A Cold, Harsh Reality for Radio

I've been thinking a lot about radio as I've watched my hometown market of Boston - once vibrant and varied - consolidate under the big boys. One path forward is to swing the pendulum the other way: offer hyper localized, focused content relevant to the geography. As a lover of rock music, a station that plays emerging artists from Allston and Berkeley School of Music would have me over the moon. College radio does this to an extent, but they still have to contend with crippling costs.

A program director for one of my local video stations sent me this link. The author of this article retracted his claims:<p><a href="http://ericrhoads.blogs.com/ink_tank/2013/03/retraction-the-exact-amfm-dash-story.html" rel="nofollow">http://ericrhoads.blogs.com/ink_tank/2013/03/retraction-the-...</a><p>The actual conversation read:<p>Rhoads: "But if I own a radio station and I've got a lot of money invested in transmitters, or HD Radio or otherwise, and everything's gonna go to IP and you'rre gonna pull that AM and FM receiver to save twelve cents out of each car, I want to know it. Do you think that's likely to happen?"<p>Koslowski: "Absolutely. I think you will see that happening."<p>Rhoads: "When will that happen?"<p>Koslowski: "That will not happen over the next five to ten years, but past that absolutely."

I never understood the love for XM. I'd get a year, then 6 months, and now just a short 3 months whenever I'd buy a new car. I liked the variety of news and talk channels. I loved the fact that I could drive down the highway, across 4 states and never have to search for a station.<p>The reception stinks, a lot like satellite TV. Going under a bridge? Radio goes out. On the north side of a large building? No radio. In the drive-through at Starbucks or a bank? No radio. And the worst offender, driving east/west with a large amount of trees on the south side of the road? No radio. C'mon.<p>I only listened to about 6 of the music channels, they have a lot of variety, but I only like certain kinds of music. The sound quality is terrible. I'm no audiophile but whatever they do to fit that many channels on their service makes for horrible sound. Plus, the channels I listened to don't have that many songs in rotation. Gets very repetitive.<p>The XM people are also very resistant to you canceling. They'll offer the service at a 50%, then 70% discount just to keep you to say. My girlfriend has had service for years for like $3 a month. I don't like having to remember to call in and cancel every 6 months so I don't even subscribe at the discount.<p>I've gone back to terrestrial radio. I only have a 15 minute commute now, and don't drive a lot other than that. The local FM radio stations have mediocre on-air talent and play just as repetitive mixes of music. I don't mind the commercials as much, we're the midwest so for a lot of events that's the only way word gets out about them. And I've found a lot of news/talk on the AM stations.

I found about about this article a month ago from a radio station manager that I know, which compelled me to write two blog posts for non-technical people involved in radio. The elephant in the room which the OP falls short of addressing is whether Internet access is so prevalent that it needs to be considered a public good. This relates to the argument (noted earlier here on HN and many places elsewhere) on the issues of private ownership and control of the Internet.<p>Here they are, with 2nd post addressing the OP listed first. For those about to nit about my technical definitions, please read my first post to understand the simplifications I've made.<p><a href="http://yummymelon.com/devnull/digital-vs-analog-broadcasting-whose-spectrum-is-it-anyway.html" rel="nofollow">http://yummymelon.com/devnull/digital-vs-analog-broadcasting...</a><p><a href="http://yummymelon.com/devnull/digital-vs-analog-radio-broadcasting-a-slightly-apocryphal-explanation.html" rel="nofollow">http://yummymelon.com/devnull/digital-vs-analog-radio-broadc...</a>

I'd have thought that assuming you've got any kind of sound system in a car, tacking on an fm receiver is trivial/extremely inexpensive. With that in mind it doesn't seem like there would be much benefit in actually removing it. It'll probably live on the same chip as your internet comms stack a bit like mobile phones.

Main point:<p><i>"AM and FM are being eliminated from the dash of two car companies within two years and will be eliminated from the dash of all cars within five years."</i>

So this piece is a year old, and it looks like attention has been stirred up enough that Jalopnik wrote a piece about this a couple weeks ago: <a href="http://jalopnik.com/will-am-and-fm-radio-really-be-eliminated-on-new-cars-453849045" rel="nofollow">http://jalopnik.com/will-am-and-fm-radio-really-be-eliminate...</a><p>Jalopnik points out that GM actually responded to the Radio Ink editorial to stated that GM has no plans to eliminate radios (see: <a href="http://www.radioink.com/Article.asp?id=2627785&#38;spid=24698" rel="nofollow">http://www.radioink.com/Article.asp?id=2627785&#38;spid=2469...</a> ).

Seems absurd to remove radio support, even todays cellphones have a radio, why should car companies just rip it out to save maybe 1 cubic centimetre of space?! This is just GM shooting themselves in the foot again. IMO, government should not have bailed them out, when you screw up your business, it should have consequences.

Most of this conversation suffers from tunnel vision. What we're talking about is mass content delivery, nothing less. It was once done with large, expensive, unreliable AM radio transmitters, then FM transmitters, now it's more efficiently done with digital data streams, from any convenient source -- a nearly WiFi hub, a distant satellite, a laser beam, a wire.<p>People want their data, for entertainment, education, work. How it gets delivered is secondary, except to say the most efficient way is to be preferred. So given that, how is it in any way surprising that car companies would consider removing a fossil from the dashboard?

This:<p>"Safety is a giant concern. AM and FM radio stays available when the power goes down. Cell towers and the Internet do not."<p>I own radio stations, and that's one of the dumbest things I've ever read about the business. Having suffered through countless extreme winter storms and electrical events, AM and FM radio DO NOT inherently stay available when the power goes down. We have generators at the tower sites and the office, but that can be done at cell towers and elsewhere, there's no magic to AM / FM. Generators do not run forever, and they don't always kick on perfectly. Completely bogus claim on the authors part.<p>In fact, frankly, more than a few times it was extremely difficult to keep our stations on the air during severe storms (hello physical, outdoors receivers - both at the towers and the office, hello ice and wind and snow), and meanwhile I was able to use my smart phone for Internet access.

I highly doubt that they would eliminate AM/FM radios from cars. I can see CDs leaving because they take a lot of space within the dash that could be better used, let alone the fact they have a moving part.<p>The circuitry needed to support radio isn't much and would most likely be integrated with other services into a simple chip set. Plus lets be frank, the youth today who don't find radio "hip" or whatnot aren't usually in position to buy new cars.

I'm a huge fan of Sirius/XM. Occasionally I flip to fm. I never touch am.<p>It's nice to allow omakase for music. I can't always spend time tuning a playlist.

I was confused when I saw the article as I had originally read the title as 'A cold, Harsh Reality for <i>Rdio</i>'. Sums up the problem pretty well.

I don't listen to radio anymore. Having a DVR for TV has made me intolerant of the endless commercials, and that has spilled over onto radio.

The only thing I use my car radio for anymore is to play audio from my iPhone. I'll use the phone to play streams of local radio stations, even, because it's just more convenient, even though the radio can pick them up directly.<p>The article takes a bizarrely alarmist tone at the end. Yes, I'm sure there are people out there who will still want a radio in their cars, whether it's people who want to be prepared for disasters, or live in areas with terrible cell coverage, or whatever. Those people can easily buy a standalone radio that plugs into their car's auxiliary input port. The author appears to think that a car which ships without a radio can never be altered to have one, which is just bizarre.