Keen On HD Radio

I have been a fan of Robert Earl Keen's since he first attempted to promote me to play his music on a radio station named KEEN (San Jose) back in the 1980's, when I was PD.

My experience was not unlike SXSW, which became a hugely successful entertainment event by dropping its role as an Alt.Country/Americana convention and becoming more mass appeal, diverse and mainstream at the same time.

I don't know what made the South-By-Southwest organizers take that journey, but I do know that Robert Earl pioneered something that is huge in night clubs all over Texas and his many proteges that have come after him but has rarely been mass appeal enough even in the Lone Star State to draw a large enough fan base of radio users to compete successfully with country radio stations simply playing the Nashville chart hits.

Propelled by a devoted and passionate base of lovers of his powerfully-creative, eclectic, indie music style, Robert continues to provide an important voice to the music scene, which makes me want to tip my (cowboy) hat in his direction for his latest promotional effort, an endorsement of HD Radio.

iBiquity’s partnership with Robert Earl Keen will build awareness of HD Radio broadcasting and promote Robert’s new album, Happy Prisoner. The program will include radio promotions and contests, as well as a trip for two to Nashville to join Robert Earl at his July 23, 2015 performance at the historic Ryman Auditorium.

“We are excited to continue to build the HD Radio Artist spotlight program,” said Mason Hunter, Executive Director, Strategic Partnerships/Business Development at Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI).    “Robert Earl Keen is a stalwart for BMI and is an artist who has been consistently releasing outstanding music for over three decades.  His latest release, Happy Prisoner, is no exception. We are thrilled to have a partner in iBiquity Digital who recognizes his talent and ongoing contribution to songwriting. The HD Radio Experience delivers digital quality sound, unique content, and exposure to artists like Robert in order to enhance the experience of their listeners,” continued Hunter.

“Robert Earl Keen is a unique talent with a long history of making music his way, and his fans love him for it,” said Joe D’Angelo, Senior Vice President of iBiquity Digital.  “We are extremely proud to be able to work with Robert and look forward to bringing his latest project to radio fans across the country.”

OK, radio.  The ball is now in your court.  If you already have an HD-2 or HD-3 channel set aside for alt.country, Robert Earl Keen, BMI and iBiquity just handed you a free gift.  If you aren't using all of your HD channels now, it's a great time to begin.

BUT, don't do it if you're not prepared to aggressively promote it on your main channel.  Enhance your brand by appealing to the widest possible group of country fans.

Make the most of this forward-thinking move by radio's longtime friend, Robert Earl Keen!

A Blog Worth Echoing (Loudly!)

"History is littered with really good ideas, which for one reason or another (or many), just failed to catch on. And recent history suggests with the ever-rapid changing world of technology, the list of really good ideas that just came up short will probably be more populated. I wouldn’t be surprised if  HD Radio is on that list by the end of this decade.

"HD Radio Can Be Saved, If Someone Cares to Try."

  -- Matt Sammon

Click for 5 reasons why HD Radio has failed, and 5 reasons why it can rise from the ashes…

Call Me Don Quixote

Is it just Bob Struble and me?

Digital radio developer iBiquity projects HD Radio receiver sales will jump 63% this year, forecasting 5.4 million units will be sold.  That compares to 3.3 million receivers that entered the market last year.

A&O&B has been chronicling the tortoise-like pace of North American radio's movement toward digital in this space for many years.  (click to read eight years' worth)

I suppose the fact that 61% of Inside Radio readers now see a "tipping point" somewhere in our medium term future is a positive sign.

Hey, 38%:  read this one (It's About Time) and see if it makes you change your tune as well.

There was a time when FM seemed like an uphill battle too.  HDRadio is our best hope for a big place in the coming digital dashboard.

Don't give up on it.

Digital radio developer iBiquity projects HD Radio receiver sales will jump 63% this year, forecasting 5.4 million units will be sold.  That compares to 3.3 million receivers that entered the market last year. - See more at: http://www.insideradio.com/Article.asp?id=2690513&spid=32060#.UhYNj4XtjJM

Bob Struble

Bob Struble

Bob Struble

It's About Time

There’s no doubt that the winds of change are blowing and a robust discussion that seems to be taking place in every radio publication right now is timely and important.

For example, A&O&B’s “Roadmap 2013” country radio listener online perceptual certainly contains evidence that new media is arriving in our listeners’ dashboard at a rapid pace.

Almost one-third of country listeners report connecting to the internet in their vehicle and among those folks almost one in five spends more than two hours a day listening to “internet radio” as they drive.

We have been tracking HD Radio for many years in these studies and though the very small percentage of folks who actually owns or knows someone who has it did increase from 2.5% to 3% of country listeners sampled, even “awareness” of HD Radio was down a fraction this year and, ironically, was exactly the same percentage who claimed to have tried internet in their vehicle is aware of HD radio, just about a third of the total (31.7%). 

If you accept my educated guess that these most likely are the same “high tech redneck early adopters,” it’s quite probable that HD Radio today is on the radar with more or less the same level as internet radio with those people in our audience who matter most to acceptance of any new technological development.

As someone who was already working in radio five decades ago, when The Beatles released “Please, Please Me,” I want to remind the skeptics that one of radio’s pioneer companies, Westinghouse Broadcasting which had started to develop FM in the 1940’s decided that it wasn’t going to be successful and silenced most of theirs in the 1950’s.

My very first job in Cleveland radio was in 1962, doing nights at an easy listening (WNOB-FM) and I hosted a Broadway show tunes special each week.  A year later, I was doing mornings for an all jazz commercial FM, WCUY.  I was a musical snob back then and we thought FM was “our” place, as the great majority of people listened to AM.

We flogged FM car radio converters in an attempt to get people with only AM in their vehicles to plug our little device into their cigarette lighter and tune to an AM frequency on their radio in order to hear “FM.” 

Small wonder that the “big stations” - WHK, WIXY, KYW (yes, KYW, Cleveland.  Look it up.), WJW and most other AM’s cleaned our clock in ratings and revenues.  They were the ones playing those first Beatles and Rolling Stones songs.

Jim Duncan’s “American Radio” documented it at the time as the growth of FM took decades and really didn’t begin its ascent until more than two decades after “Group W” decided there was no future in it.  It took until 1978 for FM listening levels to overtake AM’s.

Chart Credit:  David Giovannoni: “AM Radio Listening: An Annotated Graphical and Tabular Treatise of the Audience to Broadcast Stations on the AM Band;  with Historical Perspectives and Extrapolations for the Future.”  Takoma Park, MD:  The Station Resource Group, 1991.

Giovannoni’s model for the 1990’s downtrend for AM radio failed, just as Westinghouse had with FM’s potential, to foresee that very small uptick in AM share in 1989 on his 1991 chart was being driven by a talk show that had launched in Sacramento in 1984 and just went national from WABC-AM, New York, in 1988 and single-handedly reversed that slide as his show and approach spawned a new format, rejuvenating the AM band.

Programming drives usage.  And, the adoption curve doesn’t always move at the speed of Facebook and Twitter.  Just ask Bing.

Rather than pulling the plug on HD Radio while it’s still in its infancy, let’s remember how long it can take for emerging technologies to intersect with radio formats and target audience desires to move from awareness to adoption to loyalty.

Making history doesn’t just take courage and creative innovation. 

It also takes time.

Finally, The HD Radio Alliance Gets It Right

"If you don't have an HD, you're not hearing HD. It's time to upgrade."

Hopefully, it's not too late for a campaign that finally deals with the reality that consumer don't know what it is, and don't care.

New York's HDRadio Country Station Could "POP" In PPM!

Fact #1: The average daily in-tab for a "healthy radio station" in ARB's Portable People Meter sample is reportedly seven people.

Fact #2: New York's very first 9/20-10/17 monthly PPM info will be out on 11/7 and the first week (10/18-10/24) data releases on 11/13.

Sure, there were HDRadio stations broadcasting country in Houston and Philadelphia, but in New York City, there's only three places to get country music on your radio: XM, Sirius and WXTU-HD-2.

(It's nice to hear that, after some grumbling earlier this summer, the folks at Edison Research in New Jersey are back to being regular listeners again to the station, programmed by the very savvy and talented Clear Channel format captain for country, Atlanta-based Clay Hunnicutt.)

Now to the non-fact, educated guesses and wishful thinking:

Knowing that all it takes is seven or so to show in PPM numbers, I'd bet that Clear Channel has a longterm Critical Mass Media "Weekly Audience Report" database for New York that goes back years and years. If so, they could email, call and direct mail the former cume and partisans of Y-107, WWYZ (comes in like a local on Long Island), etc in the city to let them know they can get country on HD now and try to drive sales of radios and PPM cume.

Based on New York's former country radio stations (i.e. Michael O'Malley-consulted Y-107, the most recent one and he also programmed the original NBC-owned WYNY), you'd have to guess that there are about a million country fans living in the Gotham metro area.

How many of them are research responsive, meaning that they love giving their opinions in surveys and are the most likely to agree to carry a PPM? 400,000?

In the diary methodology, that means you'd likely have to reach at least 400 of them during a typical 12 week survey period in hopes you could impact their radio usage. With the PPM, it only takes seven, and they might remain in the panel for up to two years.

So, yes, it's a needle in a haystack, but the payoff for searching for it could be huge, not only for country music in New York but also to show the impact of HDRadio. And, I wouldn't be surprised if Clear Channel has the tools already in-house to make that search a lot easier.

Using SSI and Prizm plus the CMM WAR historical database, I'd lay odds that Clear Channel could do a mailing, followed up with automated calling, emails, giving away free or at the least very low cost ($25-$50) HD Radios to those people who they know love country radio and are quite likely to be willing to become an ARB PPM panelist very efficiently.

Wouldn't it be impressive if New York Country 103.5 HD2 showed up with seven active panelist listeners in the first few months of PPM results? What would that do for country? For HDRadio? How much would that be worth to all of us?

I hope Clear Channel isn't so preoccupied with going private right now that they don't have the time to consider such exciting possibilites..

Greater Media Stations Will Be Silent Tuesday, Will YOU?

.. and, Jerry DelColliano makes a convincing case for all of radio to do it too. I wonder, however, if depriving the 1-2% of our total audience that ARB says listens to us from streaming audio service for a day will really prove anything to the people who are responsible for these fees.

Go silent, if you want, I'd say. But, whether you do it on not (and I would not), please, please, please REALLY ramp up the announcements on your stream about what will be lost of these ourageous fees are not reversed.

"We already pay and we'll provide this service as long as possible, but we can't do it if the costs are exorbitant," would be my message during every break on Tuesday, but also today, tomorrow and always.

We need to be lobbying hard in Washington, not depriving our audience of the service they value, in my opinion. That's punishing the listener, who won't understand why we're not there when they need us.

Hurry: A $59.95 HD Radio

Retail is $119.95, and they sold it two weeks ago for $99.95, but today they just added a rebate offer, lowering the price even more.

Now, "all" we need is some really buzz-building new formats which make the average person take notice. A&O has some ideas (we have already built today's hit country, Christian country, classic country, rockin' country (HD2) and traffic & weather together radio (HD3) for clients). But, even better, what are YOURS?