No, today’s blog post title is not the newest Sue Grafton whodunit. But it is something of a mystery why there’s so much innovation occurring around the radio business, but so little actually occurring within it.
I just returned home from Radio Ink’s “Convergence” which at times felt a bit like an “assault of the new.” I have taken Eric Rhoads’ advice and ruminated over these past few days about what went on in Silicon Valley and what it means to radio.
Convergence featured a number of panels which promoted new startups that were presented by their CEOs, giving the audience an opportunity to learn what’s new in audio and tech. It was a bit like Shark Tank, without the arrogance and snark.
Steve Lehman used to be the CEO of Premiere Networks, and now has a new venture called “Business Rockstars.” His session showcased three different startups, while a panel moderated by Greater Media’s Buzz Knight introduced the Convergence crowd to three other innovative companies – all centered on the radio experience – in his “Innovators & Inventors” session.
Here are four that stood out to me:
Katie McMahon, VP of SoundHound (pictured right), showed us a new application that identifies (think Shazam or SoundHound) spoken word programming on the radio. So you hold up your phone to a radio broadcast and it displays the public radio or news/talk interview segment you’re listening to. Convenient, smart, and great when you’ve joined a show or segment in progress or the host is bad at “resets.”- Google’s Jon Sofield had a great presentation that focused on seeking out broadcast radio partners for local advertising opportunities. This one generated a lot of attention because it’s Google, and there’s apparent interest in them hooking up with radio brands.
- Boast is a startup from Ireland that is essentially a version of audio Twitter, ideal for radio station shows that enjoy interaction with the audience in a format that lends itself to on-air application. Mike Smyth and Edward Wallace made the trek from Ireland to introduce “the audio social network” to Convergence attendees.
- Pat Higbie is co-founder of XAPPmedia, a startup that allows users to gain more information from radio ads embedded in streams. These guys have already gotten campaigns going for NPR, and Higbie provided a live demo on stage at Convergence.
Many of these innovators talked about how they’ve received funding for these projects and/or how their companies are excited about the possibilities of providing new technology services to radio broadcasters.
And it struck me as ironic that there are all these tech-related firms abuzz about providing new and different ways to enhance the radio experience – interactive ads, audio “boasts” and “brags,” identification of content via apps, and advertising partnerships. And yet, so little of this is actually occurring inside many broadcasting companies.
That’s not to say that traditional companies aren’t innovating, because we can point to new digital marketing divisions, platforms like iHeartRadio and Rdio, the NextRadio app, and other initiatives that are designed to generate more revenue or offer content in different formats.
But the types of innovative efforts shown off at Convergence – from big companies like Google to smaller enterprises like Boast or XAPPmedia – represent experimentation, unique applications of existing radio tools, and novel ways that radio can be more exciting, vibrant, and cool.
And the fact that so many companies outside radio look at the industry as a hotbed of potential in an exploding tech environment should be recognition that there could be amazing chapters ahead for broadcast radio. That so many innovative people see opportunity in AM/FM radio should remind us of the great potential the industry still has.
Rather than let these efforts incubate on the outside, doesn’t it make sense for radio broadcasters to find ways to partner with these companies, invest in them, embrace them, or perhaps even buy them to create a brighter future for the business? Or create their own “inside startups” that do nothing but experiment with new ways to make radio fun and exciting using the new digital tools.
As Steve Lehman reminded the room, his early strategy at Premiere was to take pieces of companies as trade for programming. Some of these ventures went belly up and returned nothing to Premiere. That was until he got a nice cut of Mark Cuban’s Broadcast.com. And he’s never looked back.
Any of the major broadcasters could have invested in (or even bought) Pandora five years ago. It might have gone bust.
But then again….
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Fred was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2018.
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“…That’s not to say that traditional companies aren’t innovating, because we can point to new digital marketing divisions, platforms like iHeartRadio…the NextRadio App…”
Seriously…if those are radio’s show horses for digital innovation, its time to call the glue factory. NextRadio is essentiallty an FM chip embedded in phones isn’t it – really just a more compact version of the guts of what was called a transistor radio back in the Mad Men days?
As for iHeart Radio, funny you should mention Broadcast.com. Isn’t iHeart pretty much just Broadcast.com redux?
Radio could profit buy being more involved in digital innovation, but I would contend that if your examples are radio’s best, they aren’t really in the game now.
I’m hoping that a takeaway from this post is that radio must do better. Thanks, Bob.
That was what I was thinking, yes.