Technology: Broadcasting - Going Mobile

Over recent years, we've seen a great deal of change in the way we receive our media content, primarily thanks to the internet, and more recently, our handheld mobile devices, such as the iPhone and BlackBerry.

The first to feel the winds of change was clearly print media such as newspapers, followed closely by the music industry with shifts from physical delivery systems such as the CD to "digital downloads" via the illegal types of Napster, Kazaa, and their legal brethren, iTunes. Walkmen laid way for the Discman, which has now become little more than a paperweight with the advent of the MP3 player, such as Apple's iPod devices, first introduced in fall 2001.

Years later, traditional television and radio broadcasting has had to address the way their viewers and listeners alike want to take in their content. Netflix has had a big hand in the way that viewers watch their content - in my own home, I can watch nearly any movie or TV show from my game console, any one of our many computers, or via our mobile phones. Most cable or satellite providers also make On Demand content available to their subscribers; they also make DVRs with large capacity storage for their subscribers to record any program they want, to watch at a later time. Long gone are the days where you had to hunt for a blank tape to record a specific show.

Smartphone penetration is significant and increasing. Pandora and other pureplay streaming listening is increasing. Still, the impact has been generally minimal on FM and AM radio. But make no mistake, habits are changing. The seeds of this are happening today with streaming audio, and radio can’t afford to ignore what is happening in that space. Its future depends on it.

For radio, we are seeing this accumulation of changing behavior occur before our eyes. From fewer commercials to the ability to share our listening experiences with friends to On Demand access via podcasts to pausing and skipping songs, there is a gap in functionality that will increasingly lead to a streaming tipping point.

When consumers start to say that radio annoys them because it can’t do this or it doesn’t have that, then you will start to see consumer adoption change. Many forward thinking broadcasters are already making the changes necessary to move with the times. Streaming audio has long been available via station websites, and many broadcasters are also offering their fare via applications for smartphones. One of the best parts of that is that you can now access stations from across the country that you couldn't before. It IS a small world, after all.