Is Sports Radio's Weapon Against Technological Disruption?

As more and more people begin to get at least some of their music through IP delivery (i.e. Internet radio, streaming music services, etc.), music-based terrestrial radio is going to be under more and more pressure. Could sports be the solution?  From Ad Age:

Live sports have turned out to be traditional TV's best weapon against growing competition from the likes of Netflix and disruption by the DVR. Now as Spotify and Pandora chase listeners -- and Apple reportedly prepares a streaming music service of its own -- radio broadcasters are hoping they can use sports in much the same way.

Last weekend NBC and the radio syndicator Dial Global introduced NBC Sports Radio on 249 affiliates around the country, joining an increasingly crowded field that was once, surprisingly enough, considered unpromising. Emmis Communications was given little chance of success in 1987 when it introduced WFAN in New York, the first all-sports radio station, which promptly lost millions of dollars and nearly got shut down. After relocating on the dial and gaining a stronger signal, however, business started improving -- to the point that WFAN, now part of CBS Corp., raked in $41 million in revenue last year, according to BIA Kinsey. It ranked first among all sports stations nationwide and just ninth overall.

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Canadian Music Week Moves from March to May for 2014

After 31years of being a late winter/early spring convention and festival, Canadian Music Week will become a slighlty warmer-weather event.

The traditional timing of CMW has become more problematic for organizers and participants over the last decade with the rise of SXSW in Austin.  The back-to-back scheduling of these two major events has all kinds of headaches.  Add in that mid-to-late March is spring break time (gotta take the kids to Disney World!) and you end up with all kinds of issues.  Best just move the whole thing to a better time for everyone.

So be it known that CMW 2014 will run from May 6-10, 2014, immediately following the rising World Wide Radio Summit in LA (first couple of days of May) and before Music Matters Asia (which usually starts around May 20). And yes, it'll be back at the Downtown Marriott Eaton Centre Hotel, which passed its inaugural test this year.

It'll be interesting to see how this move will affect the programming of NXNE in Toronto, which comes around in mid-June.

Time Spent Listening to Music Online Jumps Dramatically

Here's a chart provided by Audio4cast.  Although the trend is pretty self-evident, it's worth reading the whole story here.

Younger Music Fans Leaving AM/FM for Internet Radio

Hey, radio peeps: if you're not paying attention to this, then you're igoring the future.  Again, it's not about the great content radio can delivery; it's all about the delivery mechanism.  The sooner more companies realize that the future is all about peronalized IP delivery and not big, dumb analogue transmitters using amplitude and frequency modulation, the better.  

From Billboard:

Internet radio and streaming services accounted for nearly four out of 10 minutes heard by young listeners in the fourth quarter, according to new figuresreleased by the NPD Group.
 
Internet radio services like Pandora and iHeartRadio accounted for 23% of listening time for consumers between the ages of 13 and 35, up six percentage points from 17% a year earlier. Digital files took up 15% of listening time, while on-demand services such as Spotify accounted for 14% of listening time.

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A Great Read for Radio Programmers: Time for Some Soul-Searching

If you're in radio, today's post by Fred Jacobs begins with something that's awfully familiar.  But are these truths still truths?

When you’ve been doing anything for a long time, it often becomes a challenge to question some of the basic underpinnings of your profession.  That is especially true in radio where the fundamentals of consumer appeal and preference have been rocked by the Internet and disruptive technologies and platforms.

In radio, we were all taught from the same textbooks – the rules of radio handed down by Bill Drake, Rick Sklar, and others.  In Rock Radio, many learned their craft from the Lee Abrams playbook.

At the heart, it seemed like there were three fundamental steps:

1. Play the hits
2. Be consistent
3. Repeat steps 1 & 2

Other “truths” included: 

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