What’s just about the worst thing that can happen when you work in radio?
Well, I’m sure that question triggered no shortage of thoughts, from format attacks to that big cancellation.
But really the nuclear problem is when a station gets knocked off the air – whether it’s for five minutes or painfully, longer than that. While engineers are famous for building in redundancy, we’ve all been through the heartache of backup systems failing to kick in, despite huge investments in equipment and maintenance.
But radio isn’t the only one feeling the pain of outages as everyone gets more techie reliant over time. At the moment, Apple is grappling with an iOS7 crashing problem. They indicated they’re working on a fix for it, but random reboots have been apparently occurring since the new system was introduced last fall.
Last week, Google Mail went out, impacting around 10% of their users. While the outage lasted under an hour, the global impact of this breakdown had a cataclysmic effect on the millions of subscribers – and the many more millions trying to contact them. Of course, Google encountered a software bug, thus creating the “off the air” moment on a prime time Friday.
And we all know about Target’s issue with credit card security that occurred late last season during the height of holiday shopping. Millions were affected, along with the banks and financial institutions that support these credit cards. It still has not been entirely sorted out.
If you own a “connected car,” you also know up close and personal how the experience can be frustrating at times. Devices don’t always talk to each other flawlessly or “hear” what we’re trying to say to them, causing delays, breakdowns, and navigation mistakes.
It gets even worse when a new product launches, and the experience isn’t exactly a smooth one. From the debut of the Healthcare.gov website last year to the very checkered launch of Beats Music last week, consumers have been forced to get used to things not working flawlessly – especially when they’re brand new.
And it’s a reminder that in a world where we increasingly expect perfection, mistakes, screw-ups, unforeseen accidents, and yes, bugs, are all part of doing business.
We know this on the jacAPPS side of the street where new mobile handset models are being introduced on a weekly basis. Each one presents a unique challenge because they are introduced to the marketplace before app developers can even purchase them.
On the right is an example of something that you see on your smartphone every day of the week – an app update designed to fix a litany of problems, bugs, glitches, and other snafus that impact the way consumers interface with the gadget they love. But as developers from all the above examples will tell you, it’s impossible to get it right all the time on every device and in ever situation.
This is all part of what Mark Zuckerberg calls hacking our way to success. Devices, technology, and gadgets rarely work perfectly, especially at the beginning. But the trade-off is our enjoyment of them, and the elation that accompanies a new and different medium, gadget, or technology.
So on the one hand, our elation skyrockets when we run across a new gadget, device, or medium that resonates. But on the other, our patience for things that don’t work the first time is shortening by the month. That puts a lot of pressure on innovators in the tech field to get it right the first time in an environment where that is becoming less and less possible.
And that brings us back to good old radio. Because in the big scheme of things, the incidence of stations actually going off the air is a lot less frequent than app breakdowns, web outages, software glitches, crashes, freeze-ups, and “blue screens of death.” It’s the Energizer Bunny of media.
From an advertiser standpoint, the chance of your commercials running seamlessly on broadcast radio has to be better and more reliable than clunky stream insertions, poorly executed video pre-rolls, and all the other screw-ups that occur every day when we open up apps, listen to streams, or navigate to a web page.
In fact, looking at it from a “breakdown per 1,000” uses, I’d bet that “old school” broadcast radio has a higher ratio of success than any smartphone app, pure-play platform, video game, or software operating system.
When was the last time you had to reboot your radio?
Jacobs Media has consistently walked the walk in the digital space, providing insights and guidance through its well-read national Techsurveys.
In 2008, jacapps was launched - a mobile apps company that has designed and built more than 1,300 apps for both the Apple and Android platforms. In 2013, the DASH Conference was created - a mashup of radio and automotive, designed to foster better understanding of the "connected car" and its impact.
Along with providing the creative and intellectual direction for the company, Fred consults many of Jacobs Media's commercial and public radio clients, in addition to media brands looking to thrive in the rapidly changing tech environment.
Fred was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2018.
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