in the media needs of the next generation.

Again and again I'm hearing it and discussing what it means with members of the next generation. It's worth your attention.

Generation Y -- the social generation -- relies on each other in ways previous generations could not imagine. Through Facebook and MySpace and the lesser known social websites, this generation learns about music, performers and ordinary people of interest just like themselves.

Do you know that when they date and obviously rank high on their mates&hellip

I want you to know that the word discovery and the concept that it embodies is emerging as a key factor in the media needs of the next generation.

Again and again I'm hearing it and discussing what it means with members of the next generation. It's worth your attention.

Generation Y -- the social generation -- relies on each other in ways previous generations could not imagine. Through Facebook and MySpace and the lesser known social websites, this generation learns about music, performers and ordinary people of interest just like themselves.

Do you know that when they date and obviously rank high on their mates&hellip

ESPN is a phenomenal operation in many ways.

The company that made a franchise out of "Sports Center" -- not to mention many innovations in sports broadcasting -- is about to do it again in podcasting.

Those of you who read me every day know that I believe podcasting will replace radio for the next generation.

It cooperates with their attention spans -- or lack, thereof -- as well as their need to be in control of starting, stopping, time-delaying or deleting their programming.

What ESPN did was to shift its KSPN, Los Angeles afternoon personality Dave Dameshek from on-air to
This is the future and worth&hellip

ESPN is a phenomenal operation in many ways.

The company that made a franchise out of "Sports Center" -- not to mention many innovations in sports broadcasting -- is about to do it again in podcasting.

Those of you who read me every day know that I believe podcasting will replace radio for the next generation.

It cooperates with their attention spans -- or lack, thereof -- as well as their need to be in control of starting, stopping, time-delaying or deleting their programming.

What ESPN did was to shift its KSPN, Los Angeles afternoon personality Dave Dameshek from on-air to
This is the future and worth&hellip

CBS is selling 50 of its mid-market sized radio stations.

It's never a good thing for a troubled industry when companies want to unload assets -- especially your number two operator.

CBS is thinking that it can make still money in the larger markets and there is some evidence to back up that rationale. Meanwhile, CBS has not announced the list of specific markets where stations are going to be put on the block leading one to believe that it can be flexible based on demand -- or lack of it.

Not good, either.

It remains to be seen what kind of interest there will be for mid-market radio stations in an economy&hellip

CBS is selling 50 of its mid-market sized radio stations.

It's never a good thing for a troubled industry when companies want to unload assets -- especially your number two operator.

CBS is thinking that it can make still money in the larger markets and there is some evidence to back up that rationale. Meanwhile, CBS has not announced the list of specific markets where stations are going to be put on the block leading one to believe that it can be flexible based on demand -- or lack of it.

Not good, either.

It remains to be seen what kind of interest there will be for mid-market radio stations in an economy&hellip

Google has released its new page view rankings and Inside Music Media has increased from a 4 to a 5. For those unfamiliar with this standard, a 7 would be a large aggregator of viewers such as CNET. I am blown away as it has all been done virally.

This is beyond our expectations and is possible only because so many of you forward my content to friends, message boards and post them on other web sites

Clear Channel went private yesterday at long last.

Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital Partners are in charge now. They are investment buyout companies and their business is buying companies to sell them for greater profit.

Clear Channel -- the Mays version -- ended as a colossal failure when shareholders lost confidence and eventually the founders saw privatization as the better option. Running 1,100 stations turned out not to be as easy or as accretive to investors as originally hoped.

Once $90 a share, the investors walked away with $36 yesterday.

We've all heard and read a lot about what went wrong, but&hellip

Google has released its new page view rankings and Inside Music Media has increased from a 4 to a 5. For those unfamiliar with this standard, a 7 would be a large aggregator of viewers such as CNET. I am blown away as it has all been done virally.

This is beyond our expectations and is possible only because so many of you forward my content to friends, message boards and post them on other web sites

Clear Channel went private yesterday at long last.

Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital Partners are in charge now. They are investment buyout companies and their business is buying companies to sell them for greater profit.

Clear Channel -- the Mays version -- ended as a colossal failure when shareholders lost confidence and eventually the founders saw privatization as the better option. Running 1,100 stations turned out not to be as easy or as accretive to investors as originally hoped.

Once $90 a share, the investors walked away with $36 yesterday.

We've all heard and read a lot about what went wrong, but&hellip

So Universal signed the Rolling Stones.

Just great.

It's the latest installment in a sleepy record industry that has no answers and thinks with a calculator. After all, the Stones are a great rock and roll band but they are not exactly the future. The deal was made for the catalogue.

When Trent Reznor has to experiment with ways to sell Nine Inch Nails music in a digital world, you know the record industry no longer cares or no longer has any answers.

Live Nation is not the future of the record business. They sign the likes of Madonna and Kanye to guarantee that their concert venues will be full for years to&hellip

So Universal signed the Rolling Stones.

Just great.

It's the latest installment in a sleepy record industry that has no answers and thinks with a calculator. After all, the Stones are a great rock and roll band but they are not exactly the future. The deal was made for the catalogue.

When Trent Reznor has to experiment with ways to sell Nine Inch Nails music in a digital world, you know the record industry no longer cares or no longer has any answers.

Live Nation is not the future of the record business. They sign the likes of Madonna and Kanye to guarantee that their concert venues will be full for years to&hellip

Eighteen months after the Sirius/XM merger was announed, the FCC finally approved it.

The entire process was a joke -- and a not very funny one at that.

In a world where the Justice Department allows almost any two companies to merge, for some reason this merger was held to another standard. It was pure hypocrisy at best.

It's as if federal regulators, lawyers, lobby groups and traditional media executives fail to understand that it's over for all of them if they don't change. The next generation is calling the shots now -- like it or not. They have control of the delivery system -- the Internet -- so displays of&hellip

Eighteen months after the Sirius/XM merger was announed, the FCC finally approved it.

The entire process was a joke -- and a not very funny one at that.

In a world where the Justice Department allows almost any two companies to merge, for some reason this merger was held to another standard. It was pure hypocrisy at best.

It's as if federal regulators, lawyers, lobby groups and traditional media executives fail to understand that it's over for all of them if they don't change. The next generation is calling the shots now -- like it or not. They have control of the delivery system -- the Internet -- so displays of&hellip

While you may be out there worrying about the future of the radio industry without a new generation coming up through the ranks, Consolidation's Founding Fathers have been working diligently on how to work their "magic" on network syndication.

Farid Suleman, Citadel's $11 million man, has found a way to re-sign a talk show host he needs on several of his stations without spending much money -- a bean counter's dream.

The deal with the devil is with Clear Channel's Premiere Radio Networks for Sean Hannity.

I asked my colleague Joe Benson to help me look inside the Hannity deal and you probably won't be surprised to&hellip

While you may be out there worrying about the future of the radio industry without a new generation coming up through the ranks, Consolidation's Founding Fathers have been working diligently on how to work their "magic" on network syndication.

Farid Suleman, Citadel's $11 million man, has found a way to re-sign a talk show host he needs on several of his stations without spending much money -- a bean counter's dream.

The deal with the devil is with Clear Channel's Premiere Radio Networks for Sean Hannity.

I asked my colleague Joe Benson to help me look inside the Hannity deal and you probably won't be surprised to&hellip

Twenty-one Los Angeles stations have a cume of over one million according to the Arbitron Portable People Meter.

By comparison the diary method reports ten.

Twenty one -- or ten?

Which would you choose?

Don't ask Bob Neil or his band of die-hard diary proponents. They want the People Meter -- their way -- perfect.

And on their timetable - which seems to some as never.

The radio industry is in the tank -- along with other advertising-related businesses. If someone could show you a way to report larger audiences just by improving the methodology, wouldn't you be interested?

You'd think so. But&hellip

Twenty-one Los Angeles stations have a cume of over one million according to the Arbitron Portable People Meter.

By comparison the diary method reports ten.

Twenty one -- or ten?

Which would you choose?

Don't ask Bob Neil or his band of die-hard diary proponents. They want the People Meter -- their way -- perfect.

And on their timetable - which seems to some as never.

The radio industry is in the tank -- along with other advertising-related businesses. If someone could show you a way to report larger audiences just by improving the methodology, wouldn't you be interested?

You'd think so. But&hellip

I love this.

Greater Media's WBT in Charlotte is standing up to the record industry.

Ever cost-conscious these days, WBT has had it with spending $30,000 a year on royalty fees for one show -- "Boomer" Von Cannon's "Time Machine" oldies show.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sorry to see the show go. Maybe, for now, the show needs to go to a music station in town.

WBT, except for that show, a non-music station, is giving the first indication of what it could be like for the record industry if the labels succeed at winning repeal of radio's performance tax exemption.

A House subcommittee has approved a bill that&hellip

I love this.

Greater Media's WBT in Charlotte is standing up to the record industry.

Ever cost-conscious these days, WBT has had it with spending $30,000 a year on royalty fees for one show -- "Boomer" Von Cannon's "Time Machine" oldies show.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sorry to see the show go. Maybe, for now, the show needs to go to a music station in town.

WBT, except for that show, a non-music station, is giving the first indication of what it could be like for the record industry if the labels succeed at winning repeal of radio's performance tax exemption.

A House subcommittee has approved a bill that&hellip

<

br />Last week Jupiter Research came out with some new research that pandered to the radio industry -- reassuring it that radio is the most powerful means of music discovery.

They assert that "Even among the 8% classified as trend setters because of their influence over other music users, radio, at 59%, is second only to recommendations from friends, 62%, in introducing them to new music" -- is just plain wrong.

And it's incorrect to think radio drives music sales the way it used to.

Radio still has a significant influence on Hispanic music and to some extent Hip-Hop. Hispanic listeners continue to love the radio&hellip

<

br />Last week Jupiter Research came out with some new research that pandered to the radio industry -- reassuring it that radio is the most powerful means of music discovery.

They assert that "Even among the 8% classified as trend setters because of their influence over other music users, radio, at 59%, is second only to recommendations from friends, 62%, in introducing them to new music" -- is just plain wrong.

And it's incorrect to think radio drives music sales the way it used to.

Radio still has a significant influence on Hispanic music and to some extent Hip-Hop. Hispanic listeners continue to love the radio&hellip

I was just blown away when I saw the front page of Inside Radio Friday in which they described the results of their special survey on voice tracking.

Now, you know I love Inside Radio.

But the results are from another planet. I know they are telling it like it is so I have to assume that the participants in the study are not really being honest.

Let's break down the findings:

I was just blown away when I saw the front page of Inside Radio Friday in which they described the results of their special survey on voice tracking.

Now, you know I love Inside Radio.

But the results are from another planet. I know they are telling it like it is so I have to assume that the participants in the study are not really being honest.

Let's break down the findings:

The radio industry gets excited at even the mere thought that radio will be included in the Internet and mobile future.

Remember the high-fiving over HD radios that dock an iPod and allow music heard on HD sub-channels to be purchased by listeners on iTunes? It was going to be the next big thing.

It wasn't.

Now that Apple CEO Steve Jobs has introduced iPhone 2.0 with applications that enable a consumer to easily dial into AOL (powered by CBS) or any other station through other apps, many industry execs think this will mean new life for terrestrial radio.

Not so fast.

We're leaving out the sociology -- as&hellip

The radio industry gets excited at even the mere thought that radio will be included in the Internet and mobile future.

Remember the high-fiving over HD radios that dock an iPod and allow music heard on HD sub-channels to be purchased by listeners on iTunes? It was going to be the next big thing.

It wasn't.

Now that Apple CEO Steve Jobs has introduced iPhone 2.0 with applications that enable a consumer to easily dial into AOL (powered by CBS) or any other station through other apps, many industry execs think this will mean new life for terrestrial radio.

Not so fast.

We're leaving out the sociology -- as&hellip

I've got some ideas for broadcasters, new media companies and record labels with regard to the growth industries of Internet and mobile content.

1. Don't confuse a terrestrial radio station's Internet stream with Internet radio. Young listeners aren't confused. There is certainly nothing wrong with a branded commercial radio station distributing their signal via Internet radio. It's helpful for at-work listening where FM reception may not be strong. But it is not Internet radio to many in the next generation.

2. Internet radio could be the radio of the future but not without a stable and fair royalty agreement with&hellip

I've got some ideas for broadcasters, new media companies and record labels with regard to the growth industries of Internet and mobile content.

1. Don't confuse a terrestrial radio station's Internet stream with Internet radio. Young listeners aren't confused. There is certainly nothing wrong with a branded commercial radio station distributing their signal via Internet radio. It's helpful for at-work listening where FM reception may not be strong. But it is not Internet radio to many in the next generation.

2. Internet radio could be the radio of the future but not without a stable and fair royalty agreement with&hellip

Recently I spoke to the broadcasters who attended my teaching seminar at the Conclave in Minneapolis that young listeners want to hear new music -- and that they wished that djs would play their own music.

This corporate record list stuff -- the fabric that runs through all of us -- is overrated.

We know what's best, right?

The playlist must be controlled by a program director. After all, ratings are a factor, aren't they? And what insures against payola like a program director in charge of the playlist?

While radio was out regionalizing and nationalizing its music, the next generation won control of today's&hellip

Recently I spoke to the broadcasters who attended my teaching seminar at the Conclave in Minneapolis that young listeners want to hear new music -- and that they wished that djs would play their own music.

This corporate record list stuff -- the fabric that runs through all of us -- is overrated.

We know what's best, right?

The playlist must be controlled by a program director. After all, ratings are a factor, aren't they? And what insures against payola like a program director in charge of the playlist?

While radio was out regionalizing and nationalizing its music, the next generation won control of today's&hellip

Yesterday I wrote about the coming of flash drives and factory installed hard drives in automobiles as yet another threat to the radio and record industries.

I asked at the end of my piece (scroll down to read it, if you like) -- game over? To which I answered - game changer.

So, let's build upon this latest "opportunity" disguised as more bad news to see if we can come up with a list of action steps that might be helpful.

1. Try not to confuse terrestrial radio with new media. Terrestrial radio was damn good for many years and, although it has suffered from corporate budget cutting and lack of leadership, could be&hellip

Yesterday I wrote about the coming of flash drives and factory installed hard drives in automobiles as yet another threat to the radio and record industries.

I asked at the end of my piece (scroll down to read it, if you like) -- game over? To which I answered - game changer.

So, let's build upon this latest "opportunity" disguised as more bad news to see if we can come up with a list of action steps that might be helpful.

1. Try not to confuse terrestrial radio with new media. Terrestrial radio was damn good for many years and, although it has suffered from corporate budget cutting and lack of leadership, could be&hellip

Young people tell me they love two things that we should keep an eye on:

1. Cars that have large hard drives built into their on-board entertainment center -- allowing them to download music from other sources for personalized listening.

2. Portable flash drives that hold whatever they want -- use your imagination. In fact, the students from one of my labs last year brought in a flash drive that looked like a guitar and held lots and lots of entertainment. Very cool.

Then, a few days ago, one of my readers wrote:

Recently I met a man who frequently travels to China and attends trade shows. He told me the&hellip

Young people tell me they love two things that we should keep an eye on:

1. Cars that have large hard drives built into their on-board entertainment center -- allowing them to download music from other sources for personalized listening.

2. Portable flash drives that hold whatever they want -- use your imagination. In fact, the students from one of my labs last year brought in a flash drive that looked like a guitar and held lots and lots of entertainment. Very cool.

Then, a few days ago, one of my readers wrote:

Recently I met a man who frequently travels to China and attends trade shows. He told me the&hellip

There is a military term for a situation caused by too many inept officers -- clustering -- referring to the insignia worn by majors and LT. Colonels, oak leaf clusters.

In Clint Eastwood's 1983 movie about the invasion of Grenada (Heartbreak Ridge), Eastwood, who played Gunnery Sergeant Highway had this dialogue with a colonel during a readiness exercise.

Col. Meyers: What's your assessment of this situation, Gunny?

Highway: It's a cluster f@#K, sir.

Col. Meyers: Say again?

Highway: Marines are fighting men. They shouldn't be sitting around on their sorry asses filling out request forms for&hellip

There is a military term for a situation caused by too many inept officers -- clustering -- referring to the insignia worn by majors and LT. Colonels, oak leaf clusters.

In Clint Eastwood's 1983 movie about the invasion of Grenada (Heartbreak Ridge), Eastwood, who played Gunnery Sergeant Highway had this dialogue with a colonel during a readiness exercise.

Col. Meyers: What's your assessment of this situation, Gunny?

Highway: It's a cluster f@#K, sir.

Col. Meyers: Say again?

Highway: Marines are fighting men. They shouldn't be sitting around on their sorry asses filling out request forms for&hellip

(Pictured left, front, then clockwise next to John Sebastian, Bill Gardner and Todd Wallace)

At our monthly lunch out here in Scottsdale, John Sebastian, Bill Gardner, Todd Wallace and I kicked around a lot of topics as is our custom. But the one that I'd like to share with you today is what the radio industry could have been if Clear Channel had not become the largest owner and radio's default industry leader.

What a day for this conversation!

Citadel's stock closed at just 87 cents! I mean, that's not possible. You'd have to work at making a company with so many assets and talented people worth less than $1 a&hellip

(Pictured left, front, then clockwise next to John Sebastian, Bill Gardner and Todd Wallace)

At our monthly lunch out here in Scottsdale, John Sebastian, Bill Gardner, Todd Wallace and I kicked around a lot of topics as is our custom. But the one that I'd like to share with you today is what the radio industry could have been if Clear Channel had not become the largest owner and radio's default industry leader.

What a day for this conversation!

Citadel's stock closed at just 87 cents! I mean, that's not possible. You'd have to work at making a company with so many assets and talented people worth less than $1 a&hellip

Shane Media's Lee Logan is a smart fellow. After I wrote about the ingrates at the record labels who are trying to get radio's performance royalty exemption revoked, he contacted me with a genius idea.

Pay it.

That's right, pay the labels their extra tax -- the rights fee.

Oh, but it gets much better that. Here's Lee's premise:

Let

Shane Media's Lee Logan is a smart fellow. After I wrote about the ingrates at the record labels who are trying to get radio's performance royalty exemption revoked, he contacted me with a genius idea.

Pay it.

That's right, pay the labels their extra tax -- the rights fee.

Oh, but it gets much better that. Here's Lee's premise:

Let

I'm kidding -- just kidding.

A little.

Let's say some of you are right and I'm wrong -- Tribune CEO Randy Michaels is raiding Clear Channel for radio talent to reinvent -- newspapers.

That's what some people believe.

Now Randy has hired former KIIS-FM, Los Angeles GM and later Clear Channel market and regional exec Roy Laughlin as a Special Consultant. Former Jacor employee Jana Gavin is now Senior Director/Business Development for the Tribune Interactive division.

This adds to the many former Jacor (and Clear Channel) employees who have joined Randy & the Rainbows in their effort to reinvent the&hellip

I'm kidding -- just kidding.

A little.

Let's say some of you are right and I'm wrong -- Tribune CEO Randy Michaels is raiding Clear Channel for radio talent to reinvent -- newspapers.

That's what some people believe.

Now Randy has hired former KIIS-FM, Los Angeles GM and later Clear Channel market and regional exec Roy Laughlin as a Special Consultant. Former Jacor employee Jana Gavin is now Senior Director/Business Development for the Tribune Interactive division.

This adds to the many former Jacor (and Clear Channel) employees who have joined Randy & the Rainbows in their effort to reinvent the&hellip

Back in the Reagan years the move began to repeal what was thought to be radio's burdensome Fairness Doctrine.

No need for a provision requiring equal time for other sides of the issues -- so the thinking went. The marketplace would take care of itself. There were enough voices.

What followed was some of radio's best talk franchises -- The Rush Limbaugh's and the Sean Hannity's and many, many others in between that led to the golden age of political talk radio.

A lot of stations made money and the value of radio properties grew -- in part because talk radio thrived. Talk radio (all news and later sports) helped to&hellip

Back in the Reagan years the move began to repeal what was thought to be radio's burdensome Fairness Doctrine.

No need for a provision requiring equal time for other sides of the issues -- so the thinking went. The marketplace would take care of itself. There were enough voices.

What followed was some of radio's best talk franchises -- The Rush Limbaugh's and the Sean Hannity's and many, many others in between that led to the golden age of political talk radio.

A lot of stations made money and the value of radio properties grew -- in part because talk radio thrived. Talk radio (all news and later sports) helped to&hellip

You've got to hand it to Clear Channel CEO John Hogan. He could teach President Bush a thing or two about how to handle the quagmire in Iraq.

When Hogan loses, he simply declares victory and withdraws.

That's what he did last week when Hogan circulated an ominous email around to Clear Channel employees to tell them that his personal crusade to lower commercial loads -- Less is More -- is so successful that in some cases Clear Channel stations will be free to -- ignore it.

Hogan describes Less Is More as an "unqualified" success. He's right about that choice of word -- unqualified.

The dictionary's preferred&hellip

You've got to hand it to Clear Channel CEO John Hogan. He could teach President Bush a thing or two about how to handle the quagmire in Iraq.

When Hogan loses, he simply declares victory and withdraws.

That's what he did last week when Hogan circulated an ominous email around to Clear Channel employees to tell them that his personal crusade to lower commercial loads -- Less is More -- is so successful that in some cases Clear Channel stations will be free to -- ignore it.

Hogan describes Less Is More as an "unqualified" success. He's right about that choice of word -- unqualified.

The dictionary's preferred&hellip

Those HD advocates have gone and done it.

As Kurt Hanson reported in RAIN recently:

The ASCAP has proposed to the Radio Music License Committee that HD2 radio pay a music license royalty. Broadcasters maintain that since they're generating no revenue from their HD2 channels, a royalty isn't justified. In making their case, the ASCAP cited research, long ago debunked, that predicted 30 million HD receivers in the market by 2012.

It looks like the record industry is going to stuff the braggadocio that the HD Alliance calls promotion down their throats.

Hell, if I saw the radio industry bragging about HD's 30&hellip

Those HD advocates have gone and done it.

As Kurt Hanson reported in RAIN recently:

The ASCAP has proposed to the Radio Music License Committee that HD2 radio pay a music license royalty. Broadcasters maintain that since they're generating no revenue from their HD2 channels, a royalty isn't justified. In making their case, the ASCAP cited research, long ago debunked, that predicted 30 million HD receivers in the market by 2012.

It looks like the record industry is going to stuff the braggadocio that the HD Alliance calls promotion down their throats.

Hell, if I saw the radio industry bragging about HD's 30&hellip

Chrysler announced recently that starting with many of next year's models, it will offer a new option that will include WiFi's capability to bring the Internet to the car as a dealer installed option.

Luckily for the radio industry the auto industry is also in the tank.

As a recent article in the LA Times put it:

Have you ever thought rush hour on the 405 Freeway might be more bearable if you could check your e-mail, shop for a book on Amazon, place some bids on EBay and maybe even, if nobody is looking, download a little porn?

Now, drivers and their passengers will have access to email while in the car as well&hellip

Chrysler announced recently that starting with many of next year's models, it will offer a new option that will include WiFi's capability to bring the Internet to the car as a dealer installed option.

Luckily for the radio industry the auto industry is also in the tank.

As a recent article in the LA Times put it:

Have you ever thought rush hour on the 405 Freeway might be more bearable if you could check your e-mail, shop for a book on Amazon, place some bids on EBay and maybe even, if nobody is looking, download a little porn?

Now, drivers and their passengers will have access to email while in the car as well&hellip

The shareholder vote is in just a couple of weeks.

All Access was reporting over the weekend that Clear Channel President John Hogan will be returning for at least another five years -- longer than either Barack Obama or John McCain will serve their first term as president.

You can't just sit dispassionately by when the largest radio group goes private because what they do still matters a lot to everyone else.

There are lots of folks out there who think the two buyout companies Lee Partners and Bain Capital are all of a sudden operators, but that's not realistic. Buyout firms don't make their money off of free cash&hellip

I just returned from a fabulous time at Tom Kay's Conclave in Minneapolis where I had the honor of doing a two-hour teaching seminar for a most remarkable group of learners.

These are radio people who got up to arrive on time for an 8 am session on The Next Generation of Radio.

I didn't know what to expect.

For the past four years or so I have been teaching young, idealistic college students -- the heart of Generation Y. I have learned a lot from them -- not only about their likes and dislikes vis-a-vis the media business -- but their views about what's wrong with the record business and radio.

Our session at&hellip

I love to watch the legendary, brilliant programmer Lee Abrams talk about Bob Dylan's XM Satellite radio show "Theme Time Radio Hour" which is heard on XM's Deep Tracks channel every Wednesday at 10 a.m. EDT.

Now that's a great reason to have satellite radio.

Dylan's show was the topic of a Friday Wall Street Journal article which describes it as "Each week Mr. Dylan plucks a topic out of the air -- colors, trains, death and taxes, spring cleaning -- and plays recordings of a dozen songs whose lyrics relate to it in some way. In between songs he chats about the music and its makers, interspersing his gnomic mini-lectures&hellip

Have you heard about Twitter?

It's the hottest new social networking tool that allows people to "stay in touch" all day by exchanging frequent answers to the question "How are you doing?" (or as we say in South Philadelphia, "How ya doin'").

Try this thing to get the hang of it. The next generation will.

Less than 200 words -- so you have to keep it short.

And what are young people saying on this site? Well, they are narrating their lives -- from the meaningless to the significant and they are doing it in real time.

It's just another of the many things listeners can do&hellip

I thought it was bad enough when Eagles lead singer Don Henley demanded that radio pay additional performance taxes.

But now, the insult of all insults.

Nancy Sinatra, the unplatinum daughter of the Chairman of the Board is lobbying Congress along with other ingrates to see if Congress can do something. (Sorry about the imagery here

The latest Don Imus mess is on Farid.

The CEO of Citadel -- the guy who brought Don Imus back from the dead after he insulted the Rutgers girls basketball team -- should be held accountable for his decision.

Not that Farid Suleman is ever held accountable for his many mistakes running Citadel.

The $1.42 stock price.

The excessive $11 million compensation -- including taxes paid with the good judgment of the Citadel board of directors.

Shoddy executive oversight.

Turns out Suleman's former company, CBS, was right after all.

CBS canned Imus' tired act when he went over the line about a year and a&hellip

Thomas Lee Partners out of Boston and Bain Capital, the buyout firms behind the Clear Channel privatization (and many other buyouts) have one way of doing radio.

They buy a large established industry leader, cut expenses to the bone, operate it until the market allows them to -- sell it for a greater profit than what they paid.

That's the Lee & Bain way -- nothing wrong with it -- if you're an investor.

But for operators, there is another way.

Last week, Jerry Lee, the owner for life of WBEB (B-101), Philadelphia showed the industry what operators do when they want to actually keep the stations and make lots&hellip

I am expanding my private practice to include advising new media and broadcasting on future content models that could reap financial benefits.

And here's why.

One of the many concepts that I believe passes the litmus test with the next generation

C. Montgomery Burns is

Version 1.0 was Lowry Mays and Red McCombs building their little Texas radio group pre-consolidation.

And 2.0 was Lowry and sons Randall and Mark with Randy Michaels telling them how to build radio clusters. It was when Jacor and AM/FM were acquired to build the 1,10o station platform Clear Channel used to dominate the industry, that is -- until it ran out of gas.

Now, what's Clear Channel 3.0 likely to look like.

Clear Channel is aggressively moving to get the new deal to take the company private approved by its shareholders. The Mayses have moved the voting date up to the end of July -- smart tactic in an industry&hellip

First, the record labels:

1. Stop the RIAA lawsuits against college kids and youth by declaring victory and giving up on this failed strategy that has backfired by increasing piracy not stopping it.

2. Give up trying to sell monthly subscription plans so listeners can access millions of songs

Sometimes radio people say the darndest things

The NAB Board meeting in Washington this week has FM on cellphones as a big agenda item.

Too bad the NAB and most radio CEOs do not understand Apple CEO Steve Jobs' thinking in continuing to exclude FM radio from the increasingly popular iPhone.

Radio people think that if you build it, they will listen.

As I frequently point out, you have to take a closer look at the next generation and why they will reject radio -- even on an iPhone.

The radio industry fails to grasp that this new generation does not listen to its entertainment the way older folks did. You may see a young person with an iPod glued to his or&hellip

The CEOs at Cox, Saga and ICBC Holdings (Inner City) climbed out of their sandboxes briefly last week to shoot rubber bands at Arbitron once again over the issue of People Meter accreditation.

At least, that

Tribune owner Sam Zell has declared newspapers dead.

In fact he reportedly memoed Tribune staffers recently "What has become clear as we have gotten intimately familiar with the business is that the model for newspapers no longer works".

So Zell

Leave it to the Federal Communications Commission to come up with a way to control the free Internet.

It is proposing giving away broadband Internet for free in exchange for their right to control it.

There is an upcoming airwaves auction and if the FCC has its way the winner would be offering free wireless Internet to most consumers

On May 31st 2008, I read an obituary for radio.

No, I didn

I was in New York last week on business and had the occasion to dine at my favorite Italian restaurant in the Village

My mother lived to a ripe old age and there are two things I will always remember from her lips to mine.

One, there is no city better than Hoboken, New Jersey, where she and I were born

Can you name the best run radio group that has the following characteristics?

1. Never had a layoff. Could have made more money by running a leaner staff or cut back in hard times, but chose never to layoff an employee.

2. They honor their employees constantly through financial rewards, special perks and/or recognition under the theory that without happy employees the end user will not be happy.

3. When their people get sick, the company takes care of them. They continue to have their health coverage and insurance, but when something out of the ordinary happens the employee gets cut some extra slack because&hellip

Perhaps you saw why the world

At the end of June I am going to teach an interactive session for radio executives at the Conclave in Minneapolis. It will be conducted as I have taught classes for my university students over the past four years

There isn

I don

CBS CEO Les Moonves took out his checkbook last week and agreed to pay $1.8 billion in cash for CNET.com.

CBS is a TV and radio company but increasingly you can see how Moonves is not going to be left behind the way Tom Freston was when he disappointed their boss

Record labels just can

I received a very inspirational email from a long time friend that has prompted me to put together the essential qualities of the next generation of program directors for terrestrial radio.

In doing so I am taking into account that radio today isn

Look, I know Paul Harvey is old.

He is a remarkable throwback to another generation

All too often lately the major broadcast groups have been firing able and talented people to save money.

Last week CBS pulled off a double firing of a PD and morning personality with surgical precision.

WYSP, Philadelphia morning jock Kidd Chris lost his gig because of a March 21st in-studio guest named Lady Gash who sang the song

(On the road with the Flyers NHL playoffs in Philadelphia pictured with my daughter, Daria and wife, Cheryl).

A few weeks back the RIAA was dealt a blow in a music piracy case. Perhaps you saw it.

A judge in the Atlantic vs. Howell case ruled that the sole act of making a music file available in a "shared folder" does not violate copyright laws.

The RIAA had been arguing that a sound recording that is ripped to a computer and stored in, say, a shared folder, constitutes unlawful use. Even the RIAA doesn

Did you see how Clear Channel began saying publicly that the Lee and Bain bailout may never happen? Then, a few days later brinksmanship brought the banks and Clear Channel together to arrive at a lower, more realistic purchase price at $36 a share along with other considerations. Now their fate is in the hands of the shareholders once again.

Leave it to the largest, storied radio group to come up with one of the weirdest sales that has ever graced our industry.

First, Clear Channel honchos do a gut check and find nothing there

The radio business is really the airline business.

Flying back to Philly for the hockey playoffs this week, it occurred to me that the similarities are so striking.

Radio and airlines crave consolidation and each has failed miserably as consolidated industries. That doesn

I saw a video of Randy Michaels speaking to a group of newspaper people at the Allentown Morning Call.

I

Radio One CEO Alfred Liggins doesn

No, the CEO of Citadel is not talking about his company's stock price -- that's much lower than half.

At about $1.50 a share, what's half -- 75 cents?

Farid Suleman, the bean counter loosely disguised as a wannabe Jack Welsh, is considering cutting his sales staff.

Brilliant.

And you wonder why this hapless radio industry can't get it turned around.

He believes as much as half of revenues would come in with or without a salesperson. That's right. Open mouth, put foot in. Suleman as quoted in Inside Radio added "why are we paying commissions for that revenue?"

Note that he did not say why Citadel&hellip

My longtime friend Dan Mason, the CBS Radio President who is leading the dramatic turnaround of the company made a statement the other day about technology and radio.

Dan reportedly told his new media road show in New York that "$1 billion in ad dollars were telling you that the iPod or satellite radio will lead to the death of radio. That's a myth. To say that an iPod or satellite radio, with little or no human connection, will ever replace radio is absurd." (from PaidContent.org).

Well, maybe not satellite radio, but iPods have already changed the dynamic for radio. Just ask a young person who is not listening to a&hellip

Radio groups that have been chopping away at expenses are beginning to see the ratings repercussions of their actions.

Morning shows -- down and in some cases out.

Total ratings down (especially with a weakened morning show).

The decision makers decided they had to cut to the bone and their companies are getting ready to pay the price. You can't get top rates for declining shares. The economic downturn is prompting some advertisers not to buy as deeply in the top ranked stations for their desired demographics. Where they might have bought four or five deep, soon it will be three. After all, these are hard times&hellip

When public radio has to consider making its programs shorter because young listeners won't listen, we officially have a documented attention span problem.

Of course, it doesn't take any more than a few minutes in the company of the next generation before you realize that the number one problem going forward isn't too many commercials or too little new music or stupid djs or lack of social networking.

That, too.

But the inability or unwillingness of young listeners to extend their listening is problem number one. It deserves discussion, understanding and then innovation.

In NPR's case listening is up but for&hellip

For those who may not remember it, radio (back when it did great on-air contests) used to feature a game called Beat the Bomb.

My first recollection of it was at the legendary top 40 station WFIL in Philadelphia -- either under the brilliant programmers Jim Hilliard or the late Jay Cook.

A listener is chosen at random and the sound effect of a bomb ticks for up to 60 seconds on-the-air. However, anytime along the way if the bomb goes off, the listener loses a chance to win up to $60. The idea is to shout STOP before the bomb goes off or you lose everything.

Today's radio industry is playing a deadlier version of&hellip

So much for Radiohead's publicity-laced experiment to give their music away for free online -- or more precisely, let their fans determine if they are going to pay for it.

The band recently announced there will be no more pay-if-you-like releases from Radiohead.

I read an account of the story online the other day and the reporter wrote "The band remained quiet about whether the experiment was a success with so many fans opting not to pay anything for "In Rainbows"."

Well, let's see.

If it were a success, don't you think Radiohead would be repeating the offer? Instead, they're moving on. But to what?

The&hellip

Now that the Polk iSonic is on sale in Apple stores nationwide -- and soon to be available at Best Buy can we talk?

I mean this is as close as an HD radio is going to get to Apple coolness.

The Polk iSonic lets listeners buy the songs they hear on HD radio stations -- that is, if only there were HD radio stations and listeners to those HD stations.

If you want to hear loud laughing just describe the iSonic to a group of young people.

"You can now 1) buy an HD radio that has a 2) built in feature that allows users to tag whatever song they want. Then all you have to do is 3) sync your iPod and you get a chance&hellip

There's new research I thought you'd like to know about that is in direct conflict with what I have been observing in my work with the next generation.

I'll report. You decide.

Let's breakdown a fairly recent RCW Wireless news account:

"A recent study from TNS Global Telecoms found that 43% of all mobile users listen to some form of music on their phones, and 73% of smartphones double as music players. And while the use of MP3 players on phones is up 78% in the last year, mobile radio uptake has seen a whopping&hellip

As many of you know I love ice hockey.

More specifically, I love the Philadelphia Flyers for their physical play and great passion for winning.

I see a lot of similarities between hockey and life. In fact my son and daughter were raised on Flyers hockey from six months old.

The Flyers never give up, I told them.

Look at the Hound (Bob Kelly) in the corner mucking it up trying to make something happen, I used to say. The lesson is obvious.

Stand up and fight for what's worth fighting for.

When you lose, you don't really lose unless you give up. There's always something to build on.

But&hellip

Radio has had an illustrious history of selling merchandise and services.

That's why Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama can't buy enough of it when they are battling in Democratic primary states. It's cheap (especially for politicians) but it's not all that prohibitive for the rest of the advertising world.

Still, as powerful as radio is with older listeners, there is one thing it cannot sell even to them -- HD radios.

You can hardly find a person who owns an HD radio in the real world. Broadcasters know this because they don't program anything compelling to make consumers even consider buying an HD radio. They are&hellip

Clear Channel used to be the one and only Evil Empire.

I didn't give them that name.

I believe Eric Boehlert of Salon came up with the greatest description of a ruthless company that doesn't -- in my opinion -- care for its audience or its personnel.

But today there are even more Evil Empires.

Citadel is one of them.

Radio One could be another.

If enough people have been screwed (and I'm including shareholders, now) then fill in the blank for your favorite nominee for Evil Empire.

As some of you know, my dealings with the original Evil Empire resulted from irritating them with news accounts&hellip

Did someone forget to tell Apple CEO Steve Jobs that we

Sony BMG has agreed to allow Nokia to get access to its entire catalog following the lead of the largest label aggregator Universal Music.

The labels' "Comes With Music" program lets users who buy certain cell phone models download any song from the participating record company catalog to their cell phone or computer for the first 12 months.

Universal gets $35 per phone. No word on Sony BMG's take.

The cost to the consumer is likely to be higher -- what else did you expect -- although Nokia says it is eating some of the cost of providing the music as part of the cell phone purchase.

But "Comes With Music" comes&hellip

Sounds funny doesn

I read in Inside Radio last week that Citadel

Radio is losing the local and out of home franchises.

Within a few years, radio's last line of defense will likely be penetrated by the new WiFi and WiMax technologies that will allow the Internet to be accessed on the go in automobiles.

Detroit Radio Advertising Group President and CEO Bill Burton came up with the fabulous motto "An Automobile Is a Radio With Four Wheels" many years ago and it is and has been the most dramatic statement of radio's out of home dominance. We mean no disrespect to Bill or his fine organization as we look ahead to changes that may be on the horizon, but an automobile could one day be the&hellip

When cable companies, cellular operators and Google think about going into business together, I listen.

Not that I don't think that they will eventually kill each other, but ...

Comcast, Time Warner and other companies are thinking about financing a new wireless company that would be a joint venture of Sprint and Clearwire to build a nationwide WiMax wireless network.

To build a WiMax network would cost billions. Sprint knows. It has tried to raise the money.

If you're a radio person thinking, "so what", wake up.

WiMax is even better than WiFi -- that very local wireless way computers and phones can&hellip

Just when the radio industry needs straight talk it gets this.

The head of the NAB sounding clueless and blaming radio's problems on being taken for granted.

Really.

It happened yesterday at his organization's annual convention in Las Vegas.

David Rehr dispensed some kind of joy juice at a time when an industry is being left behind by technology and it's own poor management. Many of you emailed me press coverage of his remarks and you were not pleased.

I'm not going to sit silently by while radio audiences decline, good people lose their jobs, the next generation is allowed to get away without a fight --&hellip

There's a new chip coming that will allow iPods, mobile phones and other consumer devices to hold as many as 500,000 songs.

The biggest iPod currently holds only 40,000 tunes.

Still, that's about 39,700 more than some radio stations play -- which is exactly part of the problem with the next generation.

IBM is behind this new chip. It will cost less to produce. Require much less power to operate -- maybe for a week at a time on one charge and it may last decades. (The last benefit sounds nice but very few of today's consumers would be caught with even a five-year old MP3 device or cell phone).

They call this&hellip

From time to time I like to share the insights of the next generation as it pertains to traditional media.

I do this because there is a great disconnect between what media executives think they want and what these quirky, Gen Y'ers say they want.

When I arrived at USC four years ago for my radio sabbatical, I was shocked to find young people so distanced from radio. It didn't take me long to find out why. Other alternatives. More time on the computer, cell phones, social networks like Facebook, but the worst cut of all was the one that could have been prevented.

In my observation (and I emphasize you're reading my&hellip

Look, this is getting ridiculous.

It's insulting.

Citadel CEO Farid Suleman made over $11 million in 2007 -- and that's without his usual bonus. Oh, and his pay is down from almost $18 million the previous year -- if that makes you feel any better.

I don't.

Didn't this guy put a lot of people out of work at Citadel when the last devastating quarterly results came out?

Didn't he save his neck and reap the rewards while vowing publicly to get a grip on expenses -- spoken like the true bean counter he is.

Good people. Fired.

Didn't this guy's stations -- you know in tiny markets like San&hellip

Who can live without a cell phone these days

It

The new USC Annenberg Digital Future study is out and it's worth consulting for a snapshot of where traditional vs. new media stands. It provides some insight as to how the audience is changing.

Some in traditional media think that radio can be fixed (just about every consolidator says so) and that even newspapers can be revived (Tribune Company's pitch). But as you'll see, competing in the digital world is far more complicated.

This is from the latest USC Annenberg Digital Future study:

The Digital Future Report found that the Internet is perceived by users to be a more important source of information for them --&hellip

Look at all this talent -- in one place.

Randy Michaels. Bobby Lawrence. Frank Wood. Lee Abrams. Jerry Kersting. Mark Chase. Steve Gable. The last three stolen away from Clear Channel late last week.

It's the best radio team that doesn't have any radio stations (except WGN).

Sam Zell and Randy Michaels are sly foxes. Zell owns newspapers (what a dying business) and TV stations (ouch) and very little radio.

I know I always say radio people are good enough to do many things other than radio, but maybe those of you out there who have had problems believing me about what I think Zell/Michaels are up to will&hellip

You have to hand it to the record labels.

When they get a good idea, they get it too late.

Take the new music service that three of the big four labels (Universal, Warner and SonyBMG) are going to launch within the next few months that they think will revolutionize the digital music business.

Dream on.

The labels are eight years late and a dollar short.

The joint venture announced yesterday with MySpace is meant to be a digital lifeline for both companies. The three labels are hoping MySpace's 110 million users will help both of them grow.

But the labels' hatred for Apple's Steve Jobs is showing.&hellip

The news business is imploding.

CBS Television just recently let a couple of hundred employees go at its local TV news operations. A few weeks earlier CBS pruned its radio news operations nationwide.

Newsweek is offering over 100 of its staffers including some pedigreed reporters and correspondents early retirement.

The New York Times, Tribune

Okay, that's it.

50 Cent, the rapper, is now officially smarter than the four major record label heads put together.

How do I know this?

While the labels are out dreaming up more hair-brained schemes to force consumers into paying monthly fees for music they can already get for free, 50 Cent is becoming more anti-social.

He's moving on -- beyond MySpace and Facebook.

And this shrewd dude has introduced Thisis50.com -- which acts like a social network where fans can create profiles and friend lists just like the other social networks with one big difference.

50&hellip

Yesterday, Live Nation, the largest concert promoter in the world announced a 12-year deal to continue its long relationship with the group U2.

Under the terms, Live Nation will lock up rights to produce U2 events, make and sell all its merchandise and handle licensing. U2 also gives up control of its web site and fan club.

What's not included is just as important.

U2 stays with Vivendi's Universal Music Group. In fact the band extended its record label contract last year.

This is opposite of what Madonna did when she previously signed with Live Nation in a broader deal for $120 million starting next year.&hellip

What does it take to pierce the brain of record label executives who keep insisting that subscription models will save the music business?

Last week, SonyBMG jumped aboard the Titanic for another try at offering an unlimited iPod-compatible library of its music for between $9-12 a month.

The plan is likely to sink in Europe before it arrives by lifeboat to this country.

Just what young people want -- one label's music library.

Even if the labels could agree to contribute all their music to a consortium and offer it for the same money, every indication I have is that it will fail.

Cut the price -- and it&hellip

There is a YouTube video making the rounds these days that is worth a look.

It's about CKLW's 20/20 News concept when The Big 8 was a dominant rocker in Detroit and Windsor, Ontario.

In my career I also had the opportunity to do this form of rock 'em sock 'em news which in many ways went beyond what news should be. But in retrospect, this video teaches us a lesson and gives us a glimpse into what might have been if radio kept inventing new ways to do things.

I hate to send you away to watch a video, but you must. Come back for some comments that I think you'll appreciate.

Every time I write about how better off the radio industry would have been without consolidation, I get a barrage of email telling me a) you

When The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Clear Channel's privatization deal was near collapse it sent shock waves throughout the radio industry.

This ill-conceived way for the Mays family to have one more payday has been teetering on the brink for well over a year.

I say teetering because the economy and the radio industry has been declining since the ink dried on the agreement.

The $19.5 billion price was wrong from the start. You'll remember Clear Channel tried to do the deal at a lesser price than $39 a share, but was forced to up it.

All during the tough times, Clear Channel tried to keep Thomas&hellip

Yesterday the DOJ fired the shot heard 'round the entertainment industry. It paved the way for the long-anticipated merger of Sirius Satellite Radio with XM.

Now the only thing standing in the way is FCC approval which will come -- maybe in a month or so.

But the question is: how will the FCC screw up this merger by mandating add-ons that have little or nothing to do with the merits of the merger?

Let us count the ways.

Don't get me wrong.

Once Sirius merges with XM it will be a monopoly -- the kind of thing the DOJ is supposed to protect us from. But they gave up on that mission a long time&hellip

With the NCAA's March Madness annual collegiate basketball frenzy underway, I see too many parallels to the music media business to not mention them.

Imagine if the key components of the music media industry were basketball teams -- with real nicknames, coaches and game plans.

Let's see if anyone other than Jim Cramer would bet money on them.

The Wireless Mavericks

Remember when many of the major cities in the U.S. were going to make municipal WiFi available to their citizens?

Forget it.

Philadelphia, the leader in round one, is now being forced to abandon its plans because of second thoughts on the&hellip

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case concerning vulgarity on the airwaves -- you know, Bono using the F-word in an unscripted broadcast, etc.

The FCC wants the power to punish carriers that are responsible for such slips -- like the ones Cher and Nicole Richie made at a Billboard Awards show.

I guess the Supreme Court has nothing better to do -- the next presidential election doesn't need to be decided until November. What's remarkable about this issue is that one of the chief proponents for stronger FCC power is the Parents Television Council -- a group some consider right wing wackos.

In fact, as The&hellip

No doubt those of you who follow the music media business have heard that Steve Jobs is supposedly working on a program with the major labels to sell fully-loaded, "all you can eat" iPods with virtually everything ever recorded.

Well, if you have you may not be getting the real story.

My contacts at the record labels confirm that discussions have been going on for sometime -- for Europe.

No deal can happen in the U.S. very easily because of publishing issues.

Nokia apparently has set the bar for what it would take to get the labels to offer their libraries as a benefit for buying a fully-loaded MP3 player --&hellip

It never surprises me that the music industry is in the mess that it's in.

Consumers want one thing and the record labels want another. In any other industry, this type of thinking would put companies out of business. But in the music industry, it's standard operating procedure.

Examine the evidence.

1. Starbucks sells CDs when customers obviously want coffee. According to a recent New York Times article the average company-owned Starbucks sells only two CDs a day. Starbucks disputes the figure, but refuses to supply Times reporter Jeff Leeds with a better one. Starbucks has lost its way in the coffee end of the&hellip

Clear Channel, sometimes referred to as The Evil Empire in the consumer press, has finally let the FCC know the merger conditions it is requesting should the Commission approve the merger of XM and Sirius. That is, after the DOJ decides.

Clear Channel is a minority owner in XM and has been for a long time. And, they provide some terrestrial programming for XM.

It must have been a good fit way back then because from the looks of their merger conditions, satellite radio is the evil empire -- not Clear Channel.

Here's what Clear Channel wants (in bold) -- with my comments:

1. No less than 50% of broadcast&hellip

CNBC's Jim Cramer has been out to get terrestrial radio of late. The circus-like Mad Money show is hard to watch and even harder to tolerate if you work in radio.

Cramer's advice to investors owning radio stock is "sell, sell, sell" which is easy to say because he doesn't own Citadel at $1.32.

I don't know whether to advise you to listen to his most recent and scary rant, but we're all adults so here's the link. Promise me you'll return because there are some important points to be made.

1. Cramer worked in&hellip

At left with the program consultant Todd Wallace (center) and former KOOL-FM, Phoenix morning personality Bill Gardner.

We had a great lunch in Scottsdale Wednesday that could accurately be described as "good times, great oldies". I've known Todd Wallace from the very, very early days of Inside Radio and Bill Gardner and I worked under Paul Drew when he was doing Drake at WIBG in Philadelphia.

It's always good to be with old friends. Todd still consults. Bill was one of the many victims of the recent CBS cutbacks. He was a highly rated morning personality so his departure is either gutsy or stupid depending on where&hellip

The fall of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer -- the hated zealot who among other things forced the record and radio industries to own up to their failings and pay for them -- has now been forced to do the same.

Spitzer resigned as governor yesterday in a scandal over paying prostitutes and the once squeaky clean former New York state attorney general has fallen off his pedestal. Looking at the anguish, hurt and tears in the eyes of his wife Silda, not to mention what his three girls are going through makes it more than a "he got what he deserved" moment of revenge.

A number of my readers have expressed great delight in&hellip

Call me suspicious, but the Clear Channel buyout is supposed to close shortly and Randy Michaels keeps hiring more radio people for the television and newspaper business.

What's a person to believe?

There are a lot of funny things about the Lee and Bain $29 billion Clear Channel bailout starting with the price.

That price was determined over a year ago and since then the radio business has continued to tank on every level including local and national sales and share price. Still, these folks at Lee and Bain have not asked for the usual renegotiation to obtain a more reasonable price. What's up with that?

Dumb&hellip

Last week the CEO of National Public Radio

Hillary Clinton

Radio doesn't want 6-11 year olds. The Advisory Board has asked Arbitron to stop measuring listening for these children and "redistribute" the People Meters to the 12+ sample.

There must be a shortage of People Meters.

Or a shortage of foresight.

It's as if the radio industry believes that the more People Meters you put out there, the more 12+ radio listening they will record. Of course, the People Meter does a better job of correcting the under-reported ratings delivered by the antiquated diary system.

Kids are the new 12+ if you believe these people -- for all the wrong reasons.

It's typical of radio&hellip

The radio revenue figures for 2007 are out and the industry is down just 2%. I say just because it could have been a lot worse and it probably will be a lot worse going forward. It seems non-traditional revenue may have helped mitigate some of the damage this time.

Radio is a business that has been on the decline for many years. Consolidation has never really paid dividends (in more ways than one) and the growth of the Internet and failure to attract the next generation has taken its toll.

Most of the executives who were in charge when their companies consolidated are still at the helm today. Their personal wealth is&hellip

Nine Inch Nails is thinking out of the box with its next-generation Radiohead marketing of the band's new 36-track record which was recorded over a ten week period last year.

Where Radiohead shook up the industry with its -- you name the price (or don't pay a price) model, Trent Reznor's group is adding a few more nuances to their attempt.

1. A free download of the first nine cuts.

2. A $5 download for the entire album (well below the Apple iTunes $9.99 industry standard).

3. A $10 double-CD set either on their website or at record stores after April 5th.

4. A $75 deluxe edition including a hardcover&hellip

I was on a panel yesterday for the California Bar Association in Santa Monica dealing with the issue of repealing radio's performance tax exemption.

Besides the fact that everyone was very nice as expected, it was a scary hour and a half that I thought you'd like to hear about.

These guys are clueless -- the record industry -- about the new paradigm that free is the new overpriced CD.

What's scary is that no matter how many times you tell them that both the radio industry and record business have lost control of their delivery systems, they stumble back into dreaming up ways to get their piece of traditional&hellip

This isn't personal. I don't even know the man. I know he has had an excellent career as a bean counter for Mel Karmazin, but something needs to be said.

I am tired of reading news accounts of the implosion at Citadel without anyone standing up and saying what's on everyone's mind.

Citadel CEO Farid Suleman must be fired.

He has earned the right to get a pink slip for many, many reasons. Among them:

1. Presiding over a company that is virtually worthless to its shareholders. Over $10 a share a year or so ago and $1.10 a share when it closed Friday. I mention shareholder value first since it is the Holy&hellip

Next week I am appearing on a panel in Santa Monica (The Copyright Office Comes to California) devoted to repealing the performance tax exemption from radio. The NAB will have Suzanne Head, a representative, on the panel. I guarantee you we'll both be in agreement that any attempt to tax radio for helping the music industry make money for free is wrongheaded.

But, as we say in New Jersey, "who don't know that?"

You know why the labels are desperate to raise money. They are losing control. Their arch enemy, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, has trumped them again. Apple's online iTunes music store is now the number-two music&hellip

Have you heard about what Ford Motor Company and Microsoft are partnering to do?

They

An ex-program director is like an ex-Marine.

There are no such things.

Like the Marine, once a PD always a PD. We have worked in the trenches. We performed well before consolidation and we know what is working about today's radio content.

I'm one. Many of my friends are one -- some still have jobs in radio. There is a reason why three people make or break the management of a radio station -- the general manager, sales manager and program director.

During the Dark Ages -- 1996-present AD (After Deregulation) managers holding these critical positions were lured, then forced, then threatened with taking on&hellip

Lost in all the cutbacks, firings and cost adjustments that consolidators have been making the last few months is the demise of the morning radio show.

The morning slot is responsible for up to 50% of a radio station's total revenue yet that apparently means nothing to consolidators desperate to make their latest poor quarter look a little better.

Clear Channel is the leader in dismantling morning shows but CBS is not far behind. They are the biggest, but they're not alone. Other operators are no better -- the morning show is no longer sacred.

We've seen morning teams divided in half -- one half left to create all&hellip

It doesn't take long to figure out that the next generation doesn't like advertising.

Its curious because their world -- the Internet -- is cluttered with ads, search results, links, videos, pop-ups and the like from companies desperate to get through to them.

TV isn't getting the job done.

Radio? Forget about it. Any medium that thinks six commercials in a cluster will be heard is mistaken. It is a miracle that radio got away with it so long.

The Clear Channel of their world is Google -- the search giant you can't ignore. Google seems to be on a mission to be everywhere with its search-based advertising and&hellip

One of my readers asked if I had any ideas on how the radio industry could redirect its efforts in light of all its mounting problems.

He said,

Inside Radio is reporting that at least one analyst (Blair Levin of Stifel Nicolaus) thinks the FCC may mandate radios that include HD plus satellite stations as a condition of winning approval for the XM-Sirius merger.

The HD Radio Alliance and iBiquity (the folks who brought you radio

My old friend and radio executive Bill Figenshu wrote to me over the weekend with some thoughts on the recent New York Times article about why National Public Radio is thriving and PBS television is hurting.

Fig says, "..they (NPR) have grown, have none of the negative commercial radio issues, and did it without taking the 8th caller, TV or any marketing budget, slamming PPM, HD, or "less is more." In many cases, the public radio signals are not exactly "blowtorches." They did it
with good programming, a long view of content, and a&hellip

There are few things that aggravate radio executives more than satellite radio.

For years they were so blinded by the prospect of competition from satellite radio that terrestrial operators actually thought they were competing with satellite. Some still think so.

This in spite of the fact that together XM and Sirius only have about 15 million paying subscribers.

They run many music channels with no commercials -- and some channels have few listeners. They are money losing machines that have posed no threat to traditional radio -- not even for a minute.

Meanwhile, the NAB is helping to mislead the industry into&hellip

It's hard to fathom that a consumer electronic device that is both so cool and so hot may have finally peaked.

In my work with college students I have discovered one thing if I have learned anything at all -- you can hardly find a student on campus without an MP3 device (usually an iPod).

That is, until now.

Several months ago a class project revealed that most students who were asked to give up their iPods and cell phones for two days could easily sacrifice the iPod, but not so much with the cell phone. The cell phone is essential equipment.

This past week I discovered that half of one of my larger classes,&hellip

Five years ago when I moved out west from New Jersey I had to give up my EZPass, an electronic toll collection system based in New Jersey and used extensively throughout the Northeast. We have freeways out here.

I slapped the device on my windshield out of the way under the rear view mirror and I could cruise through toll plazas on the Jersey Turnpike, Garden State Parkway, Lincoln Tunnel and the bridges leading into Manhattan and Philadelphia.

It was seamless. Just put your travel on your tab (credit card) and cruise right through to your destination. No stopping to pay the toll.

Kind of reminds me of Clear&hellip

At the Grammy's the other night, Recording Academy President Neil Portnow stepped up on his nationwide soapbox and promised to "fight to pass legislation to once and for all ensure that, just like in every other developed country in the world, all music creators are compensated for their performances when played on traditional radio".

Fortunately, no one heard him.

The Grammy's pulled in the third worst TV audience ratings of all time.

Apparently, Alicia Keys was not listening either when she thanked "every radio guy" in her acceptance speech -- a real time acknowledgment that she couldn't have won without the free&hellip

I

MSNBC

Move over, Sheryl Crow -- the first cut is not the deepest. The worst is and it's happening right now.

The other shoe has now dropped as many of the major consolidators have followed their leader -- Clear Channel -- with layoffs, firings and cost-savings caused by bad business and bad strategy.

We're now seeing CBS with program directors overseeing two separate cities. That will really work now, won't it? Inside Radio reports several dozen positions wiped out yesterday. Three PDs in New York were fired: Crys Quimby at WCBS-AM, Tracy Cloherty at "K-Rock" WXRK and Rick Martini of&hellip

Yahoo just turned over its "Music Unlimited" operation to the rental music service Rhapsody.

True, Yahoo is in short pants these days. True, Microsoft knows this which is why they are making an unfriendly move to buy Yahoo.

Rhapsody isn't lighting the world on fire, either. Rhapsody charges $12.99 per month for millions of songs. It promises "Play all the music you want for one low monthly price". Maybe it would do better if Rhapsody were more portable. Maybe not.

There's Slacker's WiFi Net radio player which is mobile. It has a four inch screen that pushes the Internet radio stream to the player because it is&hellip

Clear Channel's stock price is now under $30.

Down to $29.76 as it closed yesterday on a trading session that saw the Dow drop 370 points on continued fears of a recession. You may remember CCU was once a $90 stock way back when.

The recent and infamous John Hogan memo calling for deeper cutbacks ahead of the potential closing of the sale of Clear Channel to investment banks Lee & Bain was like asking a super model to not eat.

Now Mark Mays emails his employees with a truly clueless "win one for the Gipper" essay.

First of all, why is this man writing emails?

I'll admit it.

The HD Alliance has got my number.

It is the most incredible or should I say incredulous group of intelligent people in the radio industry. The only problem is, they are not giving you any credit for being intelligent.

Thus the recent headlines that 2007 was a "breakthrough year" for HD radio sales.

It's getting to the point that whenever Peter Ferrara says anything, I don't believe it. This is nothing personal about Peter. It's about the tactics of the HD Alliance.

Supposedly iBiquity, the manufacturers of this gift from heaven called HD radio, claims to have sold 330,000 HD receivers&hellip

Constant denial -- that's what's killing radio.

Last week we heard the same old song again at the Southern California Broadcasters Association gathering. I don't know about you but these guys are starting to scare me.

Radio-Info's Tom Taylor reported that Clear Channel's John Hogan said "performance and capability is not our problem. Our problem is one of perception".

No.

Consolidators like Clear Channel but not limited to Clear Channel either just don't get it or they don't want us to get it.

1. They try to grow a business by cutting back.

2. They embrace&hellip

There is so much coverage of the possible closing of Clear Channel's $19 billion privatization sale to Bain Capital and Thomas Lee Partners, but I'm afraid even the best financial publications are distracted from what's really important.

The Super Bowl is this weekend in Phoenix and this is as good a time as any to invoke the imagery of the "Hail Mary" concept.

In football, the "Hail Mary" is a desperation pass like the one Dallas quarterback Roger Staubach threw to his teammate Drew Pearson who was being covered by cornerback Nate Wright in a December, 1975 divisional playoff. Pearson stopped and pushed Wright as the ball&hellip

I was surprised to find many young people enthusiastic about the prospect of paying $5 for a CD.

I'm sure the record business is not.

I can hear them right now: "We can't make money on $5 CDs" -- like they can make money on free downloading, right?

I put the question to students in my USC class "Music, Broadcasting & the Mobile Future". About 75% of them -- a surprising number -- said they would buy CDs or multiple CDs -- a significant increase over their current spending -- if the labels charged a flat $5 for the CD.

Only one condition: they also want a high fidelity digital version for purchasing the&hellip

There was another abortion in the music industry this week.

QTrax, the startup that promised free music from the four major labels, and a number of indies launched without the music of the four major labels.

This is an advertiser supported project that had been at least a year in the making -- not unique -- just another whack at trying to offer music to the next generation for free.

Unfortunately, either QTrax or the labels scotched the much ballyhooed launch. We've heard that the ink wasn't dry on a number of the agreements. I don't know who launches a business based on four record labels without having the deal&hellip

Tom Taylor broke the news of John Hogan's "draconian" first quarter contingency plan in his Taylor on Radio-Info publication Monday.

It's bad -- all bad.

Hundreds of additional jobs are in jeopardy -- this from the industry leader that has been cutting jobs at a record pace in preparation for what they hope will be the completed sale of Clear Channel to Bain Capital and Thomas Lee Partners within a few months.

Clear Channel has a problem. It isn't making budget for the first quarter and revenues are down.

In the movie Airplane, Lloyd Bridges who played the character&hellip

The HD Radio Alliance has gone and done it.

It has officially opposed the merger of XM and Sirius Satellite Radio.

That tells me enough that if I'm at the DOJ, I'm going to approve the merger immediately -- which they're likely to do anyway.

You may remember that iBiquity, the designated manufacturer of HD radio, unofficially asked the FCC to consider mandating the manufacture of new satellite radios so that they would include the HD subchannels. Exactly, what satellite subscribers want, right?

Wrong.

Now the HD Alliance which riled the terrestrial radio business with its "creative" commercials that&hellip

There is quite a controversy building around whether CBS-owned Last.fm is an eventual replacement for terrestrial radio.

The Motley Fool investors publication says Last.fm could mean the end of radio.

Kurt Hanson, who I respect more on these issues, says wait one minute -- Last.fm isn't even radio.

It's an interesting prospect either way. To bring you up to date the four major record labels have cut a deal with Last.fm to get a penny or so for every time a young consumer goes to Last.fm and requests a song. Hanson points out, "Going to a website and saying

The post Christmas radio ratings are in for the two People Meter markets -- Philadelphia and Houston -- and you should not be surprised to observe that the two bellwether Christmas stations lost half of their huge ratings gains acquired in December.

Jerry Lee's WBEB (B-101), Philadelphia slid from a 29.6 share in women 18+ during the week December 20-26 to 12.8 when the station reverted to its adult music format.

In Houston, Clear Channel's KODA lost 47% of its women compared to those listening during Christmas week.

Significantly, both stations remained number one in the 6+ average daily cume.

Are 29 shares in&hellip

The Fed further cut interest rates by three quarters of a point in an emergency move that is designed to help the U.S. economy avoid a deep, dark recession.

The market lost 465 points before greed saved the day and buyers took advantage of lower stock prices and bought back in.

The housing market is one of the major problems and the subprime mortgage mess goes along with it.

As the vaudevillian comedian "The Old Philosopher" used to say, "is that what's bothering you, bunky?"

The radio industry actually started its "recession" early.

After spending record amounts of their investors' money to put together&hellip

One of the more startling things to traditional broadcasters is that today's young audience wants to sometimes be their own program director.

The iPod is an example of how a generation decided to program their own "radio stations" with the music they choose to buy or steal online. And their stations really do have fewer commercials and more music unlike the promises we've made and broken to them for decades.

Broadcasters do what they have always done -- broadcast. When radio programming got more specific in the 70's we used the term narrowcasting to reflect how the broadcasting service had adapted.

But one thing&hellip

Today is the commemoration of Martin Luther King's birthday. In our lifetime we can count on the fingers of only one hand those who have meant more to our society. Yet we feel it more appropriate to honor such icons with a day off and 50% off sales at the mall.

In the radio industry, we suffer from a similar abuse.

While some stations commit themselves to add meaning to the King holiday, it's often no more than another day for an industry that would be better off if it actually translated King's message to help a troubled industry.

How so?

Radio has even fewer Black owners of consolidated radio groups that you&hellip

There is a controversy brewing in the industry and on the major boards such as Radio-Info about how the R&R Talk Conference has rescinded its planned Lifetime Achievement Award to Bob Grant -- the always and still equal opportunity offender that he is.

In the interest of full disclosure, I know Bob Grant from his Philly talker days and I've always liked him as a person. I never let his views affect me for one minute on that.

R&R is feeling the heat from minority interests who consider Grant&hellip

A week or so ago I mentioned I had an idea for building a killer morning show. The theory being -- terrestrial radio is not likely to attract new young listeners but if it snags more listening from the available audience in the mornings then it will ring the cash register.

Radio stations are fighting the first effects of a recession and fighting themselves at the same time.

There is little they can do about the economic downturn, but there is a lot they can do about maximizing free cash flow.

There are the traditional ideas: cut the spotload and raise the rates. I like it. But radio executives don

The world is worried about whether Britney Spears is going to off herself eventually and Dr. Phil McGraw got himself in trouble for allegedly reaching out to Spears and her family for the purpose of furthering his top rated TV show.

So who should the record industry call when they can't call ghostbusters?

Dr. Phil, of course.

The record industry is suicidal. Unsafe at any speed. It's long overdue for an intervention. Please, Dr. Phil --it needs your special brand of tough love.

Let's look at how Britney and Unfitney (The Big Four Labels) are alike.

1. Britney has been seen in public without her panties&hellip

Is it too late for radio?

No.

Yes.

Can't say I'm not direct. I am asked this question constantly -- not by my young students but by people working in the media business. The students represent Gen Y and they really have no meaningful connection to terrestrial radio.

They have their own means of finding, storing and listening to music and they don't care about news and talk on traditional stations. An exception would be NPR stations that many in this demographic seem to like. And as I have written previously, my students have told me they don't think of NPR or KCRW as radio. God forbid.

Terrestrial&hellip

Inside Radio is quoting sources as saying the FCC is going to approve the Clear Channel sale to investment bankers Lee and Bain.

Department of Justice approval would likely follow.

Then, sit back and enjoy the action thriller.

You read the headlines. You know that the radio industry is posting declining revenues. Most analysts say the best radio could hope for in 2008 is a flat year. Not exactly a climate that will attract investment capital.

How would you like to be Lee and Bain? If you believe they will actually close on the purchase to take Clear Channel private, they are guaranteeing shareholders $39 a&hellip

It's all becoming evident now that the revolution begun by the next generation is dramatically changing the world and, along with it, the music media business.

David Bowie sang "Time may change me, But I can't trace time".

Change is everywhere.

Ironically enough, one of the few things I could do within my core skills when I served my four year non-compete with Inside Radio's new owners was to teach. Who would have thought? And what a gift it was. Over four years ago when I first arrived on campus I quickly understood that something major was happening among the next generation and that folks in traditional media&hellip

That's what Jerry Lee's WBEB-FM (B-101), Philadelphia got among women 18+ for the week of December 13-19. That's a 27 share adults 25-54. A 1.2 million cume and double the listeners of the number two station -- all news KYW. All this courtesy of the Arbitron People Meter.

A few days ago I wrote a piece about the irony of Christmas radio -- how an arguably increasingly secular holiday can work wonders for radio ratings.

As my programming friends in radio know, Christmas music is only a part of the success of a radio station for six short weeks of the year. The other ingredients are rarely discussed.

My first job in&hellip

Barack Obama, the author of the book The Audacity of Hope, and Mike Huckabee, the spiritual GOP presidential candidate are the news media's new catalysts for change. Their surprising and convincing wins in the Iowa caucuses last week have forced many of their competitors into embracing change if for no other reason than to get elected.

Consumers of entertainment also want change.

I can tell you that first hand from the youth end of the market -- the next generation and I think you might be surprised to find that even older, prime demographic groups also want a new approach to the entertainment and information they&hellip

I always get a kick out of it when someone asks "what would Jesus do". We're hearing it a lot these days. Who knows? How could you ever be sure.

But when it comes to HD Radio and Apple together -- I think even Jesus would pray. Pray a lot.

The radio industry is setting itself -- and its advertisers -- up for yet another in a long sustained series of disappointments by speculating that Apple's rumored decision to inject its cool into a very uncool device will jump start HD Radio. If Jobs, at the MacWorld Convention in a few weeks, unveils HD on-board boom boxes with iPod docking stations, it will wind up meaning nothing&hellip

Breaking news.

Arbitron shows WBEB (B-101), Philadelphia doubling its December ratings from an 8.2 to a whopping 15.8. Praise be to God. No. Praise be to the People Meter that tracks seasonal format changes like lightning.

Clear Channel's KODA in Houston jumped from a 5.2 to an 8.9 thanks to Christmas music and the PPM.

Even in New York, Clear Channel's Lite WLTW-FM jumped from 6.1 to 8.2 with huge increases in cume and that's without the Arbitron People Meter.

Maybe the best people meter is actually -- people.

It's pure irony.

Radio audiences love Christmas in spite of all the social-correctness&hellip

You've probably noted how impressed I have been with Apple as a company -- mostly for their ability to understand and market to the next generation.

While they succeed at marketing to the next generation on a major level as witnessed by the sale of iPods, iPhones, and Mac computers, they prove that doing right by Gen Y is good for business among older customers.

A recent article in The New York Times shows that the physical Apple store -- brick and mortar --&hellip

he owns a Mac (that dastardly machine from the record industry nemesis, Steve Jobs).

3. Jerry Del Colliano lives in Scottsdale and he likes Steve Jobs.

4. Therefore, Jerry Del Colliano must be a criminal.

Don't stop there -- the RIAA's got plenty more lawyers to employ:

5. If Jerry Del Colliano is a criminal in Scottsdale, then there must be lots of other criminals with CDs and PCs in other cities, states, countries, the world, the solar system...

6. Oh -- and, if the record labels happened to give Jerry Del Colliano promotional copies of their music to gain free airplay before PCs were invented, did&hellip

This has been a horrific holiday season for radio people in terms of pink slips, wrecked careers, disappointed hopes and even unemployment while fighting illnesses.

I will not forget the fine people who are the backbone of the radio industry even if the consolidators can dismiss them so easily.

When I attended Temple University in Philadelphia, one of my wonderful professors -- Lew Klein -- the American Bandstand and Philadelphia television executive told my freshman class that if you haven't been fired five times in your career, you're not in broadcasting.

What an eye-opener for a young man getting ready to learn his&hellip

Detroit Radio Advertising Group (DRAG) legendary President and COO Bill Burton coined the catchy phrase "An automobile is a radio with four wheels".

True enough to radio people, but if that phrase is accurate then "An Automobile Is An HD Radio Without Four Wheels". In fact, the wheels are coming off.

I say this because something is very suspicious in Detroit. The proponents of HD Radio have relied on support from automakers and marketing muscle from big box retail stores like Best Buy to sell, well -- hardly any HD radios.

Imagine that.

If Best Buy, RadioShack and Wal-Mart can't evens sell HD radios then maybe&hellip

Did you see a lot of CDs under the tree this year?

Guess not.

CD sales are off and when the final figures are in that include the fourth quarter of 2007, it's not going to be pretty.

If you follow the logic record labels are applying in seeking to lift the royalty tax exemption from radio, now is a good time to fight for a separate tax on the record industry for failing to support the radio stations that have generated most of their sales profits in modern times. In other words hit them when they are down -- as they are trying to do to the radio industry.

It could be radio's answer to the record labels' No Tax&hellip

As everything in the radio business ground to a halt for the Christmas holiday I kept getting the feeling something big is up with Sam Zell and Randy Michaels.

That we're seeing only a small part of the master plan.

That the big bang is yet to come.

Consider that over the weekend and in uncharacteristic stealth fashion Sam Zell quietly announced a $1.1 billion deal to purchase eight very attractive TV properties from none other than -- Rupert Murdoch.

Murdoch is no fool. And Zell is the Murdoch of the radio industry&hellip

I'm wondering.

What kind of investment bankers fail to close on their acquisitions by year's end if they really want to buy? After all, they don't get their considerable fees unless they close.

Lee and Bain have been postponing their closing of Clear Channel ostensibly because the FCC hasn't approved the deal. Some skeptics might say that the FCC could have been accelerated for a deal this size. There certainly haven't been any major objections to Clear Channel going private.

So what's up?

I'm thinking that Lee and Bain may be noodling over whether they want to pay the half billion or so in penalty fees for&hellip

The news broke yesterday that entrepreneur Sam Zell -- the founder of the Jacor radio group -- is bringing Randy Michaels back to work for him again when he takes over control of the newspaper and TV Tribune Company.

I predicted this months ago and I added that Randy will likely be involved in radio again -- a prediction I am sticking to.

Randy and I are like hockey players. As a dear friend of mine in the radio industry pointed out to me -- in some ways we're alike. Let's look at it in ice hockey terms. I'm a Flyer. He's now a Blackhawk. We've fought each other over the years but just as they do after each round of the&hellip

The phrase screw the pooch appeared in Tom Wolfe's book The Right Stuff meaning to mess up, commit a grievous error. It's a euphemism from US military slang that uses much stronger language involving a dog.

How apt, then, to apply this phrase -- which also appears in the Urban Dictionary -- to the current FCC which has begun the process of undoing some of the damage caused by consolidation.

Greedy radio consolidators have been asking for trouble -- almost from the start of consolidation which was enabled by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 -- and lobbied by your favorite trade organization -- the NAB.

I have no&hellip

The young people I have been working with and studying the past four years voluntarily remind me that they have iPod fatigue.

I have written about this before but I keep hearing it -- and the term iPod fatigue is theirs not mine.

There is no doubt in my mind that you'd have to amputate their arms to pry an iPod away from this generation, but I've been thinking about iPod fatigue a lot lately. It seems to me that what these young people are saying is -- entertain me where I live.

They are not particularly addressing the terrestrial radio industry. Outside of NPR and some catch-as-catch-can listening this generation&hellip

Somebody lock Citadel CEO Farid Suleman in his office.

Don't hurt him but don't let him out.

It's time for the good and great employees of Citadel to take back their radio company and turn it around themselves.

Farid hasn't been able to.

In the past year alone Citadel stock took a nose dive from the $10 range to $2.05 when it closed last week. Get him to keep his hands off the company and watch his employees fix it.

Farid Suleman is best known for being Mel Karmazin's bean counter at Infinity. He's not the only radio CEO who should get a time out. All of them should. And the shareholders who can't sell&hellip

There is increasing evidence that using your cell phone can cause brain tumors.

In a British study some scientists say there is a chance that talking on a mobile phone for as little as 10 minutes could trigger changes in the brain that are associated with cancer.

And a new Israeli study says regular use of mobile telephones increases the risk of developing tumors with certain gland growths nearly 50 percent higher for mobile phone user more than 22 hours a month.

Of course, rumors about cell phones and cancer&hellip

I know the major TV networks are relying on reality shows to make it through the writer's strike, but in radio there is an unreality show going on and a new episode developed Monday.

The radio industry's lobby group -- the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) is asking the FCC to "consider continued relaxation" of the ownership rules having breathed a sigh of relief when the Commission rejected a rollback to pre-1996 levels.

You remember the NAB.

It's the trade group that collects your membership fees, charges you to attend industry conventions and works in the interests of a handful of big companies that want&hellip

The RIAA has filed a brief in an Arizona U.S. District Court against two average citizens (Jeffrey and Pamela Howell) who committed the dastardly crime of ripping their CD collection to MP3s so they could enjoy them around the house and perhaps on their iPods. The RIAA is also alleging that the Howell's put their ripped music on file sharing networks -- perhaps a trusted trump card for them in their case.

RIAA is alleging violation of copyright laws and the fair use doctrine.

If you think it's a simple case of RIAA speaking out of both sides of its mouth -- you would be correct.

During the MGM v. Grokster lawsuit in&hellip

The eyes almost popped out of my head when I was reading Inside Radio the other day.

Clear Channel Executive Vice President Andy Levin is quoted as saying, "changes to the radio ownership rule are once again necessary".

Oh, it gets worse than this.

America's biggest radio consolidator and arguably the company that had the most to do with pushing a once thriving business into the doldrums wants Congress to save it from itself. After all, radio consolidators were given a virtual monopoly with passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and they still couldn't make it pay off.

Shareholders are looking at&hellip

I can't take another day of hearing bad news from my friends in the radio industry who have been let go by Clear Channel in the latest massive clearance sale of top executives in advance of taking the company private.

Forget that it's happening at Christmas.

Clear Channel apparently has.

They say if you don't laugh, you'll cry. These fat cats are wreaking havoc on radio stations and on the lives of many talented and dedicated people who deserve better than a pink slip for Christmas.

So, I've come up with a parody called the "Tickle Me Clear Channel" doll inspired by the very popular Tickle Me Elmo.

When&hellip

There is a new Canadian study on file sharing that bolsters what many of us who work with the next generation already know -- file sharing (or stealing music) actually helps the record labels sell CDs.

You can't tell that to the music industry.

They cannot and won't wrap their arms around this concept. If they allowed themselves to believe that stealing music actually sells CDs, they would have no one to blame for the sorry state of the record industry -- other than themselves.

Industry Canada did the study during 2006-07 to measure the extent to which peer-to-peer file sharing networks affected music purchasing in&hellip

The radio industry is turning into one giant joke. But it isn't so funny.

Clear Channel firing everyone in sight before Christmas.

The meaningless war against satellite radio.

HD -- or High Destructive Radio.

And now the latest comedic effort on the part of broadcasters who should know better.

The National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters (NABOB) is asking the House Commerce Committee to launch an inquiry into Arbitron

I love Oprah Winfrey and I

Radio executives are not dumb.

They may be arrogant enough to think their old business model will work in the future, but as the pain of declining audiences and revenue proliferates they

The bane of Lee and Bain!

According to the dictionary the word bane means "a cause of great distress or annoyance". That being said, the word Bain as in Lee and Bain, the investment bankers who will make Clear Channel's privatization possible is firings -- massive firings.

Ten in Los Angeles alone last week.

What better time for consolidators that can't get their share price up like Clear Channel to pink slip people than right before Christmas. Families love to have their breadwinners come home and say, "honey, I shrunk our incomes".

You might think it harsh for me to blame Lee and Bain for these actions&hellip

You should see the email I get every time I mention the needs and desires of the next generation.

Really.

Stuff like "you can't go by what the students of the University of Spoiled Children say" or "wait until they have to get a job, they'll see" or some other dismissive phrase that only supports why the radio and record industries are currently without a future.

It's easy for radio and record executives to blame the iPod or the Internet or those thieving kids who pirate music. But the real answer is closer to home.

What we have is generational ignorance.

All of us who have children think our kids are&hellip

With Yahoo and Time Warner considering shutting down their web radio services due to the potential of a 38% increase in royalties, how does that bode for Internet radio?

Will Internet radio be at a disadvantage vis-_

The big box stores are supposed to be selling HD radios and breathing new life into a declining industry -- if you believe the hype.

Nope -- not flying off the shelves.

Instead, Wal-Mart is selling new George Foreman grills that come equipped with speakers that allow you to hook up your iPods while cooking -- God forbid you have to be away from an iPod for a few minutes.

Here's the pitch on Wal-Mart's site:
"Whether you're grilling indoors or outdoors, you'll love the convenience of listening to your iPod or other MP3 player while cooking.&hellip

Radio used to be called "Home of the Hits". But not so today as young listeners turn elsewhere for music.

A longtime friend of mine -- a well respected radio figure -- wrote to me the other day that he put the big question to a group of young people 19-24 at the family Thanksgiving celebration. He wanted to know -- where do you get new music?

One young person replied, "...from iTunes, of course". But my friend persisted, "that wasn't my question. My question was where she heard the music that she then purchased from iTunes?"

He reports the answer was radio -- good, old fashioned terrestrial radio. He added&hellip

I

I have seen the future.

It's happening now and the changes that are taking place in real time will proliferate during the year ahead.

And, as always, our consolidated leader, Clear Channel is leading the way once again. One of my readers confirmed the further degradation of America's radio stations and I thought I'd share it with you. (For those of you who know all too well what I'm going to say, I'll understand if you hold your nose while reading).

Here's the radio station of the future:

1. One program director who must by necessity juggle many balls while having none himself (or herself). A PD without the&hellip

In a way radio was an iPod long before Apple invented iPods.

After all, radios were portable analog music devices that allowed baby boomers to carry their music around with them 24 hours a day.

The iPod of today gives the listener total choice -- the music they want, when they want it and in whatever (or no) special order.

Back then, the predecessor to the Apple iPod was a transistor radio and an entire generation grew up with their radios to their ears -- just as today, ear plugs and all.

The forerunner to the "iPod" lacked the level of choice that today's Apple device has, but it had something even more&hellip

Legendary Philadelphia radio personality Hy Lit died Saturday at 73. He had come down with Parkinson

Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman, Jr. has apparently changed his tune.

He is quoted as telling a GSMA Mobile Asia Conference "We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and filesharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong".

Is Warner Records wising up?

It's apparent that Bronfman who went on to praise Apple and its iPhone is smart enough to understand that his industry is in deep trouble and he already knows how bad off Warner is. Don't look any further than losing&hellip

Firing people when they are sick is sick.

The radio industry is sick these days.

Wonder if there is any connection?

I admit I'm not naive about corporate management and I acknowledge that big companies often have no heart. I worked for one of them and I have been an agent of pain.

When I worked for General Cinema, the movie chain that ran some radio stations in major markets, I was forced to tell a widow of one of my young jocks who died of cancer that the company had no death benefits to pay her.

She said,

John Simson, the executive director of SoundExchange, an industry organization that collects royalties for record labels and artists is right.

He wrote in a recent Inside Radio commentary "People should be fairly paid for the work they do".

I think what Simson means is that record labels and artists should be fairly paid for the work they do.

But radio stations should be fairly paid for the work they do -- sell the record labels' product.

In other words, while Simson is trying to put the squeeze on radio stations for additional performance fees, radio stations should be charging the labels and artists for all&hellip

Is the next generation with their iPods and piracy killing the record labels or are the record labels and their artists killing the record business?

You could make arguments on both sides, but something is killing the business of selling music.

Wal-Mart sold 710,000 of the Eagles new album

It

There has been such a big stink in the radio industry over adopting the new Arbitron Portable People Meter ratings system that it is easy for the real issues to get lost in the controversy.

There is no doubt radio needs to adopt, support and, yes, improve the PPM methodology. The potential is there for curing the under reporting of radio stations and at the same time the risk exists of inaccurately reporting certain formats that are popular with specific demographics. Still, the PPM is the future.

But I have a litmus test, if you will, for a radio station's real popularity that has nothing to do with Arbitron diaries or&hellip

I'm loath to call people names so let me apologize for calling one of the music industry's true icons an idiot.

But when you threaten to sue thousands of fans over trivia such as using pictures of their Prince tattoos, what else could you call him?

The RIAA must be salivating.

Suing fans -- cool.

Prince's lawyers have the nerve to demand removal of all pictures, images, lyrics, album covers and anything linked to Prince's likeness. These flunk outs from Dale Carnegie's human relations course are also demanding details on how these criminals are going to compensate his royal arrogance.

The unpronounceable&hellip

The election is over and the results are in.

No, Hillary didn't beat Rudy and Rudy didn't beat Hillary.

Radiohead beat itself.

Nice try. Radiohead deserves credit for doing what the labels refuse to do -- innovate. They are still very cool for trying.

The British band let fans decide how much to pay for a digital copy of their new release "In Rainbows" and most of their loyal, loyal friends decided to pay...

Nothing.

That's right. 62% downloaded the music free during a four-week period last month proving once again that the electorate has given the music industry a mandate -- lower your&hellip

Last week CBS CEO Les Moonves revealed his company

The new owner of EMI is talking tough.

He is threatening to drop artists EMI believes are not working hard enough.

Come again.

Not working hard enough. Since when do talented artists have to work hard? Don't they just have to exhibit their talent? Like, in the form of an album. Maybe even a hit album.

Of course, the new owners are also threatening to overhaul the pay packages of their own executives. I'll bet they're really afraid.

In most other industries where a segment has lost market share for the best part of seven straight years, they would have been outta there by now.

But let's get back to&hellip

The Philadelphia Flyers hockey team has been and still is known as the Broad Street Bullies -- named after the street where their hockey rink is located and for their rough style of play.

In radio, it's the Wall Street Bullies. The investment banks and radio CEOs who have sold their radio privileges for riches beyond their level of talent.

The Broad Street Bullies fight with their fists.

The Wall Street Bullies fight with their knives -- the ones that slash station budgets to the bone.

Need a recent example?

Here's how not to rebuild radio into a competitor for increased audiences and more advertising:

Jeff Zucker, the 42 year-old president and chief executive of NBC Universal finally determined that "Apple has destroyed the music business".

So if you are one of those poor unfortunates who actually thought record labels unwilling to embrace the digital future and their partners in crime -- radio stations with their ultra-short playlists -- did it to themselves, then you would be wrong.

Lots of media types are gulping down Zucker's Kool-Aid.

Zucker has a horse in this race.

He thinks that "If we don't do something on the video side, they'll (Apple) do the same thing (there)". Could it be a way for Zucker to&hellip

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

I

About a week ago I mentioned that my students were going to give up their cell phones and iPods for two consecutive days. They didn

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

Perhaps you

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

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

You

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

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

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

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

Have you heard about Universal Music

I think it

In ten years when Madonna

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:

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

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

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

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

I borrowed the headline from the Johnny Cash record

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

Remember when radio stations were constantly abusing its listeners with the phrase

One of these days the radio industry is going to get it right -- but today isn't one of them.

Frick and Frack -- the NAB and RAB -- two organizations that still don't get it -- have announced at the NAB Radio Convention -- that they are going to spend more of their members' money.

The latest brainstorm is the "Radio 2020" project.

The first problem is the name. Radio doesn't have until 2020.

National Association of Broadcasters and the Radio Advertising Bureau are apparently going to spend all this dough to re-brand radio. That's right -- re-brand a medium that in the same breath they claim the majority of&hellip

The record industry is about to kill itself and murder its best friend.

Phil Spector, who knew?

The labels are in the process of trying to eliminate radio's royalty exemption which could exceed $1 billion -- 0r 5% of radio's revenues according to Deutsche Bank's Drew Marcus.

This would be tantamount to murder for radio stations.

The royalty tax would help cripple a declining radio industry at exactly the wrong moment in time.

By pushing for this money the record labels would also be committing suicide because radio has options to cripple them if it has the guts and because holding your best ally hostage&hellip

Clear Channel's ten-year quest to take over the world -- at least the world of radio -- has ended with shareholder approval to take the firm private at the end of the year.

It's a $19.5 billion buyout and the preliminary vote approved the merger with T.H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital Partners.

The timing was critical because investment money is hard to find these days -- a far cry from 1996 when consolidation was enabled by law. Now the shareholders are in a far more agreeable mood because it's as good a deal as they're going to get.

Back when Clear Channel stock was selling in the $90 range, executives predicted it&hellip

You've got to hand it to iBiquity, the firm that brought you HD radio over ten years too late and "shrewd" enough to copyright the term HD while at the same time saying it doesn't really mean "high definition".

As the saying goes, you can't put lipstick on a pig, but somehow, iBiquity has managed to get QVC to sell HD radios to its vast home shopping network audience.

Hope QVC has better luck than Radio Shack, Best Buy and Wal-Mart selling these empty radios. Hey, whatever happened to that hype? You can't easily find an HD radio in those stores let alone a young salesperson to close the sale.

Maybe QVC viewers can&hellip

My readers often give me ideas for things that I write about from the perspective of my experience in the media business and my work with the next generation.

After writing about the "Fresh FM" and WCBS-FM "Classic Hits" revival, one reader wondered about my take on the Jack" format.

Of course, "Jack" works in some markets -- and that needs to be recognized -- but it's also fair to say that when the history of formatic radio is compiled (and, say, Bill Drake narrates it), "Jack" will be a mere blip of the VU meter of programming.

Why?

Let's start with New York.

New York is an atypical example. Former CBS&hellip

<

br />The radio industry knows a good thing when it hears it and it's jumping on the "Fresh FM" trend afraid of missing out and/or afraid a competitor will make them eat it.

The radio industry knows a good thing when it loses it, too, as CBS' WCBS-FM is proving since Radio President Dan Mason manned up and returned the updated but beloved "Classic Hits" format to the New York airwaves.

Look at the ratings already in virtually no time as reported by Tom Taylor in Taylor on Radio-Info:
"Just looking at the highly unofficial X-Trends-produced&hellip

It's not lack of HD technology, not too many commercials, not competition from iPods, cyberspace or social networks.

Not the decline of the music industry and certainly not satellite radio.

Radio has lost its listeners' trust.

Radio used to be a trusted friend.

I remember when I programmed in Philadelphia. I inherited a fascinating (although long) jingle package called "Where Your Friends Are". The station and other stations that subscribed to that jingle imagery actually tried to make the listeners feel that top 40 radio was their friend.

Today, students laugh when they hear them -- not because the music&hellip

The artist formerly known as a singer is acting more like a record label exec.

Prince is suing people like it's 1999.

He is after the social network YouTube for unauthorized use of his music. He says he wants to "reclaim his art on the Internet".

Is this the same Prince who sat out and sulked when he got into a pissing match with his label all those years ago?

Isn't that when the silly concept of being the artist formerly known as Prince surfaced?

But now, the Internet and the next generation is getting to Prince.

He wonders how YouTube can filter porn and pedophile material but it has a hard time&hellip

It's been several months and finally SoundExchange, the royalty negotiators for the record labels, has gotten back to Internet streamers with an answer on a more equitable rate structure.

No.

SoundExchange Executive Director John Simson told the NAB in a letter that their offer of June 6th to settle the dispute over Internet streaming rates is unacceptable.

The NAB's website had been featuring a countdown clock for the number of days it took to get an answer to their proposal -- 96. Here's NAB's response.

This is&hellip

A few weeks ago The New York Times Magazine had a cover story on Rick Rubin, the co-operator of Columbia Records these days.

Rubin was pictured in a white robe in the yoga position with his beard and long hair flowing and his eyes closed. Unfortunately, or perhaps appropriately, the photo was taken in Malibu -- a yoga paradise.

The article, written by Lynn Hirschberg, was titled "Can Rick Rubin Save The Music Business" with the subtitle "Or, Can a Recording Guru Be a Mogul Too?").

If you're pressed for time, let me answer the question.

No.

Rubin is a talented creative guy who has been responsible for a&hellip

Everyone seems to know the record business is dying except the people running it.

It's a business highly dependent on the sale of Compact Discs -- and CD's are not selling the way they used to before digital downloading arrived.

The stores they sell in -- record stores -- are in short pants.
.

The record industry -- before it gets the lights on the way out the door -- might want to consider making the purchase of music virtually non-consequential financially.

Envision the youth market on their computers and cell phones buying -- I said buying -- music at will, on impulse, 24/7 -- like they use text&hellip

Did you see or hear about the Video Music Awards sponsored by MTV Sunday night?

It was business as usual.

Controversy as to whether Britney Spears looked as good as she did before giving birth to her two babies. She did an uninspired, bikini-clad rendition of her new single Gimme More.

The gratuitous barbs from comic Sarah Silverman about Britney's "two mistakes" (her children).

It got me thinking.

Why is MTV still doing these music video awards?

They hardly ever play videos.

Justin Timberlake on several occasions during the telecast shouted out that MTV should play more videos and less&hellip

The new Polk Audio I-Sonic and JBL receivers are much ado about nothing when it comes to advancing the relic known as HD radio (or for those who believe the term -- high definition!).

Last week when Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced his new line of products and left radio and Internet radio out in the cold, it was business as usual for radio advocates -- attacking the Apple and the iPod.

Then a day or so later when it became known that several of these devices including the Polk unit would have tagging capabilities for HD&hellip

Steve Jobs, Apple's dynamic baby boomer CEO, made headlines Wednesday when he announced a new generation of iPods and said Apple was going to reduce the price of its top of the line eight gig iPhone by $200.

Of course, if you were an early adopter -- someone Apple needs to drive its innovative businesses -- you could have felt screwed.

But, one day later Jobs made it right by offering all those who paid $200 too much a credit of $100.

"We want to do the right thing for our valued iPhone customers," Jobs said. "We apologize for disappointing some of you, and we are doing our best to live up to your high expectations of&hellip

Apple CEO Steve Jobs made another one of his grand pronouncements yesterday and he seems to have left everyone very unhappy.

Except his customers.

Internet streamers thought this was going to be the moment that Jobs would build digital Internet capabilities into the iPod.

Radio broadcasters may not have said it aloud, but some were hoping that if that happened maybe somehow, some way HD radio might make the cut.

Jobs, the caretaker of cool, has once again taken a pass on all types of "radio".

This doesn't mean that future iPods might not have Internet streaming capabilities, but it's not a lock right&hellip

It's hard to know for sure how the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, would run a radio conglomerate.

You might point out that Buffett has resisted the temptation of buying a radio group.

Certainly, stations were overpriced when consolidation came along (post-1996) and Buffett likes a bargain. Owning radio stations still is very expensive even without a future beyond Gen X and Baby Boomers. If and when Bain Capital (which got $1.5 billion in concessions from Home Depot recently) shaves some money off its Clear Channel purchase price, Clear Channel principals will still be seeing a lot of profit.

Assuming the banks still&hellip

CBS Radio was at it again in Phoenix over the hot Labor Day weekend in the Valley of the Sun.

Oldies KOOL-FM (or more politically correct, Classic Hits) dusted off the 30 year History of Rock and Roll narrated by Bill Drake and made a marathon out of the three-day holiday.

KOOL-FM has a history of utilizing the History at least once per summer, it seems. This year, they've run it on two long holiday weekends.

Many of you have heard me wax eloquent about how outstanding this type of thing is, but now I'd like to expand upon it. Provide a little more meaning, if I can.

The History of Rock rolls on (as the old&hellip

I know many of you subscribe to this blog and have it delivered to your email every morning.

But for those of you who go to the Inside Music Media website every day perhaps you've noticed that I started placing a Facebook icon in the right hand column to replace the customary "about me" option. (The Blogger service by Google is less than perfect and the site works best in Safari or Firefox, but I realize most use Explorer).

Now, I'm going to confess right up front that I've done so because of the strong feeling that I get from the next generation that social&hellip

It finally happened.

And it took a bunch of kids to do it.

Someone stood up to the RIAA.

And once they did, someone else stood up to the music industry's bully puppet that has been terrorizing young people, families, college students and even the dead with threats of lawsuits for stealing music.

Only about a month ago my friend, Steve Meyer, the publisher of Disc & DAT reported to his subscribers that "RIAA defendant, Deborah Foster, who won her case against the association for wrongful cause, and was rewarded with her attorney fees from the organization".

Meyer warned at the time that " With this&hellip

Move over radio. The Internet is now taking aim squarely at television.

There's an interesting new global IBM study that shows the time consumers spend using the Internet is roughly about the time they spend watching TV. (You can download the report for free).

The study reports: "66 percent reported viewing from 1 to 4 hours of TV per day, vs. 60 percent who reported the same levels of personal Internet usage. Consumers are increasingly turning to online destinations like YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, games, or mobile entertainment vs.&hellip

There's been a lot of debate since President Bush announced one more surge of troops to try and secure the law and order in Iraq.

Without getting into the political issues, the surge reminds me of what radio executives are now doing whether knowingly or not.

You get the feeling that many of the seasoned radio executives who have been in the business and at the top of their companies for a long time are desperately seeking one last push to try and make radio a growth industry again.

Somehow they think that if they come up with one more format they will discover a way to get youth back listening to their radios&hellip

I've decided to return to USC for yet another year to teach several courses including television than media people would think even though they finally got away from the burden of doing papers and taking exams. It's true many students had summer jobs but even with more leisure time, television is not the addiction it was for Gen X or Baby Boomers.

What they did do is go online and search for the videos they wanted to see. They even slipped DVDs into their computers to watch programming on inferior screens just because a computer is a great place for them to direct their TV viewing.

This summer they didn't read&hellip

Little Stevie Van Zandt is one of my favorite characters in The Sopranos.

He plays -- Silvio Dante, the consigliere -- advisor to crime boss Tony Soprano.

Stevie also plays guitar for the other boss in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band.

I was reading his comments the other day on the sorry state of the music industry. Stevie Van Zandt could be the wise advisor to the record labels -- if only they would listen.

Here's the wisdom of the consigliere as it relates to the music industry we love. My comments, although not as wise, are in italics.

1. "Our stalwart record companies had completely given up on&hellip

Clear Channel finally set a date for the shareholder vote that would allow it to go private and make a fortune for the Mays principals and their Wall Street cronies.

The date they chose was at the very end of the legal limit -- imagine that, Clear Channel pushing the legal limit -- the end of September.

Clear Channel has to win the vote.

There is no Supreme Court available to steal this election. And in the state of Texas, when a shareholder fails to return their proxy, it's counted as a "no".

Meanwhile the buyout price is $39.20, but Clear Channel's stock has been bouncing between the low $30's to the high $30&hellip

You've seen me write with some regularity about the revolutionary new iPhone from Apple's creative mad man Steve Jobs.

My readers -- you -- are divided as far as I can tell.

One group has gone ga-ga over iPhone and all its coolness while the other says it's a toy -- not even a significant work tool.

And I've concluded that you are both correct.

The iPhone lovers and early adopters know that this device which does just about everything a young person holds near and dear is the future.

The Blackberry (and other smart phone proponents) rightfully argue that iPhone is no Blackberry -- and I've known a&hellip

So I returned to Scottsdale from LA the other night when I received the first of what would be 21 -- count 'em, 21 -- emails from a radio industry consultant taking me to task for advocating the Arbitron Portable People Meter (PPM).

The emails got nastier as the night went on, but the sender is no dummy.

He's brilliant.

Rude, but brilliant.

Unfortunately he suffers from the same disease that is taking radio down right now -- the "I'm right, you're wrong if you don't agree with me" attitude. Certainly his concerns and the concerns of others should be passionately pursued.

And Arbitron should be held&hellip

Could it possibly be that Disney did something right when everyone else thought they were doing everything wrong?

Radio Disney, the kids radio format, may now find a reportable audience when Arbitron's Portable People Meter (PPM) is set to become the new standard in audience ratings. The meter measures all media within its path and kids don't have to fill out diaries. Their listening can now count.

Formerly, Radio Disney was the joke of consolidation.

A bunch of AM stations with horrible signals patched together to offer the Disney kids programming to the tween-agers. This in spite of the fact that the quality of the&hellip

I can't help being haunted by this deep-seated conviction of mine (as unrealistic as you might think it is) that the big four record labels would be in a much better position today if they could make hit records.

I know, I know -- they have many other problems.

Steve Jobs and the iPod.

Legal and illegal downloading of music.

The growing unpopularity of their main staple -- the CD.

The decline of their hitmaking partner -- radio.

I know, already.

But, I still get the feeling that if these labels knew how to make a hit -- to find the next music genre -- they'd be in a better position to survive&hellip

Universal and Warner within the past few weeks announced that they were making investments in companies that handled artist management or web networking.

The big four labels are not going to turn it around any time soon being a record company. CD sales continue to nose dive.

Warner is spending $110 million to buy more of Front Line Management, an artist management company that represents Jimmy Buffet, Christina Aguilera and others.

Universal bought a position in Loud.com, a hip-hop social networking site that offers cash prizes and recording contracts.

This scares me.

I know you could say, Jerry, you're&hellip

I guess AT&T will think twice in the future if it -- or anyone working for the cell phone giant -- tries to censor a rock performance.

They got burned when AT&T admitted to Lollapalooza concert officials that portions of the show were cut from the webcast.

During the performance of "Daughter" these lyrics were sung by Pearl Jam to the tune of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall", but they never made it onto the webcast:

"George Bush, leave this world alone." (the second time it was sung).

"George Bush find yourself another home".

Listen for yourself.If it makes you feel any better, AT&T apologized&hellip

By Jack Hannold, Guest Contributor

(Note: I am always grateful for the thoughtful comments and emails I get on my various posts. This one I thought was extremely noteworthy so I am presenting it to you today -- Jerry).

My friend, Joe Benson, whom I am proud to say I had the good sense to employ when I was programming in Philadelphia, sent me an email over the weekend.

In it he said,

It

Starbucks seems happy with the sale of the Paul McCartney CD "Memory Almost Full" and is apparently getting ready to expand its record label -- Hear Music.

Anyone ought to be excited about selling CDs

Elton John says dump the Internet and return to the good old fashioned face-to-face way of living.

Elton John is a great performer, but he

You

Sam Moore, of the duo Sam & Dave, thinks Cox Radio President Bob Neil is a racist.

Last week Neil told a Congressional committee getting ready to butt into the artists

Remember that old WINS, New York all-news motto "You Give Us 20 Minutes and We

I

The move is underway to allow our great public servants

For those who may not know, radio when it was in its second heyday used to employ a contest giveaway called "Hi-Lo" where callers to the station eventually guessed the jackpot and won money.

Many of us, as program directors, also ran contests similar to

Prince is one of the most exciting, controversial, sexy and savvy acts in the history of modern music so when he does something different he gains a lot of attention.

That

It

I

Sometime in the next few months

It

You know email has arrived when everyone you know has an email address.

But you also know when email has hit critical mass when your youngest generation turns to social networks instead.

One of the many benefits to working with the next generation is that you can get a preview as to how the music media industry is going to change. I know few people in the industry who even pay attention let alone understand. I'm not being critical here. They are just looking in the wrong direction.

I've had the opportunity at USC to see changes that appeared in the student body spread to the general population which is one of the&hellip

Utilizing HD Radio for additional revenue opportunities other than audio programming is more promising than traditional broadcasting applications.

Engineers have been busily at work on this functionality. Mobile tests were done by iBiquity in Chicago that proved no loss of service or dropped data.

This is good because HD Radio's chances of making it to prime time are slim to none -- and you know what they say about slim.

HD -- high definition, as they erroneously call it -- is too late to the party. The industry and a bevy of engineering companies fought the good fight to get what they wanted and by the time they&hellip

Imagine what some geniuses who have ruined radio through consolidation have in store for their medium next.

Selling unused inventory (as they call it) via Google's AdSense biding system.

Tomorrow, reduce the sales force and cut costs as Google makes selling radio sales as easy and inexpensive as selling any commodity.

Beyond that, the world!

It's all in the very experimental stage for Google, for radio and for advertisers.

We are on the brink of moving beyond (or should I say below) the world of vacuum cleaner sales in radio.

I'm not saying that some radio stations I have known didn't have&hellip

Radio stations are beginning to use research about pirated music trends as part of their mix that includes increasingly difficult to get passive research in determining what to play on the air.

Clear Channel's Premiere Radio Networks through its Mediabase division is marketing the information to its parent company, Radio One and Emmis.

Even record labels are holding their nose and subscribing to what's popular among their nemesis -- the digital pirate. Universal wants to see what's hot on the Internet so they know what to pitch to radio stations. Wall Street Journal subscribers can read an

Most of the trades have reported the latest, poorly-handled firings at Clear Channel.

I say the latest because, in my opinion, Clear Channel has been squandering its outstanding talent since way back when it was putting together its 1,1o0 station group.

So, a week or so ago the very capable and well-liked Minneapolis exec Mick Anselmo was fired while on a fishing vacation with a heavy-hitter advertiser -- not easily reachable. So imagine Anselmo's shock to be summoned for an emergency call to hear that he was relieved of his duties.

These Clear Channel honchos I'm sure have an excuse for firing a man without telling&hellip

SoundExchange, the record industry body that collects royalty fees, now wants Internet streamers to trade a lower license fee (or no fee for small webcasters who qualify) and a cap on minimum fees of $50,000 per 100 channels in exchange for full compliance and paying legally.

SoundExchange's Executive Director John Simson told Radio & Internet's Kurt Hanson in a recent interview, "Our biggest desire is to have people paying legally and being compliant".

Sounds harmless enough, right? But it's a bad deal for Internet streamers -- a sorry exchange.

Just when Congress seems to be waking up to what an explosive issue&hellip

You heard about the iPhone almost every day on the run up to the big day when it went on sale. You hear the AT&T network sucks and hundreds of thousands of people don't care.

They want creative solutions.

In this case, make the telephone do something other than call and do rudimentary texting. Make it intuitive. Forget about cell phone coverage or data speed.

You see Internet streamers fighting for their lives against the big bad wolf -- SoundExchange. The clock ticks. Streamers beg their congressmen to do something. The gun is to their heads with the July 15th deadline for new royalty rates approaching, but the&hellip

The high profile switch of WCBS-FM from its "Jack" format back to oldies is going to require very carefully considered programming moves to be successful in the long run.

What CBS is doing today is introducing to New York City the classic hits concept that has been working very well in some of their other markets. New York, you remember, is where disenfranchised oldies listeners have literally willed their oldies station back on the air.

That is, if it is their station -- the one they remember. Two years time can blur the memory. Will CBS-FM be as listeners hold it in their memory without most of the air talent they&hellip

Since I have been at USC, I have been very careful who I call a "Nutty Professor" for obvious reasons. For every finger you point, you have three pointing back at you.

Stan Liebowitz, a distinguished University of Texas-Dallas professor has riled the radio industry with his Business Week comments. In fact, radio people are in quite a snit.

It all has to do with his study titled Don't Play It Again Sam: Radio Play, Record Sales and Property Rights. You're going to want to read this 40-page report.

You may have heard about his work because the radio trades&hellip

I hate to say I told you so, but in the case of CBS dropping arguably one of the best radio formats in the country for an unproven, not-ready-for-prime time format like "Jack" ("We play what we want") I must say it.

I told you so.

I can't brag about being the only one to say it because almost everyone in radio knew dropping CBS-FM's oldies format was a mistake.

Forget about the fact that CBS never bothered to listened to its New York listeners preferring instead to let a salesman named Joel Hollander listen to his gut. For a man who is reputed to have trashed the popular oldies format and ordered the "Jack" format up&hellip

Is the record business getting more insane every day?

Is that possible?

Now Prince, the warrior who fought the good fight against the record labels back when they actually sold CDs is riling all of Europe with his latest marketing move. Prince's decision to giveaway his new album folded into British tabloid newspapers for free is not only ironic it is moronic.

A record artist who fought the system so vehemently that he became the artist formerly known as you-know-who is in bed with a medium that was once formerly known as prosperous. The newspaper business is still better in the U.K. than in the U.S. but it seems&hellip

The "Day of Silence" to attract attention to the unfair treatment of Internet streamers at the hands of the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) is over.

Now, it's time to take off the gloves and hit SoundExchange where it hurts them the most -- in Congress.

That's what those of us interested in promoting fair access to Internet streaming wanted the "Day of Silence" to do. It succeeded to the extent that the protest brought the issue into a more general public discussion, but the execution of many small Internet radio operators is still on for July 15th when a new, draconian rate structure will be implemented that could drive&hellip

Radio is all up in arms because Congress is threatening to reintroduce the hated Fairness Doctrine that could stifle talk radio.

Talk radio is radio's best product right now (I'm not talking about their opinions, either). And radio is a hurtin' pup with advertising revenues being projected as declining in the year ahead.

The absence of the Fairness Doctrine allows a Rush Limbaugh or an Air America to have their say without providing equal time to opposing points of view. I understand what the Democrats are doing by threatening to bring it back, but it's all pointless.

1. The pro-Fairness Doctrine forces know they&hellip

I never considered the trade publication Inside Radio a choking hazard -- until yesterday morning.

That's when Inside Radio's very capable editor Frank Saxe reported a story about Clear Channel Executive Vice President Jeff Littlejohn who he quotes as saying that "the radio industry shouldn't worry about the high-profile launch of the iPhone" adding "it's not a competitive threat".

Well, I'm certainly not going to shoot the messenger.

Coffee and Inside Radio in the morning usually go down just fine with me. But it's misleading statements like Littlejohn's that take my breath away. At first I thought of a conspiracy&hellip

Just when Apple CEO Steve Jobs is languishing in all the favorable publicity surrounding the debut of his revolutionary iPhone, he gets word that Universal Music is not going to renew its iTunes deal with Apple.

So let's think this thing through.

Who needs whom here?

Does Apple need Universal's music to sell on its iTunes online web store?

Of course.

Does Universal need iTunes to turn its year around?

No, nothing could do that.

Do young consumers need to buy music on iTunes?

Are you kidding?

So what's it all about, Alfie?

Can you say more money.

It appears Universal is&hellip

I've always liked Mark Ramsey. He's uncommonly bright and is one of the go-to people for helping you figure out how to live in the future.

Mark's Hear2.0 has an interview with Seth Godin, best selling author of Permission Marketing and now The Dip.

Godin describes The Dip like this "most of the things we set out to do in our lives are controlled by one of two curves. Most things are dead ends or cul-de-sacs. They are flat paths. They

I love this man.

I have known him a long time going back to the early days of Inside Radio when he offered wise advice and counsel. I still consider him my Irish consigliere.

When I married my wife, Cheryl, in 1998 he and his beautiful wife Nancy (shown here with Bill) were there as Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell married us at the Four Seasons in Philadelphia. O'Shaughnessy provided the "smoothies" who made the music as only he can. And can he and Nancy tear up a dance floor!

This is my way of saying I cannot be objective about Bill O'Shaughnessy, but I remain observant.

In all my years in broadcasting this&hellip

The "Day Of Silence" in support of more equitable copyright royalty rates charged to Internet streamers went off remarkably well yesterday.

Kurt Hanson's RAIN reported that massive listener support crippled servers and switchboards at Congress -- the ultimate target of this protest.

There was significant support for the "Day of Silence" from Internet broadcasters particularly but not limited to the large companies that have the most to lose July 15th when the draconian new rate structure is to be implemented.

I was not impressed that many, many&hellip

Take an issue -- preferably a polarizing issue like immigration or the Iraq war -- turn it over to terrestrial radio and they beat it to death.

In the process, they quickly sink to the lowest common denominator and insult just about everyone who disagrees with them sometimes ending by questioning the patriotism of those who disagree.

And, of course, they get ratings -- big ratings.

It doesn't matter whether they talk from the left side of their mouth or the right, their listeners are kind of on the older side.

Now let's test my assertion.

Take the issue of Hillary Clinton and Barbara Boxer out to "fix"&hellip

Over the weekend Inside Radio broke the news that Clear Channel had finally decided to become an Arbitron People Meter client. It's reportedly a multi-year deal covering 50 markets.

I don't know how Clear Channel does this with a straight face. I am going to get sick when I see the trade press coverage today and Tuesday hailing this as a great step. Of course, no one should know more than I do that you don't want to get Clear Channel mad.

Since I guess I never learned my lesson, I've got another take to share with you.

This is all about one company -- the largest with over 1,100 radio stations and a near monopoly&hellip

Enter your email address here then check your mail or filter for confirmation
Delivered by FeedBurner

How can so many smart people do so many dumb things.

Take the music industry's move to get radio to pay a performance tax.

Dumb.

Free exposure on the nation's airwaves is what sells music.

The radio industry is up in arms about the possibility of paying such a tax, but they are doing nothing to prevent it from becoming inevitable.

Nothing is what radio has done since the late 1980's -- the Dark Ages of Radio then began.

Radio execs have a hard time seeing the progression of unfortunate events. Satellite and cable radio were forced to pay a fee to broadcast music. And on July 15th the Internet&hellip

Do you ever get the feeling that the four major record labels can't be bothered with the next generation and their unorthodox ways?

These labels are so secretive, silent and yes, shameful these days while almost everyone else is at least trying something to become part of the digital future.

Their seeming indifference to reality leads us to to butcher a famous Marie Antoinette quote: "Let them eat vinyl".

Look, I don't like theft any more than the labels do.

When I owned the trade publication Inside Radio we used to charge over $400 a year for each subscription to the daily fax of news and comment. I sure as&hellip

HD is amazing radio -- the best that's ever been created. Its revolutionary ability to deliver several channels from the same station will bring variety back to radio listening. HD radio combines three products -- your usual channel in enhanced audio, several sub-channels with additional programming and a digital readout to provide critical information. It's an entirely new way to listen to radio and it's available June 29th.

Wait!

I can't do this. I'm playing with you just to make a point.

That exciting first paragraph is inspired by the Apple web site description of&hellip

Like the iconic heart and soul of Mad Magazine, Alfred E. Neuman, the radio industry is being run by many radio CEOs who have taken Neuman's motto to heart: "what, me worry"?

I don't believe -- no, can't believe, that radio CEOs are concerned about the digital future vis-a-vis their radio stations.

They certainly do worry about quarterly earnings.

They worry about share price.

They worry about the next play.

The digital future? It doesn't seem like our radio leaders have a care in the world.

All one needs to do is take a look at the amount of money terrestrial radio companies have committed to the&hellip

Why is it that when a company spends $2.7 billion to do a complicated buyout of an old radio company everyone thinks they are good investors?

Am I the only one who looks at Citadel's purchase of ABC as a colossal overpayment for radio stations with an aging audience and a questionable future.

I don't mean this as criticism of the programming people and managers who have made ABC one of the most profitable radio groups. It's just that their time is up. Their stations are not going to win the future generation and yet Citadel gets backing to do the ABC deal based on a lot of good yesterdays.

I'm not naive. I know why&hellip

From the people who brought you suing their customers you now have "performance fees" for terrestrial radio.

Their argument goes: satellite and Internet must pay a performance fee, so the nation's AM and FM stations should, too. These extra fees -- in addition to music licensing charges -- could seriously impact the radio industry as it fights for a place in the digital world.

But what groups like Music First coalition are guaranteeing is their further demise as well.

The record industry is in worse shape than radio. This desperate last-ditch attempt to&hellip

Did you catch the latest radio blunder -- this one out of Philadelphia?

It seems that CBS-owned WYSP's "Free FM" had a discussion on panties Wednesday morning.

Kidd Chris was entertaining frequent contributor Danny Ozark (real name Peter Goldman) on-the-air when Ozark confessed that he met a girl at a June 2nd Phillies game who was house sitting for local NBC10 investigative reporter Lu Ann Cahn.

As the story goes, the girl inappropriately invited Ozark and a buddy to the house where they eventually went through Cahn's underwear drawers. He is reported to have said that he had hoped to try some on but he knew they&hellip

I knew this years ago when I arrived on the campus of USC.

I didn't want to believe it. Didn't believe that it was as bad as it has turned out to be, but now the latest Arbitron data is confirming my worst fears -- streaming terrestrial radio is laying an egg on the Internet.

This in spite of all the hype about how certain large conglomerates are increasing their online streaming numbers. In reality they are going from hardly any online listeners to their terrestrial programming to almost hardly any listeners when you compare apples to apples.

How does less than 1% sound?

Online listening to AM/FM stations&hellip

I have been as amazed as you most likely are about the clinic Paris Hilton is putting on for the media business.

It's true that sites like Perez Hilton and TMZ live another day just to cover celebrities such as Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and the like screwing up. Online, their readers come and go as their interest ebbs and flows. You can never get too much Paris Hilton coverage if you're the one clicking for more.

What you may not be seeing is how Paris Hilton is teaching the traditional media business all about its destructive bad self.

Except, the media business is not listening.

NBC News&hellip

I caught "The Jersey Boys" on Broadway last week.

It lived up to its excellent reviews. Being Italian, a Jersey boy myself (Hoboken) and being in the radio industry the story resonated with me.

First, I can't remember being in the same place with so many baby boomers since my college graduation.

These boomers (usually called "aging baby boomers" by the press) had a grand old time reliving the career of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons.

I am with the next generation so much in my teaching at USC I've gotten to know them in a way I never intended. They are just like the X'ers and boomers and yet they are so&hellip

Over the Memorial Day weekend my wife listens to terrestrial radio for the only time of the year.

CBS-owned KOOL-FM in Phoenix cues up the Bill Drake-narrated rockumentary that many of us have heard in various forms from the very first edition over 30 years ago. And many of us as program directors have aired "The History" just as CBS was doing -- to make money over the three-day weekend and to keep listeners listening longer.

Tuesday morning, my wife returned to listening to Sirius satellite stations. I don't detect any great love for their programming on her part. The main advantage: it's installed in the car and&hellip

You need only to look to the panicked state of radio, records, television and newspapers to understand the monumental effect the Internet has had on the music media business.

Here's a short course:

Radio, the medium for every next generation since it arrived on the scene, is forced to share time with the Internet. How about 5o% of a young persons spare time directed to their life is online according to some researchers. Streaming of radio stations although on the increase has so so far not been the answer.

In fact, it's Internet streaming that will be the next hot thing. Probably not the kind of streaming done by&hellip

With just weeks until the Apple iPhone becomes available to consumers -- the most significant mobile happening in history -- traditional media need to have a better understanding of the repercussions.

When was the last time a satellite radio executive said don't go to the store on the day satellite radio will be debuted. Or can you imagine a radio exec saying stay away from Radio Shack or Best Buy the day HD radio debuted.

Well, Apple's Steve Jobs had the chutzpah to tell cell phone shoppers to stay away from the Apple stores on the day the iPhone is released because the line to get in will be around the block. Ever the&hellip

Now this is a headline that is irresistible because it is so outrageous. Who has the answers that will save the music business?

I confess, it's not me, but I do have some ideas and they're based on my observations of smart Internet people and the next generation which I have gotten to know very well over the past three years.

Amazon has announced it will begin selling digital rights management-free music as it creates its own version of Apple's iTunes.

For the rest of us, this sounds like good news. More music available without anti-piracy technology and it all plays on our iPods.

But it's not that&hellip

No, not the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and The Big Bopper.

I

CBS paid $280 million to buy the social networking site Last.FM.

Sites like Last.FM and Tim Westergren's founding effort -- Pandora -- represent "an" aspect of the future of radio because fans can in effect program their own music and these sites are social networking sites - very significant with the next generation.

The name Last.FM is a little creepy seeing as how a traditional media company is buying it. Maybe Next.FM would be a better name.

As RAIN Publisher Kurt Hanson told his readers yesterday, "Whereas Pandora operates by creating playlists based on songs' musical characteristics (tone, tempo,&hellip

This does it.

Now consumers are now going to rush out and buy new HD radios.

Sony just announced it is planning to sell a table-top radio. AM/FM/HD, clock with sleep timer and alarm, wireless remote and auxiliary input jack. Store 20 AM and 20 FM stations. Your low-low price: 200 bucks.

Question: when was the last time you spent $200 for a table-top clock radio? What locale will have to freeze over before you pay it now? Can you think of 20 AM and 20 FM stations you'd like to store in its memory? Or any memory? Your memory? Are there 20 AM and FM stations in the entire nation worth storing in memory. Hey,&hellip

The radio industry which has fought everything from AM stereo and high definition radio (back when it was really new technology) right up to the Arbitron People Meter ratings system is proving once again why radio has lost it.

The Portable People Meter (PPM), an imperfect but necessary update to the paper diary system in this digital age, is turning out to be -- well, not so bad after all.

PPM is live and working in Philadelphia, the original test market. And while there have been problems such as a station being left out of the totals, the People Meter is reporting lots more radio listening than the diary has ever&hellip

We have had consolidation in radio for over ten years now and even after a flirtation with virtual voice tracking, the industry is fast becoming a nonstarter for serious careers.

In television, the increasing side effects of running public companies for every penny that can be eeked out of them and the collateral damage to local newsrooms is devastating. Local news, once the profit machine of local television, is not immune from taking a hit.

I am well aware that the radio industry wasn't the poster child for a "normal" career. I've got a lot of radio friends in the business and each one can tell you another indignity&hellip

Apple's much awaited iPhone cellular device will be available to consumers in about one month.

The svengali Steve Jobs has written the script and executed it with the precision of a skilled surgeon. His announcement was long enough ago to give a heads-up to cellular customers who had contracts expiring soon.

Jobs even created the theater behind the introduction of the iPhone. Just go to the Apple web site and see if you can't get excited about it.

Mobile experts are touting this phone as the killer app -- the first intuitive mobile device that integrates everything the next&hellip

Delivered by neFeedBurner

You've seen me write about my lack of enthusiasm for HD radio (misnamed "High Definition" radio which is neither high definition nor the best radio has to offer).

In the tradition of KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid) and the Bill Clinton campaigns election motto "It's The Economy, Stupid", when it comes to HD radio I'd like to add "It's the programming, stupid".

Take WCBS-FM's HD 2 oldies stream in New York. Please.

It is a shell of the former great Joe McCoy oldies station that has been shoved to the Siberian outpost we in radio now call HD radio. You can hear it over the Internet and the fidelity is, of course, as&hellip

The longtime Inside Radio editor Tom Taylor is leaving at the end of the day today to take an executive editor position at Radio-info.com.

I am proud to say I hired Tom to help us develop the original Inside Radio fax in 1990. It's hard to believe that we had to pioneer our way through thermal fax paper, non-standardized sizes and the hope that we could make a radio publication a daily thing when everyone else was a weekly. All this well before the Internet became available.

Tom and our Inside Radio President Steve Butler (now a programming&hellip

I read recently that text messaging has increased a whopping 95% over the past few years. That is, young people (mainly) are going nuts text messaging friends. This is not just a casual addiction, it's compulsion and it can detract from traditional media's presence in their lives because of one significant and undeniable reason.

Gen Y reluctantly gives up their phones and mobile devices to a charger at night and the rest of the time their phones are with them, on them, turned on and being used. No Walkman could ever make that claim of dominance or loyalty. It's an unfair comparison in a way, but it underscores just how much&hellip

I think we've finally reached the tipping point on shock jocks who compromise radio's prized and precious right to free speech and disgrace a consolidated industry that has been compromising itself since 1996.

And we may have Dan Mason, CBS' new president, to thank for kick starting the end of our long national nightmare.

Barely on the job in his new position, Mason has spoken with a firm voice that he's not going to tolerate boneheads on-the-air at CBS. And he's going to take it in the shorts for a while by upsetting the fragile billing at CBS stations but he's sending a message loud and clear.

Mason fired "The Dog&hellip

It always impresses me that Apple CEO Steve Jobs has taken control over the record label moguls.

Jobs knows what the next generation wants. He has the sales to prove it.

Record execs have no idea what the next generation wants and if they do, they have no idea how to give it to them. They are reduced to suing their customers and making demands of radio stations to pay for using music over the airwaves.

Jobs wears jeans and a turtleneck shirt and looks like a geek. The record industry crowd is a fashion statement on the entertainment business. Unfortunately for them, the geek is cleaning their clocks.

Now,&hellip

I count myself as a staunch proponent of free speech even when it offends and even when it challenges society's tolerance for it.

I don't want the FCC, Congress, religious leaders or school teachers having an unusually influential say as to what can be said, shown or written. The FCC is a flawed group of political appointees. Congress is a flawed group of men and women who answer to a higher power -- special interest groups. Religious leaders are nice people, but they have fallen off their pedestals in the past decade more frequently than ordinary sinners -- sex scandals, power struggles, misguided organizing&hellip

If we didn't already know how self-destructive the record industry can be using their past actions as a guide, you need only consider what they are trying to do right now that will really do them in.

In the bluntest language I can use (forgive me), the record labels are preparing a suicide attack on their good friends, the radio stations of this country. I call it a suicide attack because what they want to do -- if successful -- will not only hurt or maim the radio industry, still critical to their record selling ability, but kill will themselves off as well. Thus, a suicide attack.

Radio stations have for the past 75&hellip

Randy Michaels, the former Jacor and Clear Channel executive is coming back.

Not just running a bunch of second tier TV stations (from the New York Times Company) but something even bigger. Who believes Michaels wants to run only TV stations when it seems like he used to run the entire world at Clear Channel.

It pains Michaels when I write about him.

Some of you may remember that he launched a holy jihad against me for not playing nice when I owned Inside Radio. And you know how that worked out --- for him.

Clear Channel unceremoniously removed Michaels from his position of power running their radio stations a&hellip

After some anxious moments the other day, the business world learned that Microsoft and Yahoo have not been able to complete merger talks.

Microsoft needs Yahoo.

The software business is not what it used to be now that the Internet and mobile spaces have made computing non-essential for an increasing number of consumers. Cell phones and mobile devices are essential, computers less so. Microsoft has not exactly had the Midas touch in growing beyond software and, in my opinion, has been late to the Internet race.

Yahoo was a pioneer but it is being bested by Google -- America's latest out of control conglomerate.&hellip

There is little doubt in my mind that if Mel Karmazin was still running CBS, he would not have caved to the various interests that wanted Don Imus' head after he insulted the Rutgers women's basketball team on his WFAN, New York morning show.

Of course there is no way to know for sure, but I can't imagine Mel letting his revenue rich morning show get away. Putting aside his strong feelings for Don Imus, Karmazin would fight even if he had to withstand the worst possible repercussions for him -- losing advertisers. Mel would in effect tell the advertisers to go to hell and he'd wait until they came back.

Then, he'd raise&hellip

Best Buy is going to carry HD radios in all of its U.S. stores.

Wal-Mart has already agreed to do the same.

Radio Shack was the first major coast-to-coast retailer that sold HD radios and yet the shameless promotion of this useless technology continues with no progress in changing the world of radio.

I think of all the topics I cover the issue of HD radio is the most amazing to me. Surely the proponents know that adopting HD technology and forcing consumers to buy new sets is going down in flames. Terrestrial radio is not even a hot item right now -- on a car radio!

It

I know chief executives make a lot of money and I'm not a complainer who is going to nit pick executive compensation decisions. These folks are responsible for everything that happens in a company so why shouldn't they be paid well.

However, when I read that Clear Channel CEO Mark Mays made $9.31 million in 2006 and his brother, President & CFO Randall made $9.28 million I had more than a couple of questions.

My first question?

Why does Mark get to make a little more? Did Lowry love him more?

I guess you can just chalk it up to sibling rivalry.

But what's really got me lit is what the hell did Mark and&hellip

The National Association of Broadcasters has finally gotten religion.

After months if not years of silence, the lobby group for terrestrial radio announced it is coming to the aid of Internet streamers.

Here's how the NAB told the world yesterday:
"NAB is reviewing details of Rep. Inslee's bill, which would overturn the Copyright Royalty Board's disappointing decision to dramatically raise fees for companies that stream music over the Internet. We will work with Congress to craft a solution that helps ensure the survival of a fledgling audio platform."
Rep. Jay Inslee's bill looks to reverse the recent Copyright&hellip

Some of my readers have expressed an interest in learning information I have gleaned from my extensive contact with the next generation regarding their attitudes about terrestrial radio.

As many of you know I have been a professor at the University of Southern California for the past few years and intend to return to USC in the Fall for yet another year. I have said many times that my experience with the youth of the next generation has changed my outlook on all media including traditional but not excluding interactive.

Occasionally a reader of this blog will say to me "tell us something positive". Well, I can't promise&hellip

Schools Banning iPods to Beat Cheaters
Best Buy To Sell HD Radios In All U.S. Stores
FCC To Congress: Regulate TV Violence
XM Reports Boost From New Car Buyers
YouTube Experimenting With Pre and Post Rolls
Internet Radio's Enemy: Their Talking Points
Save The Internet Legislation Introduced
Inside: Internet Radio Equality Act
Imus Producer Criticizes Sharpton
Murdoch Taking MySpace To China

I thought it would be fun to announce the First Annual "Lowry" Awards for "Less Is More" in Music Media named after Lowry Mays, the man who almost singlehandedly created and molded one medium that has turned to gold and then to tin with investors taking it on the chin.

Here's a few categories (perhaps you have suggestions of your own):

and now offering it for free instead of $450 a year adding new meaning to the saying "you get what you pay for".

Now you choose the winners -- or should I say losers.

Hope you've had fun and are not too bent out of shape. We poked fun at everyone including me. So if you're&hellip

FCC Releases TV Violence Report
Apple Earnings Soar On Sales of Macs, iPods
ABC Net Leads In Commercial Clutter
CBS Buys Into Ad Serving For Advertisers on Internet Streams
Newspaper Circulation Takes Another Big Hit

Now we know just how bad things were getting at CBS Radio when Joel Hollander presided over it.

David Hinckley in The New York Daily News Monday reported the figures based on BIA statistics. It isn't pretty.

Hollander's ill-conceived attempt at radio programming called "Jack" ("We play what we want") was supposed to replace the aging oldies station WCBS-FM. It was a bold move Hollander thought was urgent, but I think it said "panic".

CBS-FM had, according to Hinckley's article, slipped from about $40 million per year a few years earlier to $23.9 million when the mid-year shift to "Jack" took&hellip

Internet Royalties -- What Is Fair
How Much More Should Google Be Allowed To Grab

What kind of welcome is this for Dan Mason as he takes over the helm at CBS Radio?

Free FM - WFNY, New York -- talkers JV and Elvis Duran conducted a prank call on-air directed at employees of a Chinese restaurant that included ethnic slurs and sexual slurs. The call was conducted and aired on April 5 and -- believe it or not -- was rebroadcast last Thursday.

They were finally suspended indefinitely without pay.

The Asian community is up in arms. They want their heads. Activist Vicki Shu Smolin told The New York Times "If they don't fire the D.J.'s it will be a double standard". The dreaded boycott of advertisers&hellip

You've got to hand it to Clear Channel. They never give up.

After years of touting "Less Is More" to the advertising community (or should we say to their shareholders), they've now come up with a another new idea.

None is More.

No commercials 24 hours a day.

KZPS, Dallas is running no 30's, no 60's -- not even tens.

No "blinks" -- another Clear Channel innovation.

They call their latest brainchild integration because one sponsor gets to buy the entire hour and gets a mention at the top of the hour then the djs give the sponsor about two minutes of casual mentions during the hour's music&hellip

Say what you want about Don Imus, but he apologized until he couldn't say it anymore and paid the price for his bonehead comments about the women of the Rutgers basketball team. He actually left the industry with his head up -- not down. He was plastered by the news media, competitors and the increasingly powerful minority groups who wanted his head.

They got it.

Now, where are they?

Augusta radio personality Austin Rhodes repeated the Imus slur last week. The NAACP is after him but he is still gainfully employed. Advertisers are still advertising.

Get a load what Rush Limbaugh got away with just last&hellip

News organizations are driving away the next generation.

The tragedy at Virginia Tech was only a few hours old

By Steve Meyer, Inside Music Media

Clear Channel and Google are perfect together.

Clear Channel, the media giant that gave consolidation a bloody nose is teaming up with Google, the Internet monster that is aiming to give its competitors a bloody nose.

Forgive me, but this sounds like two evil empires working together to further their need to dominate the media business.

Clear Channel hasn't been able to convince its shareholders that they should pay a low ball price to get their approval to sell and go private, but it was able to announce a deal with kindred spirit Google to give up high quality radio inventory over the next three years -- all 30&hellip

Some of the brightest programming minds in the glory days of radio who were used and abused by consolidation could be having the last laugh right now about how they saw this embarrassing decline in radio coming.

But it's not funny.

The latest bump in what has become a rocky road for terrestrial radio is the decline of the morning show.

Morning shows can represent 40% or more of a stations total revenues. The morning show still makes the station.

So you would think with the stakes that high these Einsteins at consolidated radio would have a Plan B in case one of their franchise hosts (God forbid) died, left for&hellip

So, Viacom Is Going To Stop Rappers, Thugs And Whores.

The mega media corporation that owns Black Entertainment Network (BET) and MTV is not likely to solve the problem that the Don Imus firing has focused attention on because Viacom is part of the problem.

Don't believe me?

Turn on BET and see how much respect woman -- Black women -- are not getting from rappers who wiggle, waggle and gaggle all over the screen all hours of the day.

CBS was spun off as a separate company from Viacom although CEO Sumner Redstone still controls it -- after all, when he revealed that CBS CEO Les Moonves was going to do the right&hellip

Now that CBS has pulled the trigger and fired Don Imus, the story can fade out of the headlines and Anna Nicole Smith can return to its proper place in America's new flow.

It's over.

Now, the lessons:

First, about media companies and the "right thing":

Don't underestimate the power of spineless media and advertising executives who got caught in the controversy they helped to create. They're on your side one day and against you the next. I would have been more impressed if MSNBC was so outraged by Imus' remarks that they fired him on the spot. Same for CBS. Not days later when the heat was being turned up.&hellip

NBC News pulled the plug on Don Imus' Imus In The Morning TV simulcast of his CBS radio show yesterday putting an end to our long national agony -- having to listen to sanctimonious and scared media companies and advertisers try to act like Mother Teresa.

NBC -- the same multimedia company that was even later than Imus in recognizing that it had a problem.

The same NBC that only a few days earlier issued a two week suspension of Imus' show as appropriate punishment. Now, NBC News President Steve Capus was trying to pass off NBC's concern for its internal family and reputation as the reason they fired Imus.

I saw&hellip

Don Imus is the creation of radio management.

How do I know that?

There would be no Imus In The Morning if various radio executives and companies over the years did not hire him, fire him, promote him, syndicate him and pay him beyond his wildest dreams.

Imus is edgy and employers like edgy.

Until...

Well, until their creation goes over the edge.

Incidents like the one Imus had with the Rutgers basketball team (do I really need to repeat his racial slur here?) could only happen because his employers want him to be on the cutting edge. It's okay when Don Imus slices and dices a politician or a&hellip

Apple is touting its latest feat -- the sale of 100 million iPod devices.

And Apple has a lot to be proud of because this number two computer company has cleaned everyone's clocks in the five years or so that they have been on the market.

iPod just this week eclipsed the Walkman as the fastest growing music player. It took Sony 14 years to sell the same number of their cassette players with headphones.

Both the Walkman and iPod have changed the way people listen to music.

Walkman was the primitive iPod. It was analog in an analog world. Bulkier, but mobile back in the day. A Walkman was still small enough to&hellip

All of us have had a lot of fun with the Clear Channel commercial reduction initiative they dubbed "Less Is More". Ad agencies. Industry types.

Part of the reason we love to poke fun at LIM is that the name is so ridiculous. Few people believe less of anything is more than something. Maybe in golf where the lower the score the better you play or in weight loss. You get the idea.

But holding this radio industry up to ridicule with advertisers and agencies at a time when the radio industry has plenty of other reasons to be ridiculed is reason enough for some form of outrage.

Unless of course, Clear Channel was&hellip

I think with great fondness on the memory of legendary Philadelphia record promotion man Matty "Humdinger" Singer.

In my radio programming career I can think of no other person as colorful, hard-working or convincing as this man. He lived to promote records. He and his brethren were the work engine of the record business when labels were king and radio stations were hitmakers.

I mention this because I am struck by the inability of today's record labels to get records (I mean songs) played on the radio and the labels' inability to generate record sales. Compilation CDs are not record sales.

We all know that it's all&hellip

A longtime radio friend of mine reminded me that if I could have told him before 1996 that Clear Channel, the little San Antonio company that used to be called "Cheap Channel", was going to eventually be the biggest force in radio, he would have said I was crazy.

Few saw it coming.

This group of Texas outsiders rounding up over 1,100 stations was unthinkable back then. But the little engine that could wound up to be the little engine that couldn't. You don't head for the door and sell off 400+ stations and jump into the arms of investment bankers to take you private unless being a public company doesn't work.

Well,&hellip

By Steve Meyer, Inside Music Media

Radio, take a day off.

You can't possibly outdo Apple's first well-publicized mistake today so rest easy.

Apple actually did a good thing yesterday -- a deal with EMI (number three of the big four labels) to provide DRM-free music from the sizable EMI catalog. Good because it cooperates with the inevitable -- the marketplace (next generation) is demanding free use of the music they buy just as if they bought a CD at Tower Records -- if there were a Tower Records. And there isn't a Tower Records because they ignored the next generation.

But Apple did a bad thing yesterday, too.

It decided to charge a premium&hellip

Doomsday is coming.

By mid-April Clear Channel will know whether its shareholders will approve its low ball offer to cash in their chips and take the company private. That is, if the vote isn't postponed -- again.

Seems like America's biggest radio consolidator may be having trouble getting shareholders to do what it wants. The shareholders are restless about this Clear Channel plan. You remember slim and none, don't you? Well, it appears the $19 billion dollar, $37.60 per share buyout by private equity firms Bain Capital Partners and Thomas H. Lee Partners is no slam-dunk. It may be a dunk, but without the&hellip

One of the regular readers of this blog noticed some interesting associations being made in the FAQ.pdf and other parts of the SoundExchange "Legislative Alert Center".

Sit down. Stay away from sharp objects and read this in amazement:
Webcasting is to blame for the slump in CD sales."CD sales have slumped 25 percent since 2000, while webcasting audiences have grown dramatically.""Do AM & FM stations pay these royalties? Not at this time.""The United States stands alone among the major developed nations in denying artists any right to collect royalties&hellip

I know. I know.

You have a hard time believing that college students -- in this case my students at USC -- can tell you anything you don't already know about programming your stations for them.

In that case, you should stop reading. Scroll down to some other stories you may have missed or page over to a traditional radio trade publication and read how good radio really is and how important HD radio is to attracting the next generation and how everything will be just fine.

On the other hand, if you're one of my thoughtful readers in a position to influence a troubled radio station, I'd like to offer the advice the&hellip

Shortly after the new millennium, Clear Channel engaged me as publisher of Inside Radio in a very high priced lawsuit. I responded with a similar counter suit. The legal battle went on for years. Never went to court. Was eventually settled and Clear Channel purchased Inside Radio.

You do the math.

Fortunately it all ended fine for me and Inside Radio wound up in the hands of some very talented people in editor Tom Taylor and General Manager Gene McKay. I am still very proud of how these two gentlemen have continued to maintain Inside Radio as the industry's most respected news publication.

I'm not going to&hellip

I take back everything critical I have ever said about CBS CEO Les Moonves.

Finally I can say "Les is More".

Moonves came up big yesterday. A television man who knows little about radio knew enough that he needed a proven radio executive to turn his slumping radio division around. So he hired back Dan Mason. Mason had been doing some projects for CBS since he relinquished his duties to Joel Hollander. Now, Moonves showed Hollander the door and welcomed Mason in with open arms.

I have to say that I have known Dan Mason a long, long time. I like him immensely and so I may not be as objective as I'd like to be.&hellip

So Starbucks is starting a record label.

Will we someday have to use the term "The Big Five" labels when referring to the majors? Even if the record business stinks we can say Starbuck's record business smells great.

Starbucks is aiming to release eight albums in its first year. You'll be able to buy them while you're ordering your coffee, but they are also doing a distribution deal that will enable others to sell their albums as well.

And, Starbucks is launching with a big splash signing Paul McCartney to a one project contract now that he is no longer contracted to Capitol Records. I like McCartney, but I don't&hellip

The outstanding John Bayliss Foundation had themselves an American Idol-type roast last night by choosing CBS Radio head Joel Hollander to be the honored as a roastee. Who would have known that Hollander would be the hot topic in New York, in The New York Post, in the radio industry and everywhere on the evening of March 22, 2007.

See, he's apparently on the way out of his job in a high profile firing/resignation that has become quite public. Hollander is supposedly unhappy with his boss, CBS CEO Les Moonves, a television man. It's hard to tell the spin from the sin here. Who leaked to The Post? Who got fed up with whom?&hellip

By Steve Meyer, Inside Music Media

Just like in the novelty record by Napoleon XIV. It's now radio's theme song:

Remember when you ran away
And I got on my knees
And begged you not to leave
Because I'd go berserk?
Well. . .

You left me anyhow
And then the days got worse and worse
And now you see I've gone
Completely out of my mind
And. . .

They're coming to take me away, HA HA
They're coming to take me away, HO HO HEE HEE&hellip

CNN Radio asked me to do an interview last week on their show "Digital Downbeat", a fast-moving, excellent show I had never heard of prior. Bob Struble, President, CEO and Chairman (all that) of iBiquity, the surviving and only HD technology company, represented the traditional radio side. You know who was asked to take it from the other side.

What transpired was spin-doctoring in the image of White House Press Secretary Tony Snow.

Struble was good. Real good.

He was also wrong. Dead wrong.

He led the audience to believe that HD radio was the hottest thing around. That HD was the future of radio. He also&hellip

Clear Channel was first in every way.

First to amass over 1,000 radio stations. First to not be able to run 1,000 radio stations. First to move to sell off 400+ radio stations -- a mini-Clear Channel. First to declare victory while share prices fell from the $90 range to the $30 range. First to know when to fold 'em and get out.

But the other Clear Channel is CBS.

I'll give you that CBS doesn't have the hard nose, take no prisoners attitude of the Mays family business, but when it comes to running radio stations into the ground they are in good company -- they take a backseat to no one -- except, of course Clear&hellip

My longtime friend Kurt Hanson, publisher of Radio & The Internet (RAIN) has just done a spectacular piece on copyright law and the Congressional Royalty Board (CRB) -- what went wrong.

Internet Radio is the future of broadcasting and it is in serious jeopardy now due to a recent CRB ruling. Many Internet radio stations -- especially the "little guys" (the lifeblood of streaming) could be in jeopardy. They may even have to shut down as a result.

Kurt is leading a major effort to get the CRB ruling reconsidered. It's life or death for Internet Radio. I've known Kurt as a man of integrity for many years. I have&hellip

Clear Channel, or should I now say, Fear Channel, has rescheduled its vote on taking the company private from March 21st in just a few days to April 19th presumably to have more time to seek shareholder approval.

Mark Mays has already warned his employees that whether the deal goes through or not, there will be many changes ahead for them. Again!

So I ask, what's new?

On the radio side the poor people of Clear Channel have lived through the Randy Michaels era, John Hogan's stewardship and now the prospect of not knowing what the future may hold for them one more time. More change? That's all they've had at radio's&hellip

By Steve Meyer, Inside Music Media

It's just traditional media companies being traditional media companies.

Viacom and its subsidiaries like CBS, Comedy Central, etc are simply acting like Universal's NBC and Disney's ABC. They have "Seen-us envy" -- that disease that has old media companies becoming paranoid because the audience gets to see their content, they even get paid, but they can't control the distribution.

So, Viacom let the other shoe drop yesterday in Federal Court suing Google over YouTube for more than $1 billion in damages. This suit makes Clear Channel look like a nickel and dime litigator. Viacom is becoming the new Clear Channel while&hellip

An Unlikely scenario

Right now the ever weakening record labels are sticking it to broadcast radio. And some of those bullies over there in terrestrial radio are just taking it.

There is growing evidence the music business is looking to charge AM and FM stations flat fees for permission to play their music. The CRB has already dealt a blow to the fledgling Internet radio business by jacking up royalty payments beyond which most operators can afford to remain in business.

Let me get this straight. Isn't this biting the hand that feeds them. I mean, what is the record business without radio? Most record sales are&hellip

Kurt Hanson in his March 9th edition of RAIN quotes Beta News as saying that ""CRB rates would make SoundExchange a '$2.3 billion per year business'" and "based on the CRB's royalty rates for 2006, AOL Radio is expected to receive a royalty bill for last year for about $23.7 million...".

It gets worse:
"On a per-listener scale, broadcast radio stations paid $1.56 per listener on average during 2006; and in 2010, that figure rises to $1.94 per listener. BetaNews estimates that Internet radio sites, by contrast, will&hellip

The FCC and your elected officials are responsible for the current sorry state of the broadcasting business. Wall Street distracts us. Steve Jobs attracts us. And Congress, the enabler of many of today's problems for broadcast media whacks us.

Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 tacking on radio consolidation before the final vote. Congress in its infinite wisdom (or lack of it, thereof) developed the template of growth for the radio industry. A few owners own virtually everything worth owning. It created Clear Channel, the Clear Channel clones and made it impossible for small owners not to sell out to the&hellip

With all the talk about a possible presidential pardon for Scooter Libby, I got to thinking whether the radio industry should consider pardoning Clear Channel -- not for high crimes and misdemeanors because there has never been evidence such acts were committed but for blowing consolidation.

Some members of the jury have come out in favor of the president pardoning Libby even though they just convicted the aide to Vice President Cheney. Since they can find it in their hearts to forgive Libby, can radio forgive Clear Channel?

Can its employees see it in their hearts to let go of the fact that Lowry and Mark Mays could have&hellip

The radio industry is all excited about a just-announced decision by Wal-Mart to sell "affordable" HD radios. Bruce Beasley quoted in Inside Radio said Tuesday, "Wal-Mart doesn't pick up on too many bad products to sell."

Unfortunately, HD radio is one of the not "too many".

HD's time has come and gone with the radio industry fighting forever on which system to adopt. HD might have been neat in the early 90's, for instance, when radio had no competition and MTV was the only minor distraction.

And, the price of an HD radio is too steep.

Nobody needs one because the content on the sub-channels is weak. The&hellip

Four of the six largest radio consolidators have settled with the FCC over alleged payola practices according to the Associated Press. That means Entercom pays $4 million. Clear Channel $3.5 million. CBS $3 million and Citadel $2 million. Previously New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer collected $30 million from the big four record labels and another $6.25 million from CBS and Entercom. Spitzer has been critical of the FCC for doing nothing.

But early reaction to the deal seems to be positive. I wish I&hellip

"Houston, we may not have a problem after all. We just signed a contract for People Meter ratings in Philadelphia and we've now returned to the Mother Ship as a big believer. Over."

"Roger, Evil Empire. Welcome back."

That's how I imagine a conversation between Unclear Channel and Arbitron Mission Control which has launched portable audience measurement in Philadelphia and is doing the same thing in Houston.

Unclear Channel has finally decided to get on board the People Meter Love Train in Philadelphia -- this after refusing to even allow Arbitron to install an encoder on their stations' signals so that more&hellip

I just read that CBS has hired away a Google executive as its new CMO for the interactive division. The article, which appeared in Online Media Daily even went so far as to point to this as "another sign that CBS is serious about becoming a digital media powerhouse".

Oh really?

It seems to me like a bad case of -- let's call it -- Google eyes on the part of traditional media.

Google, the well-run interactive media giant, has taken on everyone and won -- so far at least. And where they came up short,&hellip

Perhaps you've heard about the new plan Fox has come up with that will allow its TV affiliates to make Fox programming available in their DMA on local broadband. The affiliates either charge the viewer a fee or use pre-roll revenue which is then split 50/5o down the middle with Fox. Such a deal!

This is just the latest in a series of moves by traditional media to take back its power to control the distribution channels for programming and product. It sounds like a great deal for everyone all around. Or is it?

One view is that traditional media&hellip

I hope the rumors are false.

I hope that Clear Channel is not about to deal hundreds of stations to one buyer creating an instant mini-Clear Channel.

Clear Channel is selling off its assets after running the shareholders value down and they are in the process of settling on a buyer for the majority of some 400+ stations they are looking to deal. These stations are obviously non-essential to their new plan which is to remain in the big markets once they've sold off these stations and other assets.

What's upsetting and probably not surprising is the prospect that one operator could pick up this critical mass of radio&hellip

I have to laugh when I see how the traditional media business is responding to the awesome attack of interactive media on their space.

When they are not doing next to nothing to respond, they are busy creating content and brand managers to take them into the new age. Now the thought is a a good one -- make your comprehensive content and marketing come together under one person. But in my view they are doing this in name only.

We already have such a person in terrestrial broadcasting. That's the program director. It's cool and everything to elevate programming to "branding" but the nomenclature is not the solution. It&hellip

A few days ago when the two -- only two -- satellite operators announced their merger intentions, I wrote a post about what it would take to succeed in a world where radio is everywhere. At the end of the piece I warned that if the merged satellite operator didn't make some major changes, it wouldn't really matter whether their merger succeeded or not because their mission wouldn't.

Now, it's time to mention the killer app.

When universal WiFi or its equivalent is available and consumers can take the Internet with them then it's all over for radio. Ditto for satellite radio.

That is, of course, assuming that&hellip

If and when Sirius and XM Satellite Radio get the green light to merge, new radios will have to be manufactured to allow both services which use different technology to be heard on one receiver. The FCC had always mandated that when satellite radio was created, both satellite networks had to be heard on all receivers. Somewhere along the way, the FCC let this little detail slip away. Could you imagine an AM/FM radio that only receives one station? Well, actually, I can because WBEB-FM, Philadelphia founder Jerry Lee used to manufacture and give them away to advertisers before a crackdown stopped his great promotion.

So follow&hellip

Put this in perspective.
Warner is trying to buy EMI again. The two record labels have been doing the merger dance for many years now. Some think it's just big egos trying to best each other. All this while their businesses go to the dogs.
The RIAA has stepped up its targeting of university campuses in hopes of catching more college students doing the nasty -- illegal downloading.And while all this is going on record industry execs are privately working on life without digital rights management (DRM) while publicly, for the most part, denying it.It's just another day in paradise for the trouble music industry.&hellip

Who's sorry now?

The radio industry liked it when Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 enabling widespread consolidation to take place. The NAB slipped the radio part of that legislation in through the back door. Wall Street embraced radio as never before. These guys loved it.

Now, the shoe is on the other foot. The two -- only two -- satellite operators must be so sure they are going to get their merger approved that they have gone and announced it. And now those same consolidators who were looking for every reason to convince lawmakers, regulators, advertisers and the public that loosening up the&hellip

Sirius and XM are proposing a merger of equals.

Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin would come away as CEO of the new entity (whatever it is called) and current XM Chairman Gary Parsons would be chairman of the merged satellite company. That's assuming the FCC approves it. Assuming the DOJ approves it. And that's a lot of assuming. I've seen reporting that predicts an early closing on the merger. On that one, we'll see what happens.

What we know is that a combined company could save billions and billions of dollars. That alone should have investors jumping for joy. These bleeding companies could be profitable as one. No&hellip

By Steve Meyer, Inside Music Media

I worked for Paul Drew when he programmed the Drake format in Philly and one of our Bill Drake-voiced station breaks said, "...And the hits just keep on comin". Back then it was true. Radio was thriving in the late 60's in large part because the music business was thriving. The Beatles, British invasion, Motown, Philly sound. Radio had hit the wall with too much talk and not enough music (sound familiar?), but the music kept radio hot.

Now the recent news that things for the record labels -- already stuck in a time warp by imitating themselves -- have gone from bad to worse.

EMI, the European member of the big four, cut&hellip

MySpace has taken another step in the direction of protecting the rights of music and publishing companies by announcing the implementation of technology from Audible Magic Corp that will provide a second layer of protection from posting unauthorized video clips. The system scans video clips and searches for signature vectors such as a unique digital fingerprint and compares it with information in their database.

Now, MySpace can block content and with this system search for unauthorized use through the fingerprinting&hellip

GM is cutting its ad expenditures by a whopping $600 million. Inside Radio reports that powerful ad exec Betsy Lazar told the Radio Advertising Bureau convention that business as usual won't win GM's business.

What does she mean?

No lazy 30 second ad pitches.

She wants ideas that show involvement by the station. Imagine. This from an industry that is flirting with letting Google automate its ad selling to cut costs. To radio's credit it may be flirting but it hasn't proposed marriage or even an affair with Google. Those who work in radio know that if radio is anything it is a one-on-one relationship with the&hellip

Let's leave our political points of view on the war in Iraq out of this discussion. While the Dixie Chicks' ideological position on the war and their version of patriotism may have gotten them into trouble with conservatives and with country radio stations, the same position also won them some sympathy in Grammy voting where the group swept all five of the categories in which they were nominated and the coveted song of the year, record of the year and album of the&hellip

Ready. Aim. Fire.

The radio industry, a business of hard working people who love what they do but are held hostage to the bad decisions of their owner, has just shot itself in its collective foot one more time. Cox, Entercom, Cumulus, Radio One and, of course, their enabler, Clear Channel are at it again. They have offered what is said to be funding in the millions of dollars to help rival The Media Audit try again to derail Arbitron's Portable People Meter which is up and running "live" in Philadelphia now; will go live soon in Houston and has received accreditation in one market already. The price for this new service has&hellip

If you've been following the battles that are cropping up over YouTube's dominance of Internet video clips, you may want to check out the back story.

Viacom made a very public gesture recently ordering YouTube to remove its considerable video content from the service. Even though sources say both sides were in negotiations over a content agreement, none was had. The number $100 million has been mentioned. Obviously, Viacom thinks its content is worth a lot more. And the issue may not just be doing a deal with Google but not wanting to have to feed the monster.

Then no sooner than Jeff Zucker took over as head of NBC&hellip

This is starting to sound like the Democrats and Republicans on Iraq -- except the topic is digital rights management (DRM).

Apple CEO Steve Jobs takes the unusual step of using his clout and places a letter about the music industry on the Apple website. In it, he outlines a number of scenarios that are possible in the digital downloading era. One option, that he rejects, is to make Apple's security system called Fairplay available to other companies. No sooner than Jobs declares DRM dead, the mouthpiece of the record industry, the RIAA, decides to take him up on making Fairplay available to other manufacturers. Didn't he say&hellip

It was only October of last year when NBC.com Rewind started running full episodes of NBC programming. It has already delivered 42 million full shows.

Now a new Mediaweek article reveals that many of the people going to the site are using Rewind as their personal TiVo. And there are some very impressive numbers according to NBC research:
78% of users who streamed full-length episodes watched shows from the series they usually watch but missed on broadcast television81% of those surveyed said they&hellip

The U.S. Census Bureau's new statistical abstract for 2007 forecasts how the "average" adult or teen will use media in the year ahead:
65 Days watching television41 days listening to radioA week listening to recorded musicIn excess of a week on the Internet7 days reading a daily newspaper
It's always dangerous to describe the "average" adult or teen, but be that as it may, you can adjust the numbers any way you like and they are still scary.

Because all adults are being factored in to the projections, Internet usage is lower than most of us using a computer right now might think. So it's not much of a stretch to&hellip

Open Letter on Apple's website from CEO Steve Jobs
February 6, 2007

With the stunning global success of Apple

One can understand Viacom

In The UK they're even calling it a "new golden age" of radio as digital use takes off. The number of radio listeners in Britain are at an all time high of 45 million every week.

It gets better.

Some 8% of people 15 or older listen to radio on their mobile phones. Try catching someone here in the U.S. doing that. Listening over the Internet in Britain rose ten percent. Brits also like podcasting even more than we do here with about 17% of all the MP3 owners listening.

Radio in other countries around the world is still revered.

But you&hellip

By Steve Meyer, Inside Music Media

There's good news and bad news for Google's YouTube and its many users.

First the good.

Google is jumping on board the video love train that will share ad revenues with contributors. Revver does that already. But the giant YouTube's entry into pay for play changes the face of the online video experience.

Now the bad news.

Google and YouTube are mulling the idea of adding commercial videos before the clip you're looking to view starts playing. They haven't made up their mind yet. Perhaps this research from a recent Harris poll will make them think twice about it:
Nearly three-quarters of frequent&hellip

We all know that the radio industry is in transition. It is coming off "The Dark Ages", a time span that began after consolidation in 1996 up to and including this year. I get the feeling radio executives are finally beginning to recognize (and the brave ones admit) that they have dropped the ball during consolidation.

It's time for an intervention for the sake of the radio monopolies allowed by Congress when it passed the enabling legislation -- The Telecommunications Act of 1996.

There was the Wall Street stuff -- getting used to running public companies, pandering to investors and analysts and for the most part having&hellip

Never have so many pulled so hard for so few.

The lines are drawn -- the many people in the radio industry who are hoping that Clear Channel will actually sell off part of its conglomerate and take a small group of radio stations private vs. the few owners and Wall Street money people who hope for a large pay day today and another one down the line if they decide to sell off more assets later.

But shareholders are funny people especially when some of them owned Clear Channel stock in the $90 range and are now holding the same issues in the mid-30's. The Wall Street Journal last week did a piece on the showdown between&hellip

The situation at KDND, Sacramento is prophetic for more reasons than the obvious -- that a 28-year old listener died in a stupid, irresponsible on-air contest where she was encouraged to drink water without regard to her health. Now, the family of victim Jennifer Strange is suing the station and naming some 40 defendants in the case.

There's no doubt in my mind that the contest was irresponsible, but its up to a jury to determine whether there is legal culpability. And the FCC may determine whether the station gets to stay on the air. There's an uproar to strip KDND parent Entercom of the license. On that issue, I would not&hellip

The most viralist video on the Internet right now is a simple clip recorded by two Philly girls doing a parody of SNL's "Dick In A Box" digital short. The girls call their version "My Box In A Box". This whole thing may just sound like another YouTube "can you top this moment" but I think it is more than that -- it's a glimpse into the future of the music business.

One girl (Leah Kauffman) sings the song and her friend, Bunny, lip syncs the video -- and does a damn good job of it (Ashlee Simpson, take note). Then a&hellip

Spiral Frog's got problems.

Last year it previewed a music service that offered free music downloads in return for users spending about a minute and a half watching ads (even more ads for video). What were they thinking?

Who do they think is their audience? Its not the Generation Y I have come to know and love. No way are they going to watch all that advertising. Maybe 30 seconds of ads while the music is downloading -- once -- but not all this blatant capitalism for every song.

The labels knew a good thing when they saw it (I am being sarcastic here). Universal and BMI and a few indies jumped aboard the Spiral&hellip

Like President Bush, who is surging ahead with his plan to send more troops to Iraq instead of withdraw as much of the country seems to want, record labels can identify. Labels know they are going to have to eat their words on digital rights management (DRM), but they don't want to do it too soon. Maybe they want to fight the downloaders there so they don't have to fight them here because in China where most of the music is pirated EMI has done a deal with their leading website Baidu.com to offer free music. And the two are going to work together on music&hellip

Traditional media finally has something not to worry about.

A study from Forrester reveals that 82% of the consumers they surveyed thought video ads were annoying. A full 75% said they just ignore the video ads and only ten percent said they interacted with these ads occasionally. If I'm selling traditional media, I'm going to like selling against these statistics.

Of course, you don't have to go to a research company to know how ineffective the new age of Internet advertising really is, you just have to be a Gen Y'er or the parent of a Gen Y'er or a nosy person watching someone blow off Internet advertising. I know I&hellip

By Stephen Meyer, Inside Music Media

KDND, Sacramento is in hot water because its morning team did a ridiculous contest egging on a listener in a water drinking contest. Water is harmless, right? Not in excess. The victim, a contestant, drank more water than she should have. Entercom, the owner, dutifully fired ten people including the morning team, as a reaction to the death of the 28-year old Jennifer Strange. Criminal charges are possible. One of the morning crew apparently questioned on the air whether they were doing the right thing. If no charges are pressed at least a prosecutor will get a chance to make some headlines for a while.

All in all the&hellip

Apple is reporting a fiscal first quarter profit up 78% from a year ago. A 24.5% increase in revenue from the prior year's quarter. Shareholder value is up 65 cents a share over a year ago. You may also remember that news accounts had iTunes slipping in the second half of 2006. The vultures were circling Cupertino. Luckily Apple CEO Steve Jobs bought none of it. Jobs knows that he is in the iPod business and that iTunes exists for the iPod. Apple sold 22 million iPods for the period ending December 30th -- a 50% increase from a year ago. Steve Jobs once again had his eyes on the right prize.

If you were in an Apple store&hellip

By Steve Meyer, Inside Music Media

It's time to take our medicine. HD Radio as a concept, as a savior, as the enabler of more channels is never going to happen. I am sorry to say this because so many of my radio friends are betting their futures on it. Its time to deal with the failure of HD and move on rather than to continue to fool ourselves. HD will not make any difference whatsoever to the future of radio.

If not HD, then what?

I'm not opposed to installing HD capability on radio signals if that is going to improve the sound quality. It should always be our goal to improve the quality of the radio signal. But at the same time it would be helpful to&hellip

The Arbitron diary system is history in Philadelphia, the first People Meter market. Philly has long been a test market for Arbitron in the development of The People Meter, a technology that should have been implemented years ago. There is no reason under the sun except for perhaps pricing that any broadcaster would choose a paper diary over this advancement. And doing ratings on the cheap was never a good investment for the industry.

You'd have to give Arbitron an A for persistence and you'd have to give Clear Channel an F for putting the radio industry's interests ahead of its own.

Clear Channel certainly has the&hellip

Apple has excited its base once more with the long-awaited announcement of the new iPhone/iPod that will be available in June. The online edition of The Wall Street Journal did a "hot or not" poll Monday wondering if iPhone will be another iPod or a Newton, Apple's pioneering PDA that failed. The results were overwhelming on the positive side. David Pogue's initial reaction in The New York Times was glowing.

Of course, I have come to trust the instincts of the&hellip

Steven Jobs did it again. The Apple CEO brought another product to market that promises to be a big revenue producer for him and a revolutionary device for consumers. The iPhone will arrive in June and will work on the Cingular mobile system. Chances are you already know a lot about the iPhone. No need to go into it here. That's only part of the genius of Jobs. He thinks them up. Builds them. Makes a big deal out of them. And sells them.

So, I've been thinking -- what if Steve Jobs took over a radio group with, say, 1,100 or so stations. What would he do? What could he do? Is analog radio off limits to the master? Or,&hellip

What Clear Channel, the largest radio broadcaster, is doing to delay or disrupt implementation of Arbitron's much needed People Meter ratings methodology reminds me of the Sheb Wooley hit in 1958 where he sang about the one-eyed, one-horned flying purple people eater. To me, Clear Channel is acting like the Arbitron People Meter Eater. Refusing to even allow all-important encoding of their stations' signals to permit these personal devices carried by a sample of listeners to record Clear Channel station listening. Surprise! Clear Channel is taking a hard-nose policy on pricing and other issues that clearly haven't helped radio&hellip

You've heard of David Letterman's Stupid Pet Tricks. Somehow all the smart executives in music media manage to do things that are, well, not very productive for them. With that in mind, try these Stupid Media Tricks on for size:
Throwing radio listeners a bone by saying that HD radio will bring digital audio to terrestrial radio stations when what the industry really wanted was more channels. Unfortunately listeners don't. Radio owners dragging their feet on implementing the People Meter seemingly never running out of excuses for sticking with a paper diary system in a digital world. At this moment Clear Channel, the largest&hellip

Excuse me, but am I dreaming or having a nightmare about Arbitron's People Meter. Yes, I know implementing this new portable technology will cost significantly more and that radio will have to share listening with other media, but -- I have a major question to pose. Why is the radio industry in this age of technology still culling their audience ratings from a paper diary system? Why is Clear Channel still nickel and diming the People Meter when the radio industry not only needs it -- it needed it years ago?

Radio is an industry that is dying from self-inflicted wounds.

Take HD Radio. I have a problem with the name --&hellip

By Peter DiCola, Inside Music Media

Digital Rights Management (DRM) has been a dismal failure. My music industry students at USC knew it before anyone because they are part of the generation that helped neuter it. We know why labels like DRM. It protects their rights and in their fantasy helps sell more music.

Now the labels are getting ready to swallow the bitter pill and give up on trying to manage DRM. It is in their best interest to do it now, but they will probably drag it out. Revenue from digital downloads and mobile content is down. Even iTunes sales are down and if the Christmas spike materializes once the figures are in, the trend is still off.&hellip

By Steve Meyer, Inside Music Media

I love the radio business. I truly do. Radio people are like an extended family. They are with you in good times and Clear Channel times. It pained me to have to write repeatedly in Inside Radio after consolidation that it would kill the medium. Many of my long time and new friends were redeployed as a result of all the station mergers and some of them took it personally. Others didn't. They just hoped and prayed I was wrong. Ten years later the record on radio consolidation speaks for itself.

Well, I'm about to do it again.

The radio industry just doesn't get it. You can't grow a business that doesn't have a&hellip

Yesterday, Entercom finally gave in and agreed to pay New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer $4.25 million to make his payola investigation go away. Several other big radio consolidators including Clear Channel and a few major record labels have already settled.

Anyone who has been or is presently in radio knows that there was and is various kinds of payola. The record industry denies it. Independent promoters have a habit of disappearing -- I heard of one going to Sicily and returning when the heat was off. Radio stations can't bring themselves to admit their complicity. They're in denial. Hey, President Clinton told us he&hellip

The Disney Channel kids program "Hannah Montana" is a smash hit. And so is the music 14- year old Miley Cyrus sings as the fictional pop star Hannah Montana. She has sold over 1.6 million songs in about two months beating out the likes of Jay-Z, Sarah McLachlan, The Beatles Love album and a slew of others. It highlights the potential of the 8-14 year old market sometimes known as the "Tweens". These days the usual mojo from teens is not there in the record business. Teens and older Gen Y youths have found their way to music downloading. They're not such a hot record market anymore. But "Tweens", that's another story. Let's break&hellip

By Steve Meyer, Inside Music Media

Coming early in the year ahead, Verizon customers will be seeing -- that's right -- seeing their first banner ads on news, sports and weather sites among others that users visit and display on their mobile phones. This morning's New York Times is reporting that the decision has some major implications for users and advertisers along with many risks. Ad averse consumers could cancel if irritated enough by this new barrage of advertising and switch to other competitors. Some view the cell phone utilities the way they look at&hellip

Consultant Jack Taddeo, a long time radio friend of mine and very thoughtful observer of the radio scene is interviewed on ZD Net's technology web site regarding the Google AdWords initiative in the radio industry. A sample: Taddeo is asked whether AdWords was a win-win for radio and advertisers:
"Not for stations. That is unless you are trying to reduce your ad inventory to pennies on the dollar. I call it the "station going out of business rate". The argument goes: if you have an open slot then why not get some money instead of no money? Plus you will be "sold out" which can help increase unit rate based on supply/demand pricing.&hellip

NBC Universal has signed a deal with Cingular to allow their upgraded video customers to access clips, new content and archived material from Saturday Night Live. NBC recently launched a section for SNL on its web site. It seems like a good deal for Cingular, one of the largest mobile phone utilities and NBC Universal. But wait. Is it? In their race to be content conduits, utilities such as cell phone companies are beginning to scare me. They think exclusive deals for content will be a win-win and enhance their ability to get customers to upgrade phone service. The problem is that in the long run if SNL content is only available&hellip

If you had a doubt as to what Clear Channel was up to when its actions proved it wasn't up to running a large radio group, you can now rest easy. The latest news is that Clear Channel plans on selling an additional 75 grandfathered stations for an approximate $1.1 billion dollar minimum take. That's on top of what they will earn from their already announced strategy of selling 448 stations below the top 100 markets. Clear Channel is doing better getting out of the business than it did by being in it. The same can't be said for their brethren -- the owners who lived in their shadow and sold ads against their mighty combos. But that's&hellip

Why not let the Radio Advertising Bureau supervise radio sales on a market by market basis? The groups and stations willing to opt in can finance the effort from savings derived from fielding a full sales staff. Yet the concept allows stations to opt in as much or as little as they feel comfortable doing on their own time, at their own speed (i.e., start by submitting unsold inventory and later, add other avails). I mention the RAB or some other sales organization so as to keep the effort fair. Standards should be set. Bids can be raised or lowered similar to how airfares are routinely priced. Two more advantages: RAB fields a&hellip

AdWords customers involved in beta testing are experiencing a new kind of radio advertising sales. The AdWords system is similar to the online ad selling approach Google has made its name and profit from. Prospective radio advertisers -- and this could be companies or individuals who have never advertised on radio or thought of radio as an advertising medium -- can bid on the spots and target their ads by time of day, demographics, format and location. The advertisers see instant reports. Google is also working on a program that will refer new advertisers to people who can help them write copy and produce ads -- something like the&hellip

It's not the old Columbia Records, but CBS is getting into the new age record business. This time it is doing it on the cheap. No start-up expenses, no worries about artist development, no expensive infrastructure. CBS wants to be paid for music that appears on its television shows. One of the benefits of the transitioning music business is that all it has to do is release songs on iTunes and voila! -- their in the record business. They can also take advantage of their broadband channel to deliver the music to the market. Imagine what they might do with radio or TV to promote it. Now old line media companies are beginning to think&hellip

I don't know about you, but this time I think Time Magazine is reaching for it's "Person of the Year". God knows, I wouldn't be the one to take anything away from the Internet or the mobile world we are increasingly living in. The "revolution" Time credits is, well -- old news. If they didn't want to name the now wealthy, wet-behind-the-ears YouTube founders, that's fine. But naming "You" as the "Person of the Year" is a cop out. If -- and I say if because Time editors are more qualified to narrow down their candidates for this honor -- they had to have an Internet-based "Person of the Year", they're missing the point. My candidate&hellip

Viacom, News Corp, NBC Universal and maybe CBS are this close to announcing that they will compete with YouTube. They want to get into the distribution business that YouTube -- now Google -- is in. There are many problems with this grand plan not the least of which is can these traditional media rivals get along? There are big egos and longtime rivalries here. What has YouTube wrought? Apparently, it has scared these old media competitors into working together. I'm not betting that this coalition will last long if it ever launches.

There are lots of concerns:
True, they own a lot of content that can be re-purposed on&hellip

Things are so quiet on the Clear Channel front that you just have to know that the Mays' want to get out the back door with as much money as they can and with a private radio group in tow. They won't even contest the sale of their valuable grandfathered radio stations by seeking waivers. Anything to get this deal done fast. Many expect the new Clear Channel radio group that emerges to be like the old "Cheap Channel" before its consolidation days -- a nice, "little" family business. That paves the way for number two to become number one -- CBS will have more influence than the new private version of slimmed down Clear Channel even&hellip

The Census Bureau projects 41 days of radio listening by adult Americans in 2007. Some 65 days for television. One week each for the Internet and newspapers -- this according to an account in Inside Radio. Don't celebrate too soon. This is definitely good news for radio stations aiming at adult listeners, but we didn't need the Census Bureau to tell us older listeners are still hooked on radio. The harsh reality is that radio listening and resulting radio advertising revenue has peaked and is heading down. The straight scoop is that young people -- the next generation, the people media must&hellip

By Dave Van Dyke, Inside Music Media

The Microsoft Chairman said that consumers should just buy CDs and rip them onto their mobile music devices. Sound idea. It gets around digital rights management (DRM) which will never fly with the music buying public and will only serve to depress online profits until labels give it up. Perhaps Gates was prompted to make his comment in light of a Forrester research study that alleged Apple iTunes sales were down. Forrester has since modified their dire projections and blamed it on too small a sample size. One thing they are correct about. DRM is hurting digital music sales. And the average amount of new music per iPod owner is only&hellip

At the Arbitron Fly-In yesterday some much needed straight talk from researchers and consultants about how radio has lost a generation of teens. I had my epiphany a number of years ago when I first began teaching at USC. I couldn't believe that the next generation had such high disregard for radio. I couldn't believe that these young people knew Clear Channel -- almost the way I knew Clear Channel and that they didn't much like what Clear Channel was up to. Even though its late, the public outpouring of what radio did -- or more precisely, didn't do -- to lose an entire generation of 12-24's is healthy for radio. After all, you have&hellip

Who would have thought that the home of the "Greatest Hits of All Time" would be an iPod instead of a radio station. With radio gradually getting out of the oldies business I'm thinking that consumers really consider their iPods and MP3 players their music collections. Odd, but research tells us these same consumers on the average have fewer than 200 songs on their iPods and they play them over and over again. Geez, that's more repetition than a Steve Rivers playlist! Why don't they complain about such repetition? Because it's their music. They are the program director. They play what they want -- take that, Jack! CBS overreacted&hellip

A Washington Post article says "Women who have historically wielded serious power of the purse as consumers are now buying all kinds of technology for their families and themselves, outspending their male counterparts 3 to 2, according to the Consumer Electronics Association." A CEA study earlier this year showed that women prefer their cell phones while men prefer high definition TV. Sterotypical or not -- there is money to be made here expanding beyond the bland mobile phone. Here's the article.

No schedules. No meetings. A company traditionally known for its strict work rules has gone head first into becoming a worker friendly company. It has its risks. Best Buy is looking to judge its employees not on hours but on results. It's amazing enough that a draconian approach to employee relations is being dropped by Best Buy. I found this plan to be fascinating and worth reading for my students as well as my friends in traditional media companies. From Business Week Online: "Hence workers pulling into the company's amenity-packed headquarters at 2 p.m. aren't considered late. Nor are those pulling out at 2 p.m. seen as leaving&hellip

The latest rumor is that Yahoo has offered $1.6 billion to Mark Zuckerberg's social network Facebook and Zuckerberg has declined it. I don't know what's more insane -- Zuckerberg turning down $1.6 billion or Yahoo willing to pay $1.6 billion. The acquisition would get the ailing Yahoo it's own social network to counter Google's YouTube which also sold for $1.6 billion. Facebook is projected to earn $1 billion in revenue by 2015. But projections are meaningless in the fickle world of the next generation. And it's odd to see new age companies such as Yahoo acting in desperation like an old line media company such as Viacom. The only&hellip

Forrester Research delivered some shocking news recently. Apple iTunes' sales are off 65% since January and the average size of transactions is down 17%. This sounds like the decline and fall of iTunes, but it really isn't. It's the continued decline of the record business because the entire downloading sector is down and the old CD business continues to erode. Just visit any Apple store during the Christmas holidays and you'll know how many iPods are flying out of the store. The concept of iPods is not going away. The concept of selling music to the next generation is. Digital Rights Management that prevents easy use and transfer&hellip

The Future of Music Coalition is releasing a damning report at 12 noon Eastern time today that will document in a meaningful way what many have thought and few can now escape -- consolidation hurts the public. This is particularly important because some radio groups are using Internet advances, new technology and satellite radio as their excuses to get the FCC to relax ownership rules further. Here's a look at the key findings:
The top four radio station owners have almost half of the listeners and the top ten owners have almost two-thirds of listeners.The "localness" of radio ownership

This generation of music fans is no fan of digital rights management. Everyone knows it but the major labels continue to tread water before they drown in their own miscalulation. Now, we're beginning to see signs of a change -- a very small change -- in the attitude of at least one label. EMI is offering Norah Jones' Thinking About You and Relient K's Must Have Done Something Right for 99 cents each as MP3 downloads from Yahoo. It's hard to say how much of this little toe in the water is to test the efficacy of selling music without DRM or how much is designed to get under Apple's skin. The labels have a hate-hate relationship with&hellip

By Dave Van Dyke, Inside Music Media

I was Christmas shopping at the Scottsdale Fashion Square a few days ago and wandered into the T-Mobile store to play with the new Blackberry Pearl. Within minutes a sixteen year old girl and her mother broke into a fist fight at the check-out counter -- that's right, holding nothing back -- with another teen and her mother. Four different customers had to restrain these holiday bundles of joy. The language was right out of HBO. Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! Holy Moses -- what is happening to us? Mobile connectivity is growing exponentially. We text each other. We talk on the phone while we walk. While we shop. While we&hellip

I feel dirty saying anything against Google, but I am worried about my friends in the radio industry. Radio is ice cold and Google is red hot. I've written previously about how the radio industry should beware of geeks bearing gifts (i.e., online bidding for radio time). I'm happy the early experiments seem to please the terrestrial broadcasters participating in the Google initiative, but they are frankly hard put for good news these days. I believe if this thing catches on, it will do more damage than good. Let me make my case. The Google radio ad system reaches out to anyone who wants to advertise on radio. They bid for ads (and&hellip

By Steve Meyer, Inside Music Media

Google, a new age company -- the rage, the do-no-wrong new media conglomerate had to go outside Google's significant brain trust to buy YouTube from a couple of kids they then made into billionaires. Couldn't Google have invented YouTube on its own for a lot less? YouTube could only have been conceived of in a garage by a few fools who thought pirating other people's copyrights could be a big business. Imagine if Viacom had a skunk works and its brainstormers came up with YouTube first. How fast do you think corporate lawyers would have shot down that idea? In the music-related media we tend to blame new technology when sales go down&hellip

CD sales are down again. Legal downloads are up but not as much as in the past. Labels are getting hooked on ring tone sales to help make up for the short fall in CD sales. Music is as stale as the latest innovative idea from a big four label. Desperation is setting in as labels try to get more merchandising rights in artist contracts. Even hit albums are not dominating the charts. Big artists start with big sales and then decline rapidly. Christmas sales figures are not in, of course, but barring the unforeseen, it will be another down year for record labels and trouble aplenty ahead. Here are some good ideas I've heard to turn&hellip

This is what's wrong with terrestrial radio. Their leaders have lost focus on what's important. Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey mocked the satellite industry at a UBS conference saying it would have been cheaper to put toasters in cars. Many radio broadcasters let their egos get in the way when it comes to satellite radio. Satellite is not their real competition -- the loss of the next generation to the mobile Internet is. And some satellite operators are trash talking radio as well. Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin's disingenuous comment that he'd love to see terrestrial radio's revenue up by double digits is the same thing from the other side.&hellip

It's Christmas and time to help the neediest. And CBS, Citadel, Entercom and Clear Channel would have you believe that they are the neediest. These groups along with TV and newspaper execs are trying to get the FCC to repeal the "severe ownership restrictions" in a time when technological and marketplace developments have made competing more difficult. Are these people serious? The radio industry got everything they wanted in 1996 with passage of the Telecommunications Act. And all they've proven ten years later is that they couldn't run more than two stations in a market even with a virtual monopoly. Now they want another bite of&hellip

There is fairly recent research that shows about one-fourth of all cell phone users would be willing to look at advertising on their mobile phones in return for free service. A Harris Interactive research poll in August also says that 7% of current mobile phone subscribers would be interested in receiving relevant promotional text messages with some caveats. The ads-for-free-service trade-off is consistent with what I have observed among samplings of the next generation. They have ways of ignoring advertising to keep things free. But it's the 7% of&hellip

Pardon the pun. It's a vile habit of young people driven to distraction by the mobile media they are addicted to. It is equally also a very rude habit of older people who whip out their Palms and Blackberries while you are talking to them, eating or trying to communicate with them face-to-face. The texting craze can be harnessed by the media to get instant input, participation or even -- with some imagination -- instant sales. But the one or two finger tap is the potential enemy in my view. Old and new technology can compete in this new age by emphasizing content, but how are they to compete with repeated distractions that have very&hellip

It didn't take Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin to announce yesterday that the satellite company was going to miss its subscriber projections -- by 200,000 by the end of the year -- to know it was in deep trouble. At least not for me. Working with the next generation at USC, I have become all too familiar with the reason why Gen Y doesn't subscribe in great numbers to a satellite service. It's money -- or the lack of it and a disinclination toward subscription services. Howard Stern boosted Sirius' subscriber count in his first year, but Stern appeals to older adults. And even the 500,000 paid subscribers he attracted was nowhere near what&hellip

By Steve Meyer, Inside Music Media

UK radio stations will begin being able to sell digital music downloads to their audiences in real time early next year. It's significant because the developers are calling it "digital radio's killer application". All the major radio groups and labels are on board for the roll out that requires a pre-paid plan for anyone interested in buying music from a digital radio station. Here's the part that's revealing. They claim more 15-24 year olds are listening to radio than ever but that as UBC's CEO Simon Cole says, "radio revenue is not rising to sustain the development". Come again? More listeners than ever in this demo but not a&hellip

Google is complaining that mobile phone operators are asking them to stop allowing people to access Google Mobile Maps by phone. Google's service gives interactive maps, search results, satellite images and very detailed directions to local businesses. The mobile operators are thus becoming the middleman between Internet companies and the public. The reason is obvious. Mobile companies offer their own detailed direction programs -- for a monthly fee. And what happens when VoIP becomes widely available on mobile phones -- in other words, cheaper service on phones with existing phone service through Internet access. The move to watch&hellip

By Dave Van Dyke, Inside Music Media Contributor

For many of us who have been in this great radio business for more than three years, the idea that the paradigm is/has shifted out from under us is a bit like feeling your first earthquake. It's crazy! Unlike most natural disasters, earthquakes give you the feeling that you are no longer in control - that there is, indeed, a greater force at work and you can't do a damn thing about it. Welcome to the world of traditional Radio 2.0 - the new reality. Does traditional radio's senior management have trouble seeing that their legacy businesses can not only peacefully but constructively&hellip

Ten years ago during the euphoria surrounding the passage of the Telecommunications Act I spoke out against media consolidation as publisher of Inside Radio. Not only that, I exposed as often I could, the heartbreak of an industry. I saw able managers overloaded with the responsibility of running too many stations. People fired because they got in the way (we wrote of a cancer patient who one of the consolidators fired even knowing he was being treated for the disease). The disconnect between Wall Street euphoria and Main Street neglect. Questionable practices like packaging more than the stations some groups owned with LMAs to offer&hellip

Can anything stop YouTube or MySpace or TiVo or peer-to-peer downloading or the iPod or iTunes or mobile entertainment? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Certainly not traditional media. Radio, television, print, movies, the record business -- they're stymied. Lost in old ideas and the technology they hang onto and misdirected when they embrace a new interactive one. What can put a hurt on the current runaway digital future is the interactive media itself -- all of it. My long time friend and media futurist John Parikhal recently wrote: "The biggest "missed" story was the continuing damage to productivity that is caused by e-mail. If you get&hellip

In spite of the fact that Clear Channel owns so many more stations than CBS, you have to wonder how number two gets away with so much less blame for helping the radio industry into the dumpster. It's true that Clear Channel started off the consolidation era with great hubris and litigiousness, but CBS shouldn't get a free pass in my view. Imagine if these two companies decided to lead rather than bleed the radio sector through consolidation. Imagine if even one of these giant companies decided to run their stations as separate entities and take a pass on the cutting and running they both did. Imagine more choices for the listeners.&hellip

I love the colorful Mel Karmazin. He's a brash, confident -- alright, over-confident -- success story and right now the never-ending-salesman that he is is doing what you'd expect him to do -- whip up interest in his company's lagging holiday sales by talking up a merger with competitor XM (again!). I laugh every time he does this. And I hope I never have to eat my words when I predict that a merger of the two satellite services will never happen. Or should I say, a merger of the two satellite companies should never happen. Even in a country where we are all supposed to live the American dream until we consolidate our assets and&hellip

When I first told my students about the "Jack" format as it first debuted in LA several years ago, their reactions are worth recalling even today. I say this because since I have been at USC I have come to closely value the rather direct reactions of this generation on things ranging from new mobile media devices to old approaches to radio formats. Nonetheless at the time they were troubled by the "Jack" format motto, "We Play What We Want". One young student told his fellow classmates, "yeah, we play what we want, too -- it's called an iPod". All this time has passed since CBS reinvented the wheel and the "Jack" format one assumes&hellip

I knew it. My students knew it. How did Microsoft not know it. The new competitor to iPod from the folks at Microsoft -- Zune -- was a turkey even before Thanksgiving. The Wall Street Journal just reported that Zune sales are not meeting expectations ramping up to the holiday season. As we used to say back in South Philly, "who don't know that?" It's clunky, rather ugly, not better than an iPod, not cheaper and not...not...not an iPod. I always used to think when Proctor & Gamble launched a new product with all their market research, how could it not be a home run? They have many home runs, but not always. So the Zune will&hellip

Traditional media companies are falling all over themselves to do content deals with their new media rivals -- Internet and mobile companies. NBC Universal did a deal to allow AT&T to offer their owned stations a chance to be broadcast on AT&T phones -- welcome to some mighty lucrative markets. Google and Yahoo announce deals on an almost regular basis. And even without alliances, traditional media is rushing to find new ways to offer their content digitally. MTV is developing niche broadband channels. HBO is mulling putting their content on broadband. Newspapers ally themselves with Yahoo and hope that the lure of local content&hellip

What happens when you dominate a market, offer the majority of your programming to an audience you don't have and then fail to deliver young listeners? You have satellite radio! Wait. Increasingly, you also have terrestrial radio. It's a losing formula in a time of great change that is begging for a remedy. Satellite radio operators have hit the wall as witnessed by unusually slow sales at their traditional busy time of the year (Christmas). They've done an excellent job in finding their market -- the pay subscription market -- but there's not enough consumers willing to subscribe. Satellite programs some excellent channels for&hellip

There's a new technology coming your way that deserves watching called Switched Broadcast. It's a technology that expands bandwidth and makes delivering hundreds of television channels to the home unnecessary. Technology enables only one channel at a time to be delivered to subscribers and this could change everything. Providers can then free up bandwidth for more content. Consumers could benefit from more on-demand services, faster delivery, more telephone services. This spells the end of television channels as we known them. Going forward under switched broadcast, channels become unnecessary. The question is will broadcasting&hellip

It's very easy during the lull in the Clear Channel sell-off to think everything is going to alright. But it's not alright for the employees of Clear Channel who are being let go or for the ones having to endure the holiday season wondering if they will be the next to be fired. If consolidation means anything, it means doing more for less. And now that Clear Channel's dynasty Mays family has decided to cash out for about $1 billion and take the radio division private there's still lots of housekeeping to do. Like tidying up the bottom line. This should be no problem to the radio industry leader that cut, combined and consolidated&hellip

<

br />By Dave Van Dyke, Inside Music Media

Cingular Wireless is trying to bridge the generation gap between parents who don't understand the language of texting and their children. Cingular, the largest cell phone company, will be holding interactive "texting bees" nationwide after the first of the year to teach parents how to send text messages to their children. It's all cloaked in the grand scheme of things to make the texting world a better place for mom, dad and their children. Of course, it's a marketing strategy to sell more cell phones. While the Cingular "texting bees" are not likely to have a major impact on anything, they do point out the fragile nature of today's&hellip

In the past few days both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have had articles about the sorry state of the pop music business. The Times Sunday was talking about the baby boomers who shy away from AARP (American Association of Retired People) even though AARP is helping to sell records. How about this? Tony Bennett, the icon he is, has sold the most albums in his entire career for "Duets" (600,500 in the first seven weeks) and Bennett is doing AARP sponsored concerts. Rod Stewart, Elton, John, James Taylor and others are also selling music tied in to their senior status. This is all good unless you're concerned about the&hellip

By Steve Meyer, Inside Music Media

Radio veteran Dave Van Dyke, now president of Bridge Ratings and a keen observer of traditional and interactive media and Steve Meyer, a well-respected music industry veteran and publisher of DISC & DAT will both become regular contributers to Inside Music Media

There's a new article in the Baltimore Sun that reports campus newspapers are doing so well that advertisers are sitting up and taking notice. This fascinates me. We've seen the decline of general print newspapers for decades especially among younger readers and here we are in the age of the Internet, mobile phones and iPods and are we to believe that old fashioned printed newspapers are a hit with this same generation? You bet we are. I believe it. While general newspapers have been imitating&hellip

Traditional media seems to fear the next generation and its Internet, mobile devices and social networks. I don't know why. In our fierce competition for audiences and dollars we often forget that media creates more media. There's some recent evidence to make my point, but it won't be the last corroboration. CBS of late has been diving into YouTube content like a true convert. "CSI". Lettterman. "Survivor" to name a few of their shows. MediaPost reports CBS has placed more than 300 clips on YouTube. You'd expect the views to be high, but some never expected ratings to go up. Letterman's audience is up 5%. Even "The Late Late&hellip

Their stock is skyrocketing. They somehow seem bigger than Microsoft (even though Microsoft way out distances them in computer software). Analysts say another big holiday season -- another -- of selling iPods is underway. But some experts say that Apple is getting ready to launch an iPhone. CEO Steve Jobs has been mum as usual and anything is possible -- including no iPhone. But think about it. Every time Apple burps consumers get excited. The only thing close to it is the gaming market where a lot of burping is going on right now. Yet few get excited over clunky HD radios that don't have content much different than what you can&hellip

I've been mulling an odd thought lately that today's consolidators could never have pioneered the radio industry. It takes me back to the 1960's when a company called Westinghouse that made electrical appliances, light bulbs and other manufactured goods owned radio and television stations. That was allowed then, but they couldn't own too many. Hold that thought. The folks at Westinghouse came up with a zany idea for a format that did all-news 24-hours a day. I was a young guy in Philly at the time where they owned a very poor signal that they wound up calling KYW Newsradio 1060. It was awful. And I just don't say that because I&hellip

When compilation albums are routinely number one, do you have to be a genius to know you're business model is in trouble. Here's your Billboard Top 20 (week ending 11/25/06)

DEBUT AT 1* - NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL MUSIC-VOL.23 (Get that! There were 22 others)
DEBUT AT 2* - JOSH GROBAN, Awake
DEBUT AT 3* - KEITH URBAN, Love, Pain, And The Whole Crazy Thing
DEBUT AT 4* - SUGARLAND, Enjoy The Ride
5 - SOUNDTRACK, Hannah Montana
DEBUT AT 6* - JIM JONES, Hustler's P.O.M.E.
7 - BIRDMAN & LIL' WAYNE, Like Father, Like Son
8 - CARRIE UNDERWOOD, Some Hearts
9 - JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE,&hellip

Inside Radio reports that Radio Shack has a three-day only $99 special on this HD radio usually low, low priced at $199.99 ($174.99 with rebate). Why do I get the feeling this is not PlayStation 3 (okay, that wasn't fair). Why do I get the feeling this is not an iPod (ooh!). Okay, it's not a Walkman! Listen to the selling points the manufacturer, Accurian, lists. (I'll react in parentheses like an average consumer): Receive HD radio signals that increases the clarity of your FM radio stations to CD-quality sound. (The better to hear Less is More -- that's not average -- the better to hear too many commercials). HD offers expanded&hellip

We'll be hearing plenty about the breakup of radio's friendly giant -- I kid -- but I'm now looking to begin focusing a long conversation on the great beyond. Let's not kid ourselves. The 448 smaller markets Clear Channel is selling could go to one or two mini-consolidators -- maybe public companies -- and then I'm not so optimistic. They could and should sell some to minorities, but they should also subsidize these minority owners not just let them die on the vine. If the "lower 448" wind up in the hands of mom and pop operators, entrepreneurs, my graduates at USC, you'll see a rebirth of local, personality-oriented, music and news&hellip

When was the last time you remember hearing about riots breaking out to buy a consumer product? How about a music-media related consumer item? PlayStation 3's significance is far more important than a bunch of geeks having to wait on long lines for the privilege of having price gouging performed on them. (And, I am taking into account those "entrepreneurs" or opportunists looking to buy one and then turn around and gouge somebody else). Gaming is the next frontier for the music business. You're not going to see anyone riot over radio ("have to get an HD radio or I'll break the door down"). Maybe it was the high price, but I don't&hellip

Have you noticed what Universal is up to these days. They've been getting "sue happy" over the lofty and worthwhile issue of copyright infringement. They targeted YouTube first, but then took a stake in the company ending that threat. Now, Universal is beating up on MySpace. They are apparently looking to test the "safe harbor" provision under existing law pertaining to Internet companies. Or are they? Many people -- and I'm certainly one of them -- believe no matter what your argument is on the copyright infringement issue,&hellip

The holy grail on Wall Street is "shareholder value". How many times has Mel Karmazin said it? How many times has Clear Channel said it. Here's a quote from Clear Channel's own "Investor Q&A" for shareholders issued when yesterday's sale was announced: "The board of directors has continually evaluated ways to maximize value for shareholders. After conducting a thorough and careful review of strategic alternatives, the board concluded that this transaction is fair and in the best interests of its shareholders". Hello? Does anyone think the same stock that was worth $94.94 on January 10, 2000 was worth holding until today when a deal&hellip

After having its way with the radio industry thanks to consolidation, the Mays family (Lowry, Mark and Randall) will be laughing all the way to the bank as Clear Channel decides to be purchased by Lee Partners and Bain Capital for $18.7 billion. Shareholders will get about $37 a share. The Mays family gets about $1 billion and continued employment as the remnant of the company sometimes referred to in the press as "The Evil Empire" goes private. The Mays reinvest some of their profits in the new entity and if you're cynical enough (or Wall Street savvy), they will be around the next time the company sells (and they'll likely profit&hellip

The decline of traditional media so far as been concentrated in radio (due to consolidation), the record business (due to unwillingness to accept new paradigms) and newspapers (inability to picture a newspaper on something other than newsprint). Television is next. It's happening right now. Their clumsy entry into short-clip video via YouTube and their own sites speaks volumes. You know its bad when an episode of Desperate Housewives ends and an announcer asks you if you want more, then directs you to their web site. TV affiliates can't be happy. Compensation is on its way out. The web is a growing alternative competitor. TiVo&hellip

I never liked media consolidation and I said so over and over again when I published Inside Radio. I remember doing an Inside Radio convention in Scottsdale one year and the usually fun-loving and social event had a pall over it. After all, consolidators were at the time forcing managers, programmers and sales managers to take on more jobs, more responsibility, more stations without a lot more money. I paid the price personally by taking on the evil of consolidation but it all worked out for me in the end. I see everything coming full circle now as the biggest consolidator of all, Clear Channel, is on the eve of selling off its empire&hellip

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been talking publicly a lot lately, but no comment he has made is more significant than Schmidt's prediction that our mobile phones should be free. And he has a plan. Sell advertising -- which happens to be a Google speciality. Schmidt told a group at Stanford recently that mobile phones may never be entirely free even with advertising subsidies citing that newspapers still charge readers and they carry advertising. Nonetheless, the wall-to-wall world of advertising now has another potential frontier. This makes me question why very little is said about the effectiveness of advertising rather than the mere&hellip

On the same day that Microsoft launches its iPod competitor, Zune, Apple announces a deal with six large airlines that will let passengers play video clips, movies and music from their iPods through in flight back seat displays. Apple is also looking to get car manufacturers to offer built-in ports in their vehicles. In the air, over land and no doubt by sea iPod is becoming the standard. Apple did what Microsoft couldn't do and this announcement yesterday rubbed it in. No matter what the fate of the Zune is, it is not likely to catch up to the 70 million (and growing) iPods now in use -- in the near future or perhaps ever. This&hellip

Okay, if Clear Channel can coin the term "Less is More" -- a ridiculous term at that -- I thought I could try this ridiculous one out -- "Small is Big". I'm not talking about commercials here (just cut them to 8-10 units hourly, raise the prices when able -- we knew that all along, didn't we?). I'm talking about a current trend to gather critical mass -- the exponential building of huge audiences for Internet hotties such as MySpace and YouTube. MySpace is far and away the leader in social networks and marketers are licking their chops at the benefits of viral marketing. Big. Really big. YouTube does about 100 million video clip&hellip

Deader than Microsoft's new iPod competitor Zune this holiday gift buying season will be HD radio. Expensive. It has no rhyme nor reason to anyone who doesn't own or operate a radio station. It's remarkable to me that any sane radio executive can believe that HD radio will give the industry the rebirth it needs to satisfy its prime audience -- Wall Street investors -- I mean, listeners. Now, if someone would invent a radio with pictures that would start a revolution. Wait, someone did. The inventors of cell phones and MP3 devices. So how can radio be so sure HD spells relief? From my perspective its wishful thinking. The&hellip

To quote a Sesame Street song -- one of these things is not like the other one. It's not like Microsoft didn't have plenty of time to come at Apple's iPod with a vengeance. And the new Zune is their second attempt. The comments have been very polite so far in expectation that this time Microsoft has outdone Apple CEO Steve Jobs. But the early reviews on the Zune by respected tech writers are anything but gushing. The New York Times David Pogue gave the impression he felt Zune was more revenge of Microsoft than anything else. The Wall Street&hellip

There's a great article in the Sunday New York Times about whether Google is a friend or foe of media companies. The issue is Google's desire to sell advertising online for radio, newspapers and soon, television. Sounds like easy money and traditional media companies could use some of that these days. Google insists its a friend. I'm not so sure. Traditional media companies have set themselves up for Google's latest play. Newspapers have been dying off for years. Don't blame that one on Gen Y or the Internet. Papers have been trying&hellip

I've noted with great interest the record labels' entry into the digital space recently with special interest in having it their way. They want to be in on the tsunami known as social networking (YouTube, MySpace, et al) as well as preserving their digital copyrights. Well, they're both late to the party and fighting a battle they cannot win. The record business is broken because of their deep desire to hold onto the past (Say CD). They see themselves as manufacturers (Hear them say "product", "units"). Their long-time partner in hit-making ain't what they used to be (radio -- growing less influential as a source for new music for&hellip

So Universal finally has the deal it wants in exchange for digital distribution rights. Microsoft has agreed to a deal that will give them a piece of the action on every Zune portable music device it sells. And Microsoft is, according to the New York Times, ready to extend that offer to the other major record labels. Universal has been tough on the DRM issue. As Jeff Leeds points out in his article, "The move also reflects Universal

Inspired by David Letterman not written by him. Advice to the big radio conglomerates:

#10...Cut the commercial load in half but don't tell anybody (the listeners will notice).
#9 ... Hire djs who are knowledgeable about the music
#8 ... Let your newly-hired "smart jocks" play some of their own music not just the corporate playlist
#7 ... Stop trying to be interactive -- you can't. Entertain in an analog sort of way
#6 ... Take all the stations you own in each city and run them separately. You keep the cash they will surely generate by being truly competitive with each other. The listener gets real&hellip

Google could be the next Clear Channel.

It is planning a massive assault on what is presently known as radio sales. If Google succeeds, it could become the next evil empire -- the term some journalist have used to describe some consolidators. Google not only wants to make it possible for anyone to buy radio ads online, it wants to go after radio's big advertisers thus the hiring away of top radio salespeople that is going on right now. Radio groups might be willing to let this mega-giant -- shall we call it ClearGoogle -- sell off unused inventory, but will they let Google turn their stations into a click and bid system open&hellip

As a guy who has spent considerable career time in radio I am very interested in the boom presently underway in video clips. YouTube does 100 million short videos a day. CNN's various short news clip services stream about 5o million a month. There are cell phones everywhere with screens that are getting ready for more video. The iPod has already been updated to include it. How important will short videos be? And if you're in the print business, is it a deal breaker going forward? What about radio or audio streams -- a thing of the past? I sense the answer is yes and no. One thing I can tell you about the next generation is that&hellip