Category: Uncategorized

This was quite surprising and fascinating…

 

When iTunes Radio launched last fall, the service was designed for music fans and music labels. Now it is branching out: National Public Radio is adding the first news station to Apple’s audio streaming service, with more on the way.

via Apple’s iTunes Radio Adds NPR News Channel | Re/code.

A few obvious but important things:

1.  This is not music.  Why is that important?  Take out your iPhone.  Note that the button you use to access iTunes radio is labeled “music.”   This suggests that the rumor of iTunes Radio getting its own app may be correct.

2.  This is not music.  It’s talk.  Will Apple just add one talk source and stop?  That would seem weird to me.  So what else is coming?  (The article I linked mentions “more on the way.”

3.  They brought NPR within iTunes radio.  Why not just encourage folks to download an NPR News app?  Why bring it inside?  What else might they bring inside?

I don’t know the answers, but I sure am keeping an eye on what they are up to.  Fascinating.

I teach a college class on radio so I spend a decent amount of time with 18-22’s.  And in the not too distant future these folks will be entering 25-54.  They definitely do not have clock radios.

The assumption that most core radio listeners have a clock radio is faulty.  Like so many things in radio, assuming these people will simply set their station without reminders or encouragement is questionable, too. And it also reinforces the importance of having presence on mobile phones.”

via Worldwide Radio Summit 2014 Exclusive TechSurvey10 Sneak Peek: The Decline Of Clock ….

I am one of the old-timers (at 44 with 21+ years in radio).  I have a clock radio.  When I had to head into the city every morning, I would set the alarm to WCBS at 6:15.  I would get the Mets score, eat one commercial, traffic and weather and then click.  Headlines could wait until I was in the car (or looked at email/twitter in the kitchen.)

More and more folks are getting those services, especially weather, from their phones.

I read an article last week that suggests that radio programmers shouldn’t forfeit the services to the phones.  Now forfeit is a loaded word, but I will ask if it is necessary for all stations to do traffic and weather.

WCBS New York (an All News* station for you out of towners, the asterisk is for those pesky sporting events) should do traffic and weather.  Of course.

But why does WFAN need traffic reports.  Is anyone listening to Boomer & Carton thinking I really need a traffic report here.  Or is it just one more thing to billboard.  Couldn’t we come up with something else to billboard?  WFAN figured out how to do mornings without 20/20s and they have a very popular show.  Maybe they don’t need that traffic report.  Does anyone miss the news that they used to do in the first year of Boomer & Carton?

So maybe you don’t need the traffic. And maybe Z-100 doesn’t need the weather (do they even do weather, I haven’t listened to Z-100 since Shannon was there.  It’s me, Z, I aged…you do your thing and you do it well.)

There was a time when school closings was not only a smart thing to do, it was a money maker.  Now, nobody does it on the radio.  I get woken up by texts at 4:45am…why do I need John Gambling to read me everyone else’s texts?

So maybe you don’t need that traffic and weather.  Maybe it’s clutter.  Just asking.

My second grader asked me to help with her homework.  The assignment?

“Write an advertisement to sell land to penguins.”

She had taken a stab at “copy” (she had no idea what I was talking about when I used that word) and I asked if she wanted me to “punch it up.”  (Still no idea.)

Well daddy has no job and used to write 95% of the copy for the SiriusXM Comedy Channels…and has this cool MacBook Air and…..an hour later here is where we finished.

One of the biggest influencers on my career was Jeremy Coleman (presently SVP of the Howard Stern channels) who taught me a lot of moves.  One of my favorited that I borrowed was drawing the poor man’s version of the graph above.

What I do (borrowed from Jeremy) is I draw a typical camel-back graph of listening with peaks in morning drive and afternoon drive…then draw the same graph over it shifted three hours to the right for Pacific time.  It goes over well in the college class and in presentations.

What happens when you do that is you realize middays are just as valuable at the national level as east coast morning drive is.  You get east coast middays plus Pacific morning drive and you get a nice bump.

The Nielsen graph above normalizes for timezones, but it is still interesting to me how flat the day is once you get out of the 7am hour.  Also eye-catching is how early the cliff starts – it looks more like 5:30pm than say 6:30pm.

One of the things I always felt about morning drive radio, especially shows that start at 5am, is that the best stuff gets wasted when fewer people are listening.  You have hosts that can’t wait to talk about the big topic so they lead with it.  Sure you can do it again at 7:40, but it’s never quite the same is it?

Conversely, morning shows are tough because to me they aren’t four hour shows, they are four one hour shows and probably even eight 30 minute shows.

Interesting stuff from Nielsen if you want to dive deeper.

Interesting., although I wonder if me working consistently on a laptop for a few hours is really the same as “checking my phone.”  That being said I have been known to stare at my phone.

At least 50 percent of consumers have both a smartphone and a desktop, and those consumers divide their time evenly between both devices. This translates to consumers checking their phones about every 6.5 minutes, or 150 times a day.

via We check our phones how many times a day? | Digiday.

Maybe it’s “phone” that is misleading.  I’ve been on the internet in one way or another (this blog, email, LinkedIn, news feed) for about 2.5 hours already today – but it has been one continuous “make the rounds.”

Anyway, that phone in everyone’s hand is a valuable tool.  Make sure you are mobile friendly or you’re going to be left behind very soon.

With my newly found free time (did I mention I need a gig?) I have been diving into the Blu-Ray collection quite a bit.  I love Blu-Ray.  I get it if you don’t, but I do.  Things looks so so vivid.

I taped (I say taped because I am from the 80’s) taped Lawrence of Arabia on TMC for no particular reason.  I had heard of it and now I had time.  I knew nothing about the movie.

I got about an hour into it and was blown away.  The scene that really got me apparently is referred to as the mirage.  What got me about the seven was the use of a single cut and SILENCE.  Oh my goodness, SILENCE.  I don’t want to be an old man, but not everything needs a loud soundtrack.  (And if you watch a modern concert video, how about keeping the camera on say Bruce or McCartney rather than some fan in the crowd?).

Silence.  The man on the horse rides up, and in silence we watch that long ride and wonder who he is.

I realized I was blowing it watching it on TMC SD, so I stopped the DVR and ordered the Blu-Ray (via my beloved Amazon Prime).   The restored BD is absolutely amazing.  If you have never seen this beautiful film, stop reading and order it.

That inspired me to get Ben-Hur.  Amazon, click.

While different, it is also awesome.  Another restored version that looks great on my big screen Sony.  It even had an intermission?  Remember those?

What is truly great about these two films is NO CGI.  There is a big difference between 200 guys on camels and CGI camels.  Or an actual desert.  Or 40 horses running side by side in a chariot race.   I may watch Gladiator tonight to compare natural effects to CGI.

I met Heston twice.  The second time he was older and not quite as sharp but the first time was priceless.  I was coming back from the bathroom at WOR with no idea who John Gambling had on as a guest.  So I’m bopping down the hallway when I look up and my face has that stunned look of hey you’re…

“Hi, I’m Charlton Heston” and he offered me a firm handshake.

That’s it.  I have never been a star-effer.  I don’t need to be their friend or stalk them for autographs.  I have my Heston moment(s) and my memory.  That’s all I need.

Anyways, just like we aren’t all going to gather around the victrola listening to Bob Hope, we won’t see any more four hour movies with a half hour religious coda.  But Ben-Hur is fantastic, and Lawrence is better.  If you haven’t seen either, go grab them on Blu-Ray.

I don’t want to turn this blog into a one trick pony, but wow would you look at that?

Pay attention to the future folks.  Last week I shared the 11 Hour Study, but let’s look at what that next generation is doing.  Look how radio is down to 1:15.   As I am typing this my kid is upstairs playing with Apple TV.  She isn’t listening to “the radio” but she is listening to music just like I did in 1983.  It’s not the desire that has changed, it is the delivery system.

She likes the Apple TV.  She just wants music.  My college kids just want music.

My daughter has access to 12,000 songs right now.  Playlists.  Customized.

Meanwhile I tried listening to a local sports station yesterday that teased a guest and then hit me with seven minutes of commercials (Seven!!!) then an update then another cluster.   Really?  Click.

Now fortunately the survey up top includes overlapping.  So my kid is probably on instagram (“browse the internet”), several chats (“social networking”) and has iTunes open in the background.  Let’s make sure we’re one of those buttons as this generation and the one in front of it ages.

I am sad to hear of David Brenner’s passing.

I had the opportunity to work with David, oh I don’t know three or four times.

One of the first (maybe the first) came fairly early in my tenure at Sirius (pre-merger).  It was one of those magical days in the lobby, where cool stars would run into other cool stars.   On that particular day the late comedian Robert Schimmel and David met for the first time while waiting to go on other shows…and man they just hit it off.

They hit it off so well that we all decided if they came back the next day and just traded stories on the air.  And that’s what we did.

This was long enough ago that our brains weren’t hardwired for social media or video yet , so I don’t have an embed to share with you.  But there they were each sitting on a high stool with an old time radio mic in front of them on a tall stand.  And David and Robert got up and swapped stories about showbiz for over an hour.  What a great use of satellite radio back in the day.

David would come by, oh I dunno every two years or so (he lived in Vegas) and I would always spend time with him in the lobby.  He loved to talk about Johnny (you don’t need a last name, do you?) and the Tonight Show.  Not in an annoying way, not in a “I used to be…” way but just with reverence and excitement for the power and greatness that show had in another media age.  (That’s not a knock on Fallon, it’s a different time, and this was the 1970s when you had 5 channels, and two of them had signed off for the night.)  I think I last saw David about a year ago, maybe less, and yep we talked about Tonight.

There was a Carson Project I never quite solved during my time at SiriusXM and I would have asked David, Joan Rivers and Conan to be part of it.  Maybe Jeremy Coleman (a fellow dreamer) can throw the power of Howard behind it and solve it, or maybe I can solve it at the next gig.  Regardless, it will be sad to do it without David.

…

I imagine Howard will give David a good tribute on Monday, and I was happy to hear that my former comrades Ron & Fez went live last night.  I was always big on the proper tributes.  Nice job fellas.

What an exciting time to be me, even if this post is coming to you from the Between Gigs Basement,

The Amazon Streaming Audio rumor is interesting.  I love Prime because I love hitting click anytime I feel like impulse buying.  If they want to give me streaming audio with it, cool!

The other rumor, this one about iTunes Radio becoming its own app, is also fun.  I will be curious to see where that one goes.

Today I played around with the iTunes Radio Top 50 Alt station and really enjoyed it.  To the point, on target and curated.  It also “tricked” me into buying about eight songs.  I run a lot and get sick of everything in my iPhone, so to get turned on to a bunch of new-to-me songs was a pleasure.  And there’s that nice and easy BUY NOW button.  This business model I get.  My “free” radio got me for like twelve bucks today.  And yet I don’t care, because I like the songs.  That’s a good product.

So there’s four quick paragraphs none of which are what I set out to write about.  I have been sitting on this one since it first showed up last Friday, but there has been so much other stuff (like that Infinite Dial study) that it has been hard to work this one in.  (Originally I was going to post twice a week so these posts see daylight, and I am already doing more because I’m excited, which is today’s theme.)

Look at the nice pretty graphic Mashable made.  ELEVEN HOURS.  Eleven.  Figure you sleep seven, so there’s six other hours for things like talking to your family and brushing your teeth.  Eleven is no joke.

The folks that watch five hours of live TV a day fascinate me.  I watch zero.  So someone else is watching ten to make the math work.  Once the Mets get rolling I will watch three hours of live.  Never five.  (Well maybe an NFL Sunday….)

Conversely, I am surprised that time shifted TV is only 32 minutes.  I watch everything time shifted.  I don’t start The Walking Dead until 9:20.  I can’t sit through a commercial.  My thumb needs to skip 30 seconds.  Eight times in a row.  I watch an hour, maybe 90 minutes a day of TV of any kind, then I am known to pass out on the couch.

Hooray for radio hanging in there at 2:46.  Unresearched I will guess that people’s commutes are getting longer than even the last studies showed (25 minutes average US, with longer ones in the fairly obvious metroplexes).

Eleven hours.  Is your content available for all eleven?  Or are you a “radio” company without good social media, without a good app, without an actual mobile site designed for mobile?  ESPN gets it – you can interact with them all day long on every device.  Wanna read?  Bingo ESPN.com.  Wanna read local?  ESPN New York LA Dallas Boston.  Wanna listen?  App.  Wanna watch?  TV.  Wanna watch differently?  App.

What a fun time to be part of all this, even if this week it is from the basement