Blaming its demise on a decline in radio industry ad revenue for ten consecutive quarters, Air America Media has decided to file under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code, effectively ending its six-year broadcasting run as of 9PM EST tomorrow. Created as a liberal / progressive radio response to conservative talk show hosts like Rush […]
Archive | Commercial Radio
Clear Channel offers contextual advertising for radio, but where's the context?
Clear Channel has announced what the commercial radio giant calls a major step forward for radio advertising: technology that can “automatically and reliably insert any length of audio spot immediately after specific programming or commercial spots based entirely on content.” In blogoland that’s called “contextual,” or sometimes “semantic” advertising. Google Adsense and various Amazon widgets, […]
Stitcher adds gay Bay Area public affairs show to its lineup
The Stitcher mobile radio service is adding another gay oriented radio show to its schedule: Out in the Bay, a regular program on National Public Radio affiliate KALW-FM in San Francisco (91.7 FM). Out in the Bay is hosted and produced by Eric Jansen and Marilyn Pittman, both of whom have tons of radio experience […]
British Ofcom dings West Midlands AM station for "blurring" ad with content
The British government released its decision today to sanction an Asian community oriented AM radio station for not keeping its advertising and content sufficiently separate. West Midlands area Radio XL (“the best in Asian music 1296 AM”) presented a 40 second office space availability spot “seamlessly as programming,” ruled the United Kindgom’s Office of Communications (Ofcom). […]
Radio at CES: Hype for HD Radio, but price is still the biggest barrier
Amazon.com Widgets I keep reading all this hype about how HD Radio is the big audio deal at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, yet I fail to quite see what’s so exciting. Sure, there are some new models of HD Radio receivers rolling out, but the number of new entries roughly equals the number of […]
Notable Comments on the RadioSurvivor Decade in Review
One of the most satisfying aspects of putting together our review of the decade’s most important radio trends was the number of comments we received. It appears we touched a nerve or two. And while not everyone agreed with our arguments or conclusions, we did get some thought provoking responses. Seeing as how we like […]
Wrapping up the decade in radio and looking forward to the decade ahead
As I said in my introduction to our subjective and opinionated review of radio in the 2000s, I still think it was darn near impossible to predict how the medium of radio would end up at the beginning of 2010. Sure, the seeds for satellite radio, HD radio, low-power FM, internet radio and MP3s were […]
Sunday Night May Be Where it's at on Commercial Radio
Today I spotted an article from this weekend’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer that extols the virtues of a Sunday night hip hop show called Sunday Night Sound Session on commercial station KUBE in Seattle. The show runs from 10:45pm to 12:15am and plays music that isn’t normally heard on the station. The piece points out that the […]
The decade’s most important radio trends #1: The birth and troubled childhood of satellite Radio
At end of the first decade of the 21st century there are more audio entertainment options available than any time before. Even if traditional broadcast radio has a case of the doldrums, the viability of radio-like media has never been stronger. Satellite radio is one medium that entered the scene, although its long-term prognosis is […]
The decade's most important radio trends: #2 The growth of Internet radio
Although today’s New York Times claims that “Internet Radio Stations are the New Wave,” a look back at the past decade makes it very clear that Internet Radio’s growing influence is hardly revolutionary news. In fact, it’s hard to overstate the importance of the Internet and Internet Radio during the last 10 years. The radio […]