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How Podcasting and Satellite Changed Radio

Posted by Zonk on from the your-own-personal-stream dept.

prostoalex writes "Business Week magazine discusses how podcasting changes the radio industry: "Consider the basics: With no licenses, no frequencies, and no towers, ordinary people are busy creating audio programming for thousands of others. They're bypassing an entire industry." The article notes about some advertising deals that podcasters managed to procure, but it also notes that another industry, satellite radio, represented by Sirius and XM Satellite radio, is already changing the radio landscape."

5 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. All this hype about 'podcasting' by fwice · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There is all this hype about podcasting but nothing about shoutcasting or other forms of internet radio -- which have been aroudn longer and have more than quite a bit of a userbase...

  2. Podcasting? by NeuralAbyss · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ....am I the only one who's had absolutely no experience, nor been affected by either podcasting or satellite radio? I'm tempted to just write it off as a fad... who'd spend time downloading a multi-hour 'podcasting' program just to play later?

    I personally would much rather go for a personal selection of mp3s.

  3. Re:Satellite will kill off AM/FM by velo_mike · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Satellite's subscription model will make AM/FM's advertising system obsolete. The majority would rather pay for no/few commercials than music that's interupted after 5 songs or talk shows that need breaks every 10 minutes. Opie and Anthony on XM do a four hour show with almost no breaks, and it's taken off so well XM is using them to compete against $500 Stern.

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that the allure of Cable TV when it was introduced in the late 70's? I've never been much into TV, and didn't get cable til I hit my mid 30's, but I seem to remember that a lack of commercials was part of what you paid for.

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    At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
    Alan Greenspan

  4. The problem with that... by solios · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... is that these "specific formats" typically consist of a 200 song playlist. There were a hell of a lot more hit singles in the 80s- nevermind hit albums or hit artists.

    I listened to the local Clear Channel Alternapop Earcock a couple of days ago for the first time in months... in a thirty minute span, I didn't hear anything I haven't heard a few hundred times before, and years previously. Last I checked, Radiohead has written more songs than "Creep"- but you wouldn't know it to listen to these asshats.

    When I got to this town (Pittsburgh) in 1997, there was a Jazz station parked at 104.{5|7}. It was nice and I listened to it quite a bit... until one day it magically Changed Format to hiphop/r&b. Just like that. A few years later and that frequency is a black hole of Rod Stewart / Michael Bolton-esque soft rock. :-| And College Radio can't get the OMFG TECHNO OMFG GANSTA RAP OMFG HIPPY MUSIC out of their systems either.

    Radio's great when you're in the serviced demographic- if you're noti, it's a vast, staticy wasteland.

  5. Re:Satellite will kill off AM/FM by HFXPro · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It was... and now look at it today. Commercials all over the place and even a lot of dedicated commercial tv stations (Home Shopping Network or whatever its called). As much as I hate most radio, if people switch to Satellite I only see it becoming worse and satellite becoming just as bad.

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    Reserved Word.