On Aug 20, 9:26*am, D Peter Maus wrote:
Are Radio CEOs 'In Denial'?

Analyst Jim Boyle:
What are radio leaders doing to change direction? Not much, it seems
to us.

Denial ain't just a river in EGYPT. Well, CL KING & ASSOCIATES
analyst JIM BOYLE didn't write that -- but he did say yesterday in
an update to clients that WALL STREET projections for a 4% decline
in JULY for radio would more likely be reported by the RAB to be a 6
or 7% percent revenue decline. It would be the 15th straight month
of down revenue for radio.

In JULY data BOYLE has seen, the average large market was down 7%,
mid-sized markets were off 5%, but small markets were up 2%.

"Radio has entered and seems stuck in a new, discouraging territory
with the combined challenges of a secular slide and cyclical
recessionary times," wrote BOYLE, continuing that the "gap has
remained very wide" between small and large market radio, with
smaller markets consistently outperforming their larger brethren.
"What are radio leaders doing to change direction? Not much, it
seems to us. The industry's larger groups do not appear ready to
institute revolutionary changes yet in sales, programming,
promotion, or station clusters. There is a notable sense of denial
of how harsh the prospects have been and continue to be for radio."

"The classic CEO reply is [that] radio is not bleeding as badly as
newspapers, continued BOYLE. "We concede there is too little radio
ad demand, but there is also too little rate card integrity and too
little investment in radio's product and people for the long term.
It very much looks to us as all rear-guard counterpunching

"RAIN: Consumers, Wall Street Not Buying HD"

"There is no apparent revenue model for HD Radio. So what's the play
here? There doesn’t seem to be one."

http://tinyurl.com/3cqnyq


"Independent Radio To Be Destroyed By Design"

"Instead of honest competition, they decided they would make the
government compel all broadcasters to convert to digital on the
existing AM and FM bands. To accomplish this, the NAB plans to double
the amount of space on the dial that a station uses, thus jamming the
signals of weaker stations next to them on the dial... Grassroots
defenders of independent radio have found proof that a new airwaves
regulatory plan will jam and eventually destroy the signals of small
community, religious, and college radio stations."

http://sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2002/03/783.shtml

"Community Radio’s Digital Dilemma"

"As deployment grows, not only may interference between stations
increase, but the negative impact will be borne largely by those
stations that operate with the least power. Given the nature of
broadcast RF interference, the negative effects induced by
interference from higher power radio stations are exponentially
greater than smaller-power stations... Regardless of a country’s
licensing regime with regard to access to the airwaves, the wholly
proprietary nature of iBiquity’s HD Radio system trumps public
authority... a conflict with iBiquity could mean the station’s
effective silencing. This is especially important for noncommercial
and community radio stations... The average estimated cost per station
for the hardware necessary to put an HD Radio signal on the air is
about $100,000. This does not include a one-time licensing fee to use
the HD Radio software, which ranges from $10,000 to $25,000 per
station, and only covers the basic use of the HD Radio mode"

http://diymedia.net/stuff/budapest0508.pdf

This is why the HD Radio Alliance owned stations want to destroy
community-based radio.