Which Would You Invest In?
Written Feb. 10, 2010 by Larry Rosin in with 2 Comments
The other day Inside Radio ran the following two blurbs in the same email:
IBiquity reduces HD licensing fee. The company says 2010 pricing for licensing HD Radio technology includes reduced license fees and expanded payment options "which will simplify radio broadcasters' migration to digital."
Chrysler adds in-car Wi-Fi. Terrestrial radio may still be the king of the road, but the in-car list of options continues to grow. Chrysler announces the 2010 Connected Dodge Caravan will offer internet, live television and online gaming join radio as in-car "infotainment" options. The system will be showcased at the 2010 Chicago Auto Show from February 12-21.
The battle for the car is on. And if this year's Consumer Electronics Show is any indication, WiFi/WiMax solutions are positioned to make the car a rolling Internet node. Of course, this also makes the car a rolling streaming device, prepared to allow your car to listen to any live radio stream in the world. Prefer BBC Radio 1 to your local Top 40? There it is.
And yet -- don't count good old over-the-air radio out yet. According the Arbitron's PPM data, Z100 New York (as an example) has a cume of over two million people per week. I don't know what the highest cume is at any given time, but let's say for the sake of argument that it peaks at 400,000 simultaneous listeners. Well let's face facts -- if that many people attempted to tune into a single stream at once, it would likely not just crash the streamer's site -- it could well crash the entire Internet.
Blogger James Cridland, whom I promoted last week, has long been saying that the listening should come from the airwaves, but all the rest of the enhanced data should or could come from the Internet. Well...that's kind of what HD Radio is theoretically trying to deliver.
So...who would you bet on? Who would you invest in? While HD Radio continues to be, at best, a slow and almost painful roll-out (what are we now -- about five years and a billion dollars of advertising into this thing?), it might not really be the loser. Or is its failure inevitable as the mobile Web rolls out?
Reader Comments
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From the broadcasters point of view, they want you to listen over the airwaves because it's cheaper for them. From my point of view, Digital radio (HD and DAB) is a 'non-starter', for several reasons.
As a traveller i need two radios. One for the UK (DAB) and one for the US (HD). Even if i didn't travel overseas, HD radio, as you point out, doesn't give me BBC radio 1 or whatever overseas or non-local station i want. Likewise if i was in the UK, DAB wouldn't give me NPR or any US station.
The internet, on the otherhand gives me it all and with my Smartphone it gives it to me in a smaller package that i can use anywhere i have an internet connection.
As they say over here.. It's a no-brianer.
I think it's programming vs. pipe. For the most part, you get the same programming on HD radio that you get on traditional signals. There are no commercials, for now, because there is no audience. The amount of original programming matches the audience level. The only restrictions on web audio are bandwidth and connectivity, both of which improve year over year. The amount of programming is virtually unlimited, provided the music industry doesn't continue it's relentless (and losing) war on its customers.
So little to no investment in the HD platform, except for promo spots, the value of which is calculated with Hollywood accounting standards. The distribution issues associated with internet audio improve with technology, the bandwidth gets cheaper every year, and there's an almost unlimited supply of content. I know where my money would be.