The End of Radio

I promised a piece on how perceptions of things differ by season of life, but I just came across an item that is so momentous in import that it wouldn’t let me wait another day to share it with you. I’ll do the promised piece next – Really!

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“It’s great to be alive when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.” Those challenging words from Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia sum up where we are today in the course of human history: at a moment in time when little in tradition serves any longer as a dependable, ever-fixed guide to what is true, what is right, what will work and what will not work.

Fundamentalists – political or religious – cling to tradition as an immutable source of guidance without realizing that even many of their positions would be too radical for fundamentalists of earlier eras. I am amused, for example, by conservative politicians today who wax poetic about the greatness of Martin Luther King, Jr. when conservatives of his day thought he was doing the devil's work. Essentially, little in the course of human affairs is beyond change. An honest reading of history bears that out.

So – simply put, we live in an era of paradox in which little is inherently believable and little is inherently beyond belief. Ponder that zen thought!

Let’s look at something as prosaic as radio.

Can you imagine civilized living without someone sending news, music and talk across the airwaves to your radio? Well start doing so because believe it or not radio has suddenly become a technological dinosaur – at least in any form looking like radio today.

No, I’m not talking about satellite radio, which in itself is revolutionary. I’m talking about podcasting – a whole new broadcast technology that makes it possible for you to have your own, one of a kind, personal radio station. In other words, what you will hear through this medium is not broadcast news, music and talk, but narrowcast news, music and radio – all coalesced in a blend designed by you , not by a remote producer you’ve never met or talked with.

To learn more about this phenomenon, which has emerged almost literally overnight, visit Rain: Radio and Internet Newsletter and read the several articles about podcasting that are featured. You’ll never think about radio the same anymore. Can any marketer who depends on radio imagine the changes that podcasting will bring to advertising? And can television be far beyond? Can you imagine having your own copy-of-one television station?

Thanks to Mark Ramsey whose Radio Nexus blog brought this topic to my attention.

Comments

[Christian Cantrell]

David, in last months Wired, there's an article about BitTorrent, an application that is changing television and other forms of media. It's interesting to see traditional media companies struggle to hold on to old models that consumers are determined to revolutionize rather than adapting and giving consumers what they actual want. Someday very soon, someone will introduce the iTunes Music Store for video (maybe Apple), and they will make a tremendous amount of money. I just wish the world wasn't so resistant to change.

[David Wolfe]

Christian,

Einstein famously said, "A problem cannot be solved in the same conssciousness that created it." The Luddites you're talking about will remain Luddites so long as they continue operating in their traditional consciousness. They literally cannot see the problems posed by new technologies because they are operating in a consciousness that hides the challenges that portend the end of their operations in a dense fog.

See yesterday's Marketplace column by Sharon Begley in the Wall Street Journal. It offers keen insights into why in the face of objective facts, people continue believing what those facts deny. If you can't get a copy of the article, email me and I'll send you a copy (and anyone else reading this, for that matter.)