The Infinite Dial

With all the press that Slacker has gotten recently for its inclusion on RCA's just-unveiled-at-CRS "Infinite Radio," I decided to take another listen. As with many other Internet-only channels/music services, I'd given it an early listen, but it didn't ultimately draw my attention away from all the terrestrial radio that was becoming available again at the time -- something that will also be an option on RCA's device. But with the new radio giving Slacker its own place of prominence -- displayed above Internet, AM, and FM radio on your list of options -- it potentially becomes a much easier choice for consumers, and one worth re-examining.

I started with the Mainstream CHR format, Today's Hit Radio. Here's an hour's worth of music without any of the available customization.

Lifehouse, "First Time"
Justin TImberlake, "Lovestoned - I Think She Knows"
Ciara, "Get Up"
Maroon 5, "Won't Go Home Without You"
Timbaland f/Onerepublic, "Apologize"
Usher, "Caught Up"
Taylor Swift, "Teardrops On My Guitar"
Nelly Furtado, "Say It Right"
Buckcherry, "Sorry"
Gwen Stefani, "Four In The Morning"
Elliot Yamin, "Wait For You"
Daughtry, "Home"
J.Holiday, "Bed"
Paramore, "Misery Business"
Mariah Carey, "It's Like That"

That sounded like a lot of Internet-only CHR stations that I've listened to over the years, it's actually a few ticks more conservative than the average major-market Top 40. If you're looking for a truly different take on Top 40, Sirius Hits 1 and XM's 20 On 20 are more distinct. On the other hand, if you're not a radio/music junkie and want a comfortable, commercial-free Top 40 for the office, it's very palatable. Of the handful of extreme records that still get airplay at Top 40, the closest to anything noisy was Paramore, and I could have made it one of my six skipped songs.

And, to be fair, as with a recent examination of the hit-to-oh wow ratio on XM and Sirius Satellite Radio, there are plenty of other channels here if you don't want to hear the hits, from "Dysfunctional Holiday" to "U.K. Indie." So I decided to try the "U.K. Hits" channel. (In actuality, more focused on Alternative music that happens to be from the U.K.)

Snow Patrol, "Open Your Eyes"
Mark Ronson, "Valerie"
Fatboy Slim, "That Old Pair Of Jeans"
Dido, "Sand In My Shoes"
Libertines, "Can't Stand Me Now"
Kooks, "She Moves In Her Own Way"
Nine Black Alps, "Shot Down"
Coldplay, "Fix You"
Travis, "Closer"
Bloc Party, "Like Eating Glass"
Mika, "Relax (Take It Easy)"
Lily Allen, "Smile"
Dirty Pretty Things, "Deadwood"

Finally, I tried '70s Hits:

Chuck Berry, "My Ding-A-Ling" (all 10-plus minutes of the album version)
Seals & Crofts, "Summer Breeze"
Chairmen Of the Board, "Give Me Just A Little More Time"
Todd Rundgren, "Hello It's Me"
Foreigner, Hot Blooded"
George Harrison, "Dark Horse"
Shirley Brown, "Woman To Woman"
Brian Hyland, "Gypsy Woman"
Carole King, "It's Too Late"
Stevie Wonder, "I Wish"
Keith Carradine, "I'm Easy"
Jackson 5, "Mama's Pearl"
Van Morrison, "Domino"
John Travolta, "Let Her In"

It was about the time of George Harrison -- the first true "oh wow" for me -- that I finally started to enjoy myself. As regular readers may have figured out, if you can put enough of those songs back to back, you will probably get me to overcome my usual preference for full-service radio over jockless music. But I make no claims to speak for the rest of America here. And Slacker's emphasis on portability and customization -- long hailed as one of Internet radio's calling cards -- will certainly resonate with somebody. (I've already heard from one very enthusiastic radio person about this announcement.)

I usually come away from my forays into much of Internet-only radio with a new appreciation for the total package (and sometimes even the depth and variety) offered by mainstream terrestrial radio -- or at least the mainstream terrestrial radio that I can stream. But that's not a story being shared from many quarters these days. Those streams (including HD-2 multicast channels that stream) will also be available on RCA's device, but not with the same prominence as Slacker.

Which again raises a question: With all the effort that is going into HDRadio, shouldn't somebody be pushing for a portable device that gives the same sort of prominence that Slacker is getting here to HD-2 multicast channels -- offering all the available HD stations, not just those that can be heard in any given market?

I've commented in these pages before that for a number of us in the business, interest in music programming began with listening to "American Top 40" and coming to the realization that some of the hits around the country were different than the hits being played in your market. Whether it was "Rub It In" by Billy "Crash" Craddock in 1974 or "I'll See You In My Dreams" by Giant in 1987, "AT40" was often the only proof those records existed if you lived in a major market. (Conversely, if you lived in a more pop-driven market, it was often the only place to hear anything but the biggest R&B crossovers.)

These days, with the major markets often setting the agenda for the rest of the country, you're a lot less likely to hear more than a handful of songs not being played in your market on "AT40." But I'm listening to the Sunday afternoon countdown on Sirius Hits 1 (starting at 1 p.m. ET) and they've just gone for about 45 minutes without a single record that I'm likely to encounter on any of the four Top 40 buttons available to me on a regular day. The last hour has been full of Dollyrots, Wyclef Jean, Within Temptation, Yellowcard, the new Duran Duran, the new Linkin Park, Rascal Flatts, etc. And it very much feels like listening to "AT40" in the old days.

It has also been noted here before that Sirius Hits 1 is one of only a handful of stations that looks for their own reaction records as aggressively as the Rhythmic-leaning major-market stations (the others are the also previously cited WEZB [B97] New Orleans and WZKL [Q92.5] Canton, Ohio), but the countdown is perhaps the best showplace for that. Today's 16-year-old has a lot more places to hear new songs than sitting around waiting to hear them on a countdown, but I hope there's still somebody whose imagination is fired by this countdown (or AT40) like ours were.

As has been noted here (and elsewhere) extensively this week, the biggest channels in the recently released satellite radio Arbitron numbers have been relatively mainstream choices. All of which makes one of the exceptions stand out. XM's third most listened to channel, "XM13 Willie's Place," isn't its mainstream Country Gold channel, that's "XM10 America." Willie's Place is traditional Country, stretching back to Hank Williams and Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys. There are newer recordings (e.g., Reba McEntire & Asleep at the Wheel covering Classic Country songs), but there is nothing that could be called contemporary.

Here's Willie's Place this morning at 10:55 a.m.:

Amazing Rhythm Aces, "Yippe Yi Yo Yo"
Faron Young, "Hello Walls"
Bob Willis & Texas Playboys, "Roly Poly"
Vern Gosdin, "Right In The Wrong Direction"
Asleep At The Wheel & Reba McEntire, "Right Or Wrong"
Charley Pride, "Just Between You And Me"
Leroy VanDyke, "If A Woman Answers (Hang Up The Phone)"
Boxcar Willie, "Long Black Limousine"
Ray Price, "My Shoes Keep Walking Back To You"
Jack Green, "What Locks The Door"
Tommy Overstreet, "Don't Go City Girl On Me"
Hank Williams, "Lovesick Blues"
Rusty & Doug Kershaw, "Jole Blon"

There's not a song there that you could expect to hear on mainstream Country radio and only two or three I could even imagine hearing on KXBL (Big Country) Tulsa, Okla. -- a Classic Country FM that actually manages to surprise me from time to time. So how is this station No. 3 among XM channels in AQH and pulling more than 400,000 listeners a week?

XM senior VP/music programming Jon Zellner says that even before the channel was rebranded from "Hank's Place" to "Willie's Place" that "it's always been a huge channel for us. TSL and overall listener satisfaction is the driver. Also, we do very well in the south where Classic Country is and/or could be a bonafide format." You can also look at the surprise success of Easy Listening "XM78: Escape" and argue that XM has done pretty well at creating a tier of channels for disenfranchised older listeners.

It's also worth noting that "Willie's Place" remains one of the most distinct experiences and most produced channels on satellite radio. The two overlapping shifts I heard were both hosted and the first jock was touting an upcoming remote. It is, in other words, a real radio station. And because it is, some records that would sound old and creaky if they were just being segued one after another sound exotic instead.

For all the attention that goes to the terrestrial vs. satellite battle, I was reminded anew of satellite's other rival this morning when I had occasion to check out Soft AC WJZQ (the Breeze) Traverse City, Mich., this morning. WJZQ streams through Live 365 and before my stream started, I heard a promo that asked something on the order of, "Why listen to a few hundred stations on satellite radio when Live 365's VIP service offers more than 10,000 stations with no commercials?"

The promo was a reminder that radio--satellite and terrestrial--is still competing not only with Internet radio, but subscription Internet radio services like Live 365 and Yahoo Radio that offer paid premium tiers of service. Whether it was Sirius and XM's intent to go after some of that business, or just establish their place on the forthcoming Infinite Dial of the wireless broadband era, their (relatively) recent emphasis on Internet listening has clearly been a shot across the bow, occasioning a shot back like this one.

I've been rather amazed by the way the radio industry trades have covered the story of Arbitron's first release of national Satellite Radio ratings. They correctly point out that Howard Stern's total weekly audience is a tiny fraction of what it once was. But the spin is somehow that this is proof of Howard having made a mistake by leaving 'over-the-air' radio.

Let's do a little math here. If we accept Arbitron's estimate of Howard's weekly cume audience of 1.2million, and multiply that by the standard $12.95 per month subscription, we get over $185million. OK -- Sirius offers certain deals and the average rate is probably less than $12.95. And maybe some of those listeners would have subscribed to Sirius without Howard. Still -- is there any doubt that just on this calculation alone Howard's show is profitable? Probably wildly so?

And that doesn't even count what Howard has done for Sirius at large. This was a company that was in 'serious' danger of becoming 'Betamax' before they hired Howard. They lagged XM badly in terms of market awareness and penetration. Howard closed the gap in a matter of days. So much did he change the battle that Sirius will now be the acquiring entity if the merger goes through.

And yet the other argument one hears is: "But Howard couldn't turn Sirius profitable." Unfair as well. How can one evaluate him other than on what he has done himself? Sirius not being profitable cannot be tagged to Howard. The 'Sirius but not Howard' piece must be incredibly money-losing -- because Howard is making them money.

It is kind of a shame in sort of a metaphysical sense that millions of people don't hear Howard any more. But from a business sense, Howard continues to show himself as one of the most potent entities this medium has seen in our time (Rush Limbaugh being the only other similar force).

There are some fascinating numbers among Arbitron's just-released Satellite Ratings Report, many of which confirm last week's then-anecdotal observation that -- for all its depth -- satellite listeners are as interested in the hits as anybody else; many of the biggest channels are indeed mainstream formats.

Sirius has six channels that manage an AQH rating of 0.01 or, in one case, more. (The latter, not surprisingly, is Howard Stern's Stern 100 with an 0.04, followed by Stern 101 with an 0.01.) XM has 15 that manage an 0.01 AQH rating, including Opie & Anthony's "The Virus."

Sirius has its highest non-Stern AQH numbers for New Country, Top 40 "Sirius Hits 1," Modern Rock "Octane," and '90s and Now Hot AC "The Pulse." Of the service's Classic Rock channels, Classic Vinyl gets 2-1/2 times the AQH of the deep tracks "The Vault." (The proportion is similar on XM.)

XM does a little better as far as eclectic offerings go. Its best AQH number is for '80s/'90s/now Mainstream AC "The Blend," and Modern AC "Flight 26." But the next highest numbers are for the Classic Country "Willie's Place." The highest rated channels also include Oldies channels "'50s on 5," "60s on 6," "'70s on 7," and "''80s on 8," as well as Country "Highway 16," the Top 40 "Top 20 on 20," Soft AC "The Heart," Classic Rock "Top Tracks," newer Classic Rock "Big Tracks," Urban AC "Suite 62," Smooth Jazz "Watercolors," Fox News, and Standards/Easy Listening hybrid "Escape".

Where there is a turn toward the eclectic here, incidentally, it's to those channels that most clearly target the older listeners disenfranchised by mainstream terrestrial stations in most larger markets. You see it more with the success of the Smooth Jazz, Easy Listening, Classic Country, and '50s channels at XM, but even at Sirius, the listening levels are higher for the pre-Beatles Sirius Gold than they are for the '60s or '70s channels.

In that regard, you can finally say that satellite radio listeners aren't just paying for the radio formats they can hear anywhere else, but you can finally see them paying for the stations that mainstream radio forced them to get elsewhere. PPM has forced terrestrial radio to take a stutter step backwards as far as Oldies, but seeing the relative strength of other older targeting formats should give them pause as well.

After this week's Ross On Radio column comparing the depth on Sirius and XM Satellite Radio's Classic Rock channels, I got the "what about us" e-mail from Music Choice's Justin Prager. It was an fair question. In the days before satellite, Music Choice was an alternaive delivery system that was more informed by radio programming logic than others. As Sirius and XM have mainstreamed, Music Choice has expanded into the Video on Demand arena--where, of course, the radio notion of making every song a smash applies less.

So here's Music Choice Classic Rock at 9:50 p.m. on Wednesday (17). Songs that elude Mediabase's Top 1,000 most played are asterisked:

Jackson Browne, "Running On Empty";
Aerosmith, "Living On The Edge";
* Traffic, "Rock And Roll Stew" -- A one-time AOR staple that is now gone, gone, gone;
Jethro Tull, "Aqualung";
Pretenders, "Brass In Pocket (I'm Special)";
Yes, "Long DIstance Runaround";
* Rush, "Finding My Way"-- From their 1974 debut; sounds like AC/DC in places;
Foreigner, "Double Vision";
* Yardbirds, "Over, Under, Sideways Down";
* John Lennon, "Nobody Told Me" -- Released after his death in 1983, disappeared from the radio almost instantly;
* Ted Nugent, "Love Grenade" -- The only current I encountered in my listening except one of the deep cuts channels;
Bruce Springsteen, "Born To Run";
Rainbow, "Man On The Silver Mountain" -- Their most enduring song at radio.

There are indeed more spikes here than I encountered at Sirius and XM's mainstream Classic Rock channels (although both had deep cuts channels that played nothing but relative obscurities, which Music Choice does not). There's also a lot of that early '70s progressive music that used to be a center lane sound for the format and has selected itself out over the years, particularly at those Classic Rock stations that test both men and women (the latter seem to have less patience for it).

A big part of the original promise of Satellite Radio was vastly enhanced variety -- not only across the channels but on those channels that duplicated over-the-air formats.

In this week's Ross on Radio column from Edison Media Research VP Sean Ross, he looks at whether one truly gets more musical variety from some of satellite's most listened-to channels.

We already have a lot of comments to the article -- as Sean's articles receive almost every week. Join the discussion!

An advertiser pulls spots from XM...for censoring O&A.

Been meaning to share this observation for a few weeks now: Shortly before the holidays, I heard from T.J. Lubinsky, the public TV oldies show magnate who has been as successful at raising money with Oldies as radio station owners are frustrated. Lubinsky had just started a new doo-wop program on Sirius Satellite Radio's pre-Beatles Oldies channel, Sirius Gold, and was surprised that the callers were younger (and more geographically spread out) than many of the fans he encounters, often concentrated in the genre's historical northeastern stronghold.

That says something about the problems that Oldies stations have had attracting younger listeners. In the '80s, when the format was new on FM, it drew a substantial number of listeners who had not grown up with the records but were enjoying them because they were new, novel, and, of course, great hit songs. But over the past five years, it's been Classic Rock and the '80s hits of the Bob- and Jack-formats that have drawn in listeners who appreciate that new song about Jessie's girl. It's now those records that are being handed down from one's parents--not '60s music--many have theorized.

But on satellite radio, you've got some listeners who are punching horizontally through 100-plus channels with the expectation that they are going to hear something different, and not going to know everything they hear. With that established, doo-wop becomes just another type of exotica, like chillout music, or like a 24-year-old listening to Sinatra. That doesn't necessarily help the remaining terrestrial Oldies FMs figure out how to attract younger listeners, but it does suggest that it's not impossible.

Given the ongoing durability of the movie "Grease," an enterprising Top 40 programmer probably could have brought back the 10-year-old "Grease Megamix," itself a remix of hits from summer 1978, at any time since it became a hit in late 1996. Then again, there aren't a lot of programmers bringing back records these days. So it's worth noting that Top 40 Sirius Hits 1 added two songs this week--the new Avril Lavigne single and "The Grease Megamix."

The immediate impetus for the return of the "Grease Megamix"--which was not to PD Kid Kelly's knowledge being worked by a label--was the debut of NBC's new Grease-themed reality show, "You're The One That I Want." But it's not out of character for Sirius Hits 1 which has, over the last year or so, gone aggressively looking for its own hits in a way that few Mainstream Top 40s do these days. With much of satellite radio becoming more conservative, Sirius Hits 1 has done an interesting job of creating a broader based Top 40 that sounds neither like a Hot AC nor the fast-on-rhythm/slow-on-rock template that still dominates in many of the major-markets.

Funny that Fred Jacobs should mention this today, as I have actually made it an effort to tune into Howard several times over the past few weeks. In one two-week period, I listened on three separate occasions--and on each, I heard essentially the exact same thing: Howard interviews porn star, asks her what she'll do, and gets her to sit on some gigantic vibrating contraption for a few minutes. That's it--same thing, three times. Maybe some guys never get tired of this, but I sure did.

With Howard, as with anything else in radio, there has always been something of a 20/80 rule (actually, more like a 27/73 rule, I think). There was always about a quarter of his audience that were hard-core listeners, and the rest were there for the occasional vicarious thrill. No further proof of this is necessary than to simply look at the box office grosses of his movies--if everyone who listened to Howard's former terrestrial show actually went to see these movies, they would have grossed a zillion. They did OK, but not a zillion.

Now that Howard has moved off to Satellite, the loyal quarter went with him--but the rest stayed behind. And the show has changed because of it--sure, much of the change has been driven by the permissiveness of his new environment, but he sounds increasingly isolated: no longer 'king of all media,' but king of a stagnating kingdom of pornography, surrounded by a moat of rabid fans who may cheer just as loudly, but are no longer representative of the wide swath of middle America Howard used to command. And as such, the show sounds like it has drifted pretty far afield of what it once was. Fred is right--it is all about the environment.

This week we are pleased to have a guest posting from Jack Taddeo on what the future holds for Satellite Radio. Remember, if you have something to contribute to the Infinite Dial, just pop me a note! Now, here's Jack:

Hello from snowy Chicago!

Some of you know that I have been a bit of a hard head when it comes to satellite radio and its perceived threat to radio.  We've had discussions on the subject in perceptual meetings or over coffee in your break rooms. I maintained that the satellite radio guys were not a long term threat.
 
I was honestly not sticking my head in the sand as much as I was sitting there saying to myself "the math doesn't work".   I've also said (privately and in the trade press) that the best use of XM and Sirius bandwidth is not in what amounts to playing records without any commercials in between.  Why?   It just never made sense to me.   They’ve launched several satellites including, in the case of XM,  2 replacements for premature failures.  (I would love to have been on the call to the insurance company!)  They build a bunch of studios for production along with a broadcast center then locate it on two of the most expensive chunks of real estate on the planet  (New York and DC). They pay a ton of money for content (Stern, NFL, CNN, etc.) then charge 12.95 a month for the service.  It doesn't add up. 
 
HBO has arguably one of the best brands and delivers on their promise of quality content year after year.  They charge about the same amount of money as XM and Sirius.  Which one do you think gives more value for the dollar?  Their call letters are HBO.
 
So, if you're in a segment that loses a billion dollars a year, and your business plan actually shows that the more subscribers you add the more money you lose, what do you do?  You wake up and realize that you are in the MOBILE entertainment business, not the anti-radio business. 
 
Bandwidth is bandwidth.  Does it make sense to use all of the technology, satellite space and expensive corporate digs to "play records"? How about using the same bandwidth to send video entertainment?  Think there are many SUVs and minivans out there with back seats full of DVDs to keep the kids entertained?  You bet.  Any reason they wouldn't want to watch all of the top-rated shows on Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, Discovery Kids, PBS, etc. while they are in the car?  No.  And that is just the lower end of the market. 
 
Enter Sirius.  In one quiet announcement they've said a mouthful.  First, satellite radio isn't a big enough deal for them to base their future on. Second, they want to be out in front of XM.   Third, they realize that content is king and that they can get great content with built-in demand from other sources without having to produce it in-house.   And finally, they need to make a course correction and they need to make it now if they are going to avoid another ambiguous year.
 
Back to my original position on satellite radio.  The bandwidth is worth more than what they are using it for presently.  So Sirius is going to wake up and start using its transmission system for something besides a place out of the rain for radio haters.  And they don't even have to merge with XM to do it.
 
FROM INSIDE RADIO:
Mel Karmazin says Sirius will break into TV in 2007.
He tells the Reuters Media Summit that Sirius will begin announcing content deals next month. And Karmazin expects Sirius will offer a live TV service to cars by the end of next year. The service is likely to begin with kids' channels and would be ad-supported.
 
-Jack

If you'd like to comment on this article, please feel free to post here or contact Jack directly at jtaddeo1 at earthlink dot net.

This week's announcement that XM Satellite Radio's fall TV campaign will be tagged to, as the press release puts it, "the joy of discovery" is interesting for a number of reasons. Three years ago, discovery was supposed to be the magic bullet for satellite radio, but after the first two million subscribers or so (all of them, seemingly, adoring consumer press writers) the emphasis switched to cherrypicking the best of terrestrial radio's content, instead of just counter-programming it.

But in recent months, some of those consumer press stories have been a little less adulatory. Some have focused on satellite's slower growth. Some have pointed out, correctly, that the offerings are a little less exotic than they used to be. The marketing for HD Radio's collection of HD-2 stations has tried to position those channels as similarly adventurous. And these days, discovery is a lot of what sets satellite radio (or terrestrial radio, for that matter) apart from the iPod.

To see the new spots, click here.

The New York Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle this week includes a fascinating clue and answer.

40 Across: The clue is "Satellite Counterpart" and the answer is..."AMFM".

Really says a lot about satellite radio's status. And AM/FM's too.