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Saturday, December 13, 2003
Listen up 
| | Subscribe to the weblog's RSS feed with an enclosure enabled RSS reader, and you get the material I used during my live broadcast last Sunday, November 30, 2003. It's a start in that direction. One thing missing is the scripting, much like an MP3 playlist (or SMIL) to then replay the RSS enclosures as a continuous stream...A SHOW! |
| | The use of enclosures makes it even nicer, it automatically downloads the MP3s. Something that doesn't happen with TestRadio. |
Digging
Radio 2.0
| | Doc uses his musings to exercise one of his recurring hobby horses, the idea that the net is Radio's natural habitat and that old school radio is a dinosaur. It's an intriguing thought, but I can think of at least one major problem with it, at least in the short- and medium-term. Net radio doesn't scale well. The sunk costs that you need to spend to get started may be low, but every single listener you get costs you money. Become successful with a mass audience and it may kill you, just as a web site can be killed by the costs involved in being Slashdotted (and I know about this one first hand). Traditional radio, on the other hand, costs a lot to get started in (land, transmitter, antenna towers, etc.), plus some ongoing costs like electricity for the transmitter, but once you're on the air, your costs are fixed. It doesn't matter whether you have one listener or one million. If you can manage to cover your fixed costs (something that most radio stations manage one way or another), you can grow as large as possible within your service area without incurring extra costs. That's something that's not possible for net radio, and may never be possible (unless bandwidth becomes too cheap to meter, which I don't think will ever happen; it's possible to disagree on this count, which is why I say this argument holds in the short- and medium-term rather than forever). Net radio is a neat idea, and I love the possibility of having a virtually unlimited number of stations, not to mention stations that target audiences solely by interest rather than by geography, but I don't see it taking over from traditional radio any time soon. The economics dictate otherwise. I think it's much more likely that the current situation will continue, where traditionally-delivered radio dominates mass audience programming, while net radio evolves to serve small niche audiences that don't cost too much to support. |
| | Well, if you read closely, you'll see that I'm not talking about the immediate execution of Radio As Usual. I am saying that in the long term Internet radio will be far more market-friendly, simply because many more people will find many more ways to get into the supply side of the the business. |
| | Amazing things happen when Demand gets the power to Supply. |
| | In the meantime, we need to think (here comes another hobby horse) in terms of AND logic here. Not OR. Conventional radio will persist for a long time. So will conventional TV, for that matter. |
| | But at some point a thousand niches become more interesting than a shrinking mass market. |
And what a lovely mess it is
| | As much as we criticize the Internet for things like spam and pop-up ads (use Mozilla...), the wonderful thing about this great network is how truly disorganized it really is. In spite of that, you can almost always get were you want to go and find something related to what you're looking for. Over the years, the unfortunate cliche information superhighway has become attached to the Internet. In reality, the Internet is really nothing like a "super" highway, and more like a collection of old two-lanes, Main Streets and back roads. "Super" implies that you fly past things...do you really do a lot of sightseeing while zipping along some Interstate? I can't think of a more boring ride than the run between Jacksonville and Pensacola along I-10. |
| | No, the Internet is more like a collection of small towns you pass through along the old A1A or Route 66. You can stop for coffee in the news village. Down the road a bit is the world's largest shopping center. Behind you is the city of porn (which you'll just have to visit without the wife, okay?). Later today, you'll stop for lunch in Blogville. There's a bank, the drug store, a few churches, and even lots of entertainment spots. How fast you get from place to place depends on what you're driving: a Yugo or Chevette (28.8 dial-up), the family minivan (56K dial-up), a Corvette or Porsche (DSL or T-1), and, for the industrial strength fortunates, a Hummer (OC-3). But, no matter how fast you drive, you all have the ability to go to the same places. Well, maybe not if you're in China. |
| | The anarchic nature of the Internet is what makes it so appealing. Consider the network's origins between the military and research universities. Then examine where it is today and how much the 'Net has become part of our lives, all the time growing with no plan, in disparate directions and with only the networking nuts and bolts as the true standard. The chaos is wonderful. |
| | What frightens me is losing this wonder of disorganization, and even scarier is the idea that so-called "experts" are gathering at the behest of the United Nations to help determine the future global use of the Internet. |
| | He goes on to make even more sense. |
Birth right
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