HD Radio and the iPhone – Not Quite There Yet

Ibiquity and a company called Gigaware yesterday announced an accessory for the iPhone/iPod Touch that brings HD radio to the device. You can pick up this little add-on at your local Radio Shack store (whatever happened to their plan to just call themselves “The Shack?) for about $80.

Here’s a link to The Wall Street Journal’s Lauren Goode article and her interview with Bob Struble, CEO of Ibiquity.

This accessory has generated a fair amount of buzz around the internets. Many people are saying that one of the major selling points of the new Zune is the HD radio inside. Before today, I can’t remember anyone saying that.

This accessory is very similar to the analog FM radio accessory that has been available for iPods for years. It plugs into the accessory connector on the device. There’s a tuning control that you can use to navigate the radio’s presets which connects to the device through a wire. There’s also an app that you install from the iTunes store – free, but necessary for the HD Radio to function. The HD Radio dongle has an iTunes tagging feature so that you can identify songs you wish to purchase later by clicking a button on the tuning control.

I own the standard iPod FM radio; it is useful on trips when I want to monitor local radio and I am not in a rental car. It has an RDS display right on the iPod – which highlights to me how poorly stations are at implementing this potentially extremely valuable tool.

So – the questions are, will people pay $80 for a radio in their iPhone when they can purchase a portable HD radio for $50? And – do people really care about having a broadcast radio receiver in their iPhone/Touch when there are so many other options available to them via iPhone/Touch apps?

My guess is that until the software that drives the HD radio is integrated with a streaming radio application in such a way that I can choose my over-the-air HD radio station or my streaming audio channel with the click of a pre-set, this won’t be a very strong offering. There’s a lot of potential power in this app that resides on the iPhone’s desktop. Smart folks will figure out how to tap into it.

The physical clunkiness of the connection to the phone may also deter people from using it. The connection of the original iPod FM radio is almost exactly the same and I find that it’s annoying. The wires get in the way.

However, it’s a start. Let’s see how this goes – maybe we’ll be able to pick these up cheaply on eBay after Christmas!

A Missed Opportunity for WRNR

WRNR, a Baltimore/DC area alternative radio station, was a promotional sponsor of the 12th annual “Maritime Republic of Eastport Tug o’ War,” held this past Saturday in Annapolis and Eastport, MD.

I heard about the event on ‘RNR and decided to go. It was a great afternoon of music, food and fun – including a tug of war between Eastport and Annapolis.

‘RNR was there – with a logo-covered tent, a table with station merchandise, and lots of signage all around the venue. A fairly standard radio presence.

But – there was another media outlet there, doing something that the folks at ‘RNR could have very easily done.

The Sailing Channel video streamed the entire event live on uStream!

The Sailing Channel?

‘RNR could have done exactly the same thing – or, teamed up with The Sailing Channel – and really connected with their audience using a new media platform. All sorts of opportunities presented themselves – interviews with ‘RNR fans, the artists who performed on both the stage in Annapolis and Eastport, personality appearances with the winners.

‘RNR could have produced this, provided talent and imbedded the stream on their home page.

Radio needs to pay much more attention to these opportunities – or be marginalized by other media outlets like, well, The Sailing Channel.

Radio’s future – sure seems like the past to me…

Mark Ramsey has more good stuff on his blog in a week than most people do in their lifetime. Today is no exception. He posts about The Most Important Thing You’ll Read About Radio’s Future this Year. I read this once and said, “Yeah!” Then I read it again.

It suddenly hit me that this is where we were back in the 80s. Marketers were pushing us to become more invested with their marketing. We built teams at stations focused 100% on developing non-transactional business. We called it all sorts of things, from NTR to Vendor. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of bright marketing-oriented people joined these teams either from the ranks of radio sales or from the greater marketing community. We developed relationships with food brokers, wholesalers, marketers at CPG companies, and small marketing teams consulting CPG companies. We learned all about in-store display, push vs. pull marketing, consumer promotion, floor plans, vendor-funded marketing programs. Millions of dollars were invested by radio broadcasters to support these programs and they began to return their investment. We did not sell using Arbitron numbers. We sold using the results of the last program. And, those results were terrific! So, we were able to get more and more marketing dollars for the programs and give up less and less inventory on the station.

And then something happened.

The advertisers said, “You know, let’s go back to buying on Cost per Point. And, while we’re at it, you can throw in all that extra stuff as a freebie for just getting on the buy.” Radio managers caved. NTR/Vendor departments were decommissioned or turned into ghosts of themselves. Smart marketers left radio, were fired in consolidation moves, or they were sucked into the vortex of transactional radio business.

When I think about Mark’s article and the points he makes,

1. Act more like a marketing company than a media company.
2. Be organized around an audience and not a platform.
3. Work directly with marketers.
4. Not just create spaces for ads next to content, it’ll create whole media channels and platforms for brands
5. Employ technologists who can build device-agnostic platforms for marketers.
6. Know how to deliver instantaneous gratification when it comes to measurement, and it’ll be measuring outcomes not outputs. A rating…stat is not going to be enough in the future, and certainly not when it’s presented weeks after the fact.

I can’t help but remember what these same marketers have done time and time again – when it suits their need, they go back to twisting radio’s arm with commodity pricing. And radio lets them do it.

Don’t let them do it again.

A great radio blog – for radio geeks

Just found a radio engineering blog that is darn good. Definitely worth a read when you want to get your radio geek on…
http://www.engineeringradio.us/blog

PPM, Politics, and Reality

In today’s MediaLife, an interview by Diego Vasquez with Bernie Shimkus sheds light on much of the controversy surrounding the rollout of the PPM device. Shimkus is VP/Director of Research at Harmelin Media. Harmelin is one of the largest media buying services on the east coast. Based in Philadelphia, Harmelin’s buyers and research team have been exposed to the PPM longer than people from other markets. As a media buying service, they have no ax to grind – they just want good, accurate data so that their clients can succeed.

In his interview, Diego Vasquez asks, “Are media people still concerned about charges that the PPM undercounts minorities? How much credence do you give these claims?” Shimkus answers:

Media people would be more concerned about those charges if they were based on hard, statistical facts rather than ulterior business motives.

Agencies and advertisers want accurate numbers that represent all groups as much as stations do.

Unfortunately, most of the claims about the undercounting of minorities just aren’t true.

For example, the cume audiences for most ethnic formatted stations have increased significantly under the PPM methodology. Since by definition cume audience represents the number of different people a station reaches in a week, I don’t know how higher cumes for minority stations translates into “undercounting.”

Finally, Vasquez asks, “There have been groups and politicians trying to stop the rollout of the PPM. Do you think any of them will succeed eventually? Or do you expect the issue to eventually die down?” Mr. Shimkus answers:

For the sake of our clients, and the radio industry itself, we certainly hope not. There is a lot of misinformation out there, and even more political posturing based on that misinformation.

This is not an area that politicians should be inserting themselves.

And the radio industry would be better served to stop the bickering with Arbitron, and instead concentrate on using the wealth of new data the PPM provides to make a stronger case for why radio advertising is still an effective media channel for advertisers.

Read the entire interview here.