Once upon a time, hundreds and hundreds of individuals and small companies operated America’s airwaves at the pleasure of the people and their licensor, the Federal Communications Commission.
Deregulation by the government and consolidation by cash-heavy companies forced the “Mom and Pop” owners into retirement and today’s environment is often, and not always kindly, referred to as “Corporate Radio”.
But, in the 1990s when radio stations were being furiously bartered and bought up, few folks saw the impending rise of thousands of audio streams which would spew from Internet radio broadcasts run by a gamut of operators from 16-year-old kids in their bedroom to disgruntled professionals looking to love radio from a new point of view.
At the same time, Satellite Radio was slowly getting legal clearance and over the past few years has been building its base of subscribers. And two significant events have recently occurred which will allow this fledgling competitor to mature: both XM and SIRIUS have hired big gun talent – Opie and Anthony and Howard Stern respectfully – and XM recently announced it will have a wearable satellite receiver in the market place this fall, the Delphi XM MyFi. (see: XM and Delphi Introduce First Portable, Personal Satellite Radio).
Suddenly, Satellite Radio not only has some talent clout and portability; its also no longer tethered to the home or auto and it can now truly compete with the millions of walkmans and iPods we entrust with our audio needs.
As I pointed out in a May, 2004 article: "wearability will change everything".
There’s been some talk lately of “Podcasting” where iPod and other digital audio player users download portions of radio programs for later playback – some of which have been created by hobbyists, enthusiasts, and even upcoming non-traditional “narrowcasters”. As much as I think this is a somewhat interesting development in the overall distribution of programming, there’s one thing about the Delphi XM MyFi which is extremely attractive. Not only can it pick up XM’s 130 channels of programming but it can store 5 hours of it as well. The user can record audio in real-time or set up a timer to record audio.
Wow: commercial free music in almost any genre plus news and specialty programming plus the ability to take it anywhere plus the ability to capture it so you can play it back at your leisure!
If it wasn’t evident before, it should be uncomfortably obvious to the owners of traditional AM and FM stations: there is now a historical and growing cultural divide between Old Radio and New Radio.
The first time you see someone wearing an XM MyFi personal portable - a symbol of New Radio - imagine this tune is playing in their head:
Look what's happening out in the streets
Got a revolution Got to revolution
Hey I'm dancing down the streets
Got a revolution Got to revolution
- “Volunteers”, The Jefferson Airplane
