Amidst all the gloom and doom PR about radio comes a piece from CNNMoney.com/Fortune’s “Small Business.” The headline? “Radio Is the Hot Tech Frontier.”
Now, that has to make you feel good… At least for a moment.
It’s an interesting twist on the Consumer Electronics Show that’s happening this week in Vegas. Author Jonathan Blum posits that because the CES landscape is “rather bland,” good old radio may be making a techno comeback. He cites a variety of radios and gadgets, including those quality tabletop radios from Bose, Cambridge SoundWorks, and Tivoli Audio, as well as new pieces of gear that offer wireless simplicity – something that consumers apparently crave.
But in all of this, HD Radio is not really mentioned. Only in passing does Blum talk about the NPR/Harris Electronics initiative to provide a radio for the deaf.
Overall, HD Radio has had a good PR week at CES. There’s been some positive information, some optimistic future forecasting, and some definite buzz. But this article speaks to the “separation” between traditional AM/FM Radio and HD Radio. Even the press often perceives these entities as two different media (and that could be exacerbated by the new HD Alliance radio campaign).
One step forward. One step back.
I often receive anonymous emails from people who are unable to go “on record” – for obvious reasons. I received this comment in response to today’s blog from a programmer whose station is carrying the new HD Radio commercials:
One step forward, one step back?
Every time I hear SpongeBob leaving a message on something we used to use called an answering machine, I fear we’re taking a step back in the HD Radio game.
It’s great that the Wall Street Journal and Fortune seem to have noticed HD Radio at the CES, but I’m not sure my middle class suburban listeners have time to read the Journal when they’re trying how to pay their newly increased adjustable rate mortgage.
The HD spots are a waste of airtime and do nothing to grab listeners’ attention or move them to buy a new HD Radio. Now they’re airing on thousands of stations and nobody seems to care. GSD&M should have been charged with making listeners feel a need for HD Radio and feel it so passionately that they make an effort to find a new radio with the stations between the stations. The first of their four campaigns is a miserable failure, and the Alliance has stuck us with the same creative house for the rest of a pivotal year in the life cycle of the product.
I used to spend lots of time thinking about what I can put on my HD3 channels or how to make my HD2 channels better. Now I wonder why I even cared. And I’m reminded of that every hour when I hear Mr. Squarepants talking smack about FM radio and wondering if his buttons are a problem that if I don’t care, chances are my listeners don’t either.
Fred,
Now that the new creative is running my thought is we get pragmatic and play the hand we have.
Let’s get research in the field and measure the messaging.
Let’s put our web assets to work. The broadcast creative alone will not deliver the mail. In the least the new creative should be tagged to direct listeners to the hdradio.com domain where they can learn more about the product. Station sites should also promote (main page, above the fold)and direct traffic to the domain.
Let’s begin a serious, candid and open industry conversation re: next steps including a full disclosure of all relevant data (e.g., receivers sold, web metrics, et al). Transparency! The time has come for a history making creative collaboration, a joint venture engaging radio’s best and brightest in the critical mission of inventing our future.
“Overall, HD Radio has had a good PR week at CES. There’s been some positive information, some optimistic future forecasting, and some definite buzz. ”
Well I do agree with one thing you said, there is definitally buzz and it is on my radio, in fact every time I tune it past an IBUZ station it gets lots of buzz. Why? Because it interferes with adjacent channels on AM radio. It destroys both channels which are next to the one that is broadcasting this terrible technology. It also drastically decreases the range of FM radios with dropouts galore. Do you think perhaps this just may be part of the reason that people are avoiding it in droves? Actually ignoring it in painful silence might be a better analogy. People just don’t care, how much money is the IBOC Alliance going to spend on these stupid idiotic commercials before they realize they are just beating a dead horse? Stop jamming our radios with your noise, please! Work on your programming, open your eyes, there’s nothing wrong with the sound of FM to the average consumer and all you’d have to do on AM is to open the bandwidth a bit. You are being taken by iBiquity, it’s a big scam and you fell for it, now pick yourself up and concentrate on your programming.