Whats up with WHAM??

[TheBigA]

How can it be "individualized" when it's all being canned at a central point?   

Go to www.pandora.com and learn.  This is not traditional transmitters and towers top-down radio.  This is listener-oriented content, with playlists designed around the music tastes and interests of each individual.  No gate-keepers like PDs or DJs. You tell the computer what you like, and it creates a personalized radio station that only plays what you like.  And it's been available for ten years.  They claim 80 million users, more than four times the subscriber base of Sirius.  See statistics here: http://www.statisticbrain.com/pandora-radio-statistics  After you see this, you'll understand why Clear Channel is going after this audience.

[JustPastBuffalo]

Having had a Pandora free account for at least five to six years, I find myself checking in regularly for days, then forgetting it for weeks. Rating the tracks is a pain in the assets, but the service is free, so I do it. Pandora is novel. It can be addictive. I have about five radio stations set up, including a Steely Dan station and JPB-FM "Playing What I Want... or close to it." Some people have dozens of different playlist preferences. My Beatles Station, just played Hard Days Night, followed by Band On The Run. This Pandora financial statement is informative and tedious. As it is, Pandora is yet to turn a profit. It's built on the broadband if-come. Here's another review http://doxspot.blogspot.com/2006/10/how-can-pandora-make-money.html This said, even my friends who are fervent Pandora listeners and fans often walk away from it, calling it "Bland-ora."

[SirRoxalot]

Look, most of us hear are familiar with Pandora. It replaces your MP3 player on shuffle, not your radio, simply because there's little or no local content.

You were the one who brought up local traffic and weather.

There's no programming that is exclusive to radio.  Pandora can do weather forcasts if it wants to.  Just as Sirius does local traffic.

Now you say:

"I never said they were going to deliver local content.  I said they deliver individualized programming."

Well, which is it, Bub?

Pandora can do a lot of things, but they're not gonna because it's simply not cost-effective. Local radio can provide content that Pandora can't simply because Pandora's not on the ground in that particular market. Radio's a shared experience. Pandora's all about pandering to what you already profess to like, and is essentially a music-only service. Radio is music and more, or at least it would be if you had live and local talent instead of syndication and VT. You see "gatekeepers" as a bad thing. Well, good gatekeepers keep out stuff you really don't want, and admit new things you hadn't really thought of. And that goes beyond music into local events of interest to broader demographic groups.

In short, radio can be hip if you let it. Pandora can't.

[TheBigA]

Look, most of us hear are familiar with Pandora. It replaces your MP3 player on shuffle, not your radio, simply because there's little or no local content.

You're the one who defines radio by local content.  The dictionary http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/radio does not.  Pandora clearly defines themselves as radio, as do their customers.  Their customers view PDs and DJs as gatekeepers, and seek to by pass them.  So move on.

Well, which is it, Bub?

THIS is what I said:

Pandora can create unique programming for individuals.  That's better than the one-size-fits-all of programming to a market.

They have discussed providing weather and traffic, but haven't begun yet.  Regardless, that content isn't unique to OTA radio, which my main point. Stop changing the subject.

[SirRoxalot]

Sorry, Bub, but you're the one changing the subject. Pandora can define itself any way it wishes, but that doesn't make it so. You're the one who said that Pandora can compete with local radio. It obviously can't. The mistake that too many corporate radio people make is trying to make radio compete with Pandora. It can't, just like it can't compete with MP3 players, CDs, DVDs, cassettes, LPs, or 45s. 

The point is that radio should be RADIO - a primarily local service delivering locally-targeted programming that informs and/or entertains. That formula worked for many decades. Radio is hardly "one-size-fits-all of programming to a market". Pandora's more "one-size fits all" to a particular demographic, without regard to locale, what's going on in that location, or sense of timeliness. Even weather and traffic suffer from the time lag and lack of local knowledge when people with tenuous familiarity with a particular market try to deliver that content.

Radio is closer to "one-size fits all of a particular demographic in a particular area at a particular time of day". Or, at least it would be if there wasn't so much syndication and VT. 

[TheBigA]

Sorry, Bub, but you're the one changing the subject. Pandora can define itself any way it wishes, but that doesn't make it so. You're the one who said that Pandora can compete with local radio. It obviously can't. 

It obviously does.  Every day.  Those 80 million users didn't come out of thin air.  They are customers of local radio who don't agree with you about what they want from radio. 

What worked for decades isn't going to work any more.  It worked for decades because people had no choice.  Now that they do, they use other things.  And those other things don't have some local guy in his 50s telling people what music to like, or what news is important.  And I understand how that's hard for boomers to deal with.  They grew up thinking what they did was important, and people respected what they did and said.  No more.  You have to wake up to new realities.  And it's not just because your definition of radio is expensive.  It's also because your definition of radio only serves one group of people, and there are lots of others who want something else.  The companies that own the towers and transmitters can provide that other stuff, but not if they devote 100% of their staffing and resources to the old model.

[SirRoxalot]

Pandora competes with local radio only if you think that local radio is ONLY music. That's never been true.

Pandora is more of a replacement for MP3 players, bypassing the downloading and playlist-making that most people saw as a chore. And, it's free for most users, making a wider range of music available than most people would purchase, while assuaging their guilt over stealing music.

Radio is still the easiest way to listen to moderated content. If that content is properly targeted toward local listeners, and offers enough value added elements to overcome the annoyances of badly produced spots, it attracts many times the listening audience of Pandora, iHeart "radio", satellite, or any combination of the three.

What owners need to do is play to the strengths of radio - local, timely, well-moderated content targeted at local users. Trying to out-jukebox MP3s or Pandora is a fools errand. Since 93% of people sample radio, the key is to give them what they can't get elsewhere. That model has worked since the 1920s. The new reality isn't really that much different from the reality that existed with vinyl, cassettes, CDs, and MP3s. What's changed is the corporate will to invest in their product, and the recognition of the strengths of their medium. By and large, CBS is doing it well. Clear Channel, Cumulus, and several others are doing it poorly.

Lastly, the only advantage to utilizing other delivery systems is if you're delivering content unavailable elsewhere. That means you STILL have to invest in programming, and in sales in order to turn listening into dollars. CC and its imitators are doing a poor job of that, too.

[TheBigA]

Radio is still the easiest way to listen to moderated content.

And if the audience doesn't want moderators, too bad.  What's wrong with those stupid people?  Why do they want to do our jobs?  Why can't they just let us have all the fun and tell them what to like?  Let us tell our stories, read our liner notes on the air, and become hometown heroes, just the way we used to be?  Don't they understand that WE know what they should like?  What they want isn't as important as what we want.  We're the ones who know. 

[Savage]

Sorry, guys, was out of town doin' family stuff for a few days.  In answer to Mr. Myers' very polite inquiry, no, transmitters do not consume more electricity warming up or getting up to power.  When they're on, they eat electricity.  When you turn them off, they stop.  This is true of today's solid-state rigs and it was true in the "hollow-state" era as well.

Back in the day of vacuum tubes, many engineers liked to leave the filaments lit ("standby" mode) and only apply the HV when it was time to put the rig on the air.  This practice claimed two advantages: one, the transmitter could instantly be put on the air without having to wait for the filaments to heat up, and two, there was a school of thought which went that the thermal shock the filaments suffered by successive cycles of heating and cooling shortened tube life. 

Tube manufacturers disputed this theory, however, claiming that turning the tubes entirely off made no difference.  This only served to launch an associated debate about whether the tube people were deliberately giving bad advice in their own self-interests.  That argument has never been settled to this day.

[SirRoxalot]

Radio is still the easiest way to listen to moderated content.

And if the audience doesn't want moderators, too bad.  What's wrong with those stupid people?  Why do they want to do our jobs?  Why can't they just let us have all the fun and tell them what to like?  Let us tell our stories, read our liner notes on the air, and become hometown heroes, just the way we used to be?  Don't they understand that WE know what they should like?  What they want isn't as important as what we want.  We're the ones who know. 

And yet, what is Pandora but the ultimate automated moderator - with no local information, and no sense of time? It's a computer generating playlists, and you have a limited ability to skip songs unless you pay. Yes, you can say "never play this song again", but only if you're interacting with Pandora - which most people do on a very limited basis when they're sitting in front of they're computer and they're not busy doing anything else.