Radio and TV are still king

[brent]

This was attached to my daily ASCAP email. Interesting.

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/uploads ... ofcom1.jpg

[Dan]

I find this very hard to believe, more people are sitting in front of Facebook than stats ever will pickup... because the people doing the stats are distracted by facebook too. Facebook the new world order.

[CatNamedManny]

Not sure you can make the case for radio, except to the extent that people are obviously listening to it while in the car and at work. When people have a choice what media to consume, radio fares no better than the iPod and fares worse than books and newspapers, texting, video games and general Internet usage. This mirrors my own activities, at least. I listen to NPR on the drive to and from work, and that's the entirety of my radio listening.

TV absolutely is still king, but context is important. How would this chart have looked 10 years ago? There's no way that between 8-9 p.m., you had a nontrivial portion of the mediaverse being taken up by text messaging and the Internet. And the later you go, the worse it gets for TV on a set, as video games and TV on the web, as well as Internet, other audio and texting, all gain quite a bit, probably at traditional TV's expense. Of course, the places where TV has really lost the percentages are also not the lucrative primetime advertising slots, so that's helpful, but the fact that television choices are so fragmented now means that the overall pie is being divided into smaller and smaller increments, which serves to dilute the kingly effects of the medium.

In short, I suspect that our grandchildren will not even know a day when television was a separate medium from the Internet. The television set will simply be an upgraded computer monitor. In that sense, traditional radio may well outlast traditional TV, which is kind of ironic. Our grandkids may still be tuning into NPR or the local pop station on their way to work long after our kids stopped using television as a separate medium from the Internet.

[executioner]

Radio has been dead now for about 10 years. The only segment where radio has grown in the last 5 years is hispanic radio, before that talk radio had some growth but has since started declining. No music format stations are seeing any growth and are losing listeners daily.
Sirius/XM have in the last few years joined together because they knew they wouldn't make it separate, but this is only a short term fixed; New subscribtions are down alot this year and you can actually get service now through them really cheap.

[brent]

Radio is not DEAD, and it never will die. It will just get back to basics, be more locally driven, and have to adapt as new electronics offer features beyond what we have access to now. Radio is not the same as it was. Rightfully so. It was suckin'.

Stations will always be needed for local news, traffic, etc. When economic crap hits the fan, people go back to free services. Everything is hyper niche market driven now. So broadcasters cannot possibly retain their shares, when there are AM/FM/HD/SAT options, CDs, MP3s, etc. Even though the industry as a whole does not have the listeners it did 20 years ago, it is still a dominant force to be reckoned with.

The biggest selling hits and careers are still made mostly via radio, not the internet, not iTunes. MAKING the single SELL still happens on radio first. Now if all stations have lost listeners or have lost frequency of listens, and radio and TV are still on top, what does that say? I think it says mucho grande.

There are still major networks. There are a few "talented" personalities here in KC (which is not the best market in the world) still making over 200k a year. There are some KC conservative talk shows with more listeners than Rush or Glenn. The largest one day music festival in the USA happens here in KC, all done by a radio station. In fact, there are about three stations that really drive the concerts here. Our concerts sell well in this market. We had AC/DC twice, Garth 7 nights in a row, etc, etc....

Mom and pop stations will be a thing of the past at some point, unless they can go non-profit. That is sad.

[executioner]

Unless its a hispanic driven station and/or talk radio it is DEAD. No growth in radio music market in over 10 years. listenership is down by about 3% a year and continues to fall, and is down about 32% in the last 10 years. In today's world if you loose % over a 1-2 year period you are considered dead. Revenue is also down alot. DJ, news archors are making no where near what they were making 10 years ago. Most large media companies are slowly selling off their radio properties and the ones that are being bought are being bought by Univision(which is now the largest radio owned property in the U.S.) and also by Telemundo. These 2 own 23% of the radio market in the U.S. as of fourth quarter last year.
Sirus/XM will most likely cease to exsist within 2-3 years; They are losing revenue at a very rapid rate and can not sustain these without failing.
I work in the 4th largest media market in the country and in the year 2000 there were 103 radio stations operating in our market; 72 of them were music based listenership now there are only 78 stations on the air now and only 34 0f them play a high percentage of music. We actually lost 2 stations this week to bankrupcty, and are expected to lose a few more by years end.
The media company I work for sold some of their stations off, but the ones they couldn't get a price for they just lost the rights to them because they didn't want to pay the fees from the FCC.

IF ITS NOT DEAD IT IS DYING A SLOW DEATH AND AT THIS RATE WILL BE GONE IN TEN YEARS.

[CatNamedManny]

Sirus/XM will most likely cease to exsist within 2-3 years; They are losing revenue at a very rapid rate and can not sustain these without failing.

Your info appears a bit out of date on this point, according to http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Sirius-XM ... l?x=0&.v=2

Net income at Sirius XM [in the second quarter of 2010] ... was $15.3 million, or nil per share, compared with a loss of $159.6 million, or 4 cents a share, one year ago.

Fueled by healthier auto industry sales, which lifts demand for satellite radio, Sirius XM ended the period with 19.5 million subscribers, up 6 percent from a year ago. It repeated its target of 1.1 million net subscriber additions this year, which is double its initial forecast.

The outlook shows that Sirius has found a stable path to growth, even though the auto industry recovery appears to be more uneven. ...

On average, each of the company's subscribers paid about $11.81 per month, up 11 percent from the same period in 2009, as customers signed up for "Best Of" programing packages that pool premium content from the Sirius and XM systems.

Born of the 2008 merger that united rivals Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio, Sirius XM has been resurgent after receiving a life-saving loan in February 2009 from Liberty Media. The transaction bought Liberty head John Malone a 40 percent equity stake in Sirius XM.

Since then, the company has seen a rise in average revenue per user, lower costs to woo subscribers to the service and an increase in new-car buyers who sign up for satellite radio after their trial subscriptions lapse.

[executioner]

Sirus/XM will most likely cease to exsist within 2-3 years; They are losing revenue at a very rapid rate and can not sustain these without failing.

Your info appears a bit out of date on this point, according to http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Sirius-XM ... l?x=0&.v=2

Net income at Sirius XM [in the second quarter of 2010] ... was $15.3 million, or nil per share, compared with a loss of $159.6 million, or 4 cents a share, one year ago.

Fueled by healthier auto industry sales, which lifts demand for satellite radio, Sirius XM ended the period with 19.5 million subscribers, up 6 percent from a year ago. It repeated its target of 1.1 million net subscriber additions this year, which is double its initial forecast.

The outlook shows that Sirius has found a stable path to growth, even though the auto industry recovery appears to be more uneven. ...

On average, each of the company's subscribers paid about $11.81 per month, up 11 percent from the same period in 2009, as customers signed up for "Best Of" programing packages that pool premium content from the Sirius and XM systems.

Born of the 2008 merger that united rivals Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio, Sirius XM has been resurgent after receiving a life-saving loan in February 2009 from Liberty Media. The transaction bought Liberty head John Malone a 40 percent equity stake in Sirius XM.

Since then, the company has seen a rise in average revenue per user, lower costs to woo subscribers to the service and an increase in new-car buyers who sign up for satellite radio after their trial subscriptions lapse.

The problem they are having though is most if not all of these get it free for the first 6 months or even a year and then when the customer has to start actually paying for the service they are not getting it renewed. most customers are walking away from the service at that point. I know we did.

[CatNamedManny]

The problem they are having though is most if not all of these get it free for the first 6 months or even a year and then when the customer has to start actually paying for the service they are not getting it renewed. most customers are walking away from the service at that point. I know we did.

This really isn't all that big a deal, but I do want to note that the article I quoted actually acknowledges that, saying the number of people who do that is decreasing, and that paid subscribers are up. I don't know. Maybe Sirius/XM will fold in a couple years. It wouldn't surprise me, but I did think it was worth pointing out that its prospects have improved recently.

[executioner]

The problem they are having though is most if not all of these get it free for the first 6 months or even a year and then when the customer has to start actually paying for the service they are not getting it renewed. most customers are walking away from the service at that point. I know we did.

This really isn't all that big a deal, but I do want to note that the article I quoted actually acknowledges that, saying the number of people who do that is decreasing, and that paid subscribers are up. I don't know. Maybe Sirius/XM will fold in a couple years. It wouldn't surprise me, but I did think it was worth pointing out that its prospects have improved recently.

I think the reason for it though is because its basically free for the first year. I know Ford and others have gone away from the Siruis/XM format mostly because of that. The Sync system by Microsoft is probably about the best out there