HD radio made its way into the Salt Lake market in May 2005. KSL was the first here to broadcast commercially using the technology. But no one had an HD radio to pick up the signal, so the majority of listeners continued to receive the same old signal they'd always listened to. The only difference most of us heard were the promos touting the new technology. I was excited about it, and the engineers were excited about it. KSL had an HD unit in the second floor conference room and we ate pizza and cake. The radio sounded great-especially comparing it to the signal that had been in use on the AM dial since 1922. We thought it was incredible, but it was our HD radio and one of the few in the state. In short, nobody else seemed to care much, and soon the novelty died off. In fact, in a survey conducted by the author, over 85% of respondents had never even heard of high definition radio. It became clear that HD is not "the new radio."

In September of 2005, the company added a simulcast FM signal just days before 97.5 FM went on air-to become the first commercial FM talker in the state. When it comes to tech trends, KSL remains the most forward-thinking of the bunch in the Salt Lake City metro-possibly even the nation. With their RSS feeds, blog, podcasts, and their general push to be the first to adopt every innovation in radio, they at least have the desire to stay on top of the radio heap.

In January 2006, KSL Newsradio and their parent company Bonneville International Corporation announced the "Bonneville FM News Initiative." They described it as "a major initiative aimed at developing the next generation of radio news content and style."[1] Basically, the initiative is a move to attract a wider and younger audience. While KSL is Bonneville's flagship radio station, and the highest rated station in the Salt Lake MSA, KSL's current demographic is weighted heavily toward the older end of their primary M25-54 target.

As the radio industry progresses, it will be important for stations to widen-even to reshape their view of how they'll survive in the long term. Being the first to adopt the emerging radio technology may not do the trick. More importantly, they'll have to adopt, adapt, and find their place next to-or along with new non-radio technology and the culture these technologies are creating.

The introduction of iPods and similar innovations could actually be favorable for KSL as well as a wide gamut of radio stations that don't follow the talk format. In fact, adaptation and convergence could push them further ahead in cume and TSL. But if this integration is not done right, the impending leap forward in radio won't happen.

First, as the younger crowd flips off the radio and powers up the iPod, they're becoming harder to reach. When it comes to music, the younger end of the prime M18-34 target demographic is crossfading from radio to newer, more portable technologies. In a survey conducted primarily of college-age students, 69% owned an iPod or other MP3 player. Forty-seven percent of those surveyed noted that their use of radio had declined as a result of the use of an MP3 player. It is clear that there is a change in where people are getting their media fix. The digitization of music, movies and other media was a start, and portability, personalization and easy transfer of these digital files is becoming the final straw pushing the new media revolution.

Second, the other end of the demographic is going to die. Literally. As the current audience age moves in tandem with actual time, the audience will grow old and, barring a medical miracle, will eventually die leaving a generation of iPod users who are particularly averse to the current dictatorial relationship between a radio station and its prospective audience.

Social bookmarking and peer reviews - The new decision making process.

In the future-and even now, the Amazon model in which consumers recommend (or disparage) products and experiences will become the new process of deciding what a person will use or purchase. Instead of a consumer ingesting the formula provided by the record label, corporation, or marketing expert, today's consumers are turning to each other in an effort to refine and personalize their decision-making process. Websites such as Digg, Del.icio.us, Newsvine, Slashdot, and even the simple blog have begun to change the way we gather information and the value we place on that information.

The shift presents itself in the way we decide what information is relevant and valuable. Since the inception of mass media, networks such as ABC, CBS and NBC have been the authority on news and world events. Those networks were the gatekeepers to our media consumption and effectively, through advertising, also our product consumption. The average consumer was spoon-fed the information the networks deemed "newsworthy." Recently, however, the term "newsworthy" has begun to depend more on our own tastes and interests. The social bookmarking and review sites have given the user the ability to determine newsworthiness on their own and with the help of other like-minded individuals. Our choices are becoming ever more dependant upon the respect or confidence we place in those we trust, and less dependant on the authority or influence generated by the mass media.

One website that has effectively incorporated this democratic model can be found at Pandora.com. Stemming from the Music Genome Project,[2] Pandora lets users pick a song or music group they like, and it finds and plays music similar in beat, tone and makeup to those groups or songs the user expresses interest in. This online "station" can be shared with friends opening up a whole new world of music to the consumer who would otherwise have been confined to the mundane rotation the program director at a particular station deemed "popular."

The Shrinking Audience.

Why would an audience continue listening to radio if all the music they want to hear can be instantly and portably accessed online or on an iPod-not to mention with better audio quality and user control?

Why would listeners continue to tolerate the constant interruption of their programming by the advertising segments commercial radio forces on its listeners?

How can a radio signal (whether AM, FM, satellite, or even high definition) match the quality and convenience of a portable music player, media phone, or notebook computer?

The answer to all the questions above: they won't. The digital age has brought with it an expectation of freedom, options, and personalization in media. The current audience will, as mentioned above, continue to shrink and die off. But does radio have to radio die with it?

Radio will live on, but in order to do so it must adapt to the new culture created by changing technology-for if radio insists on remaining just the jukebox it has been for the past ninety years, it will go the way of the film strip. Through ingenuity and forward thinking, radio is poised to shed its cocoon and could become a much greater influence than it has been in recent years. Radio still has unlimited potential as a useful and reinvigorated medium for discovery when combined with the technology that is beginning to make media consumption a much more personal experience than it has been in the past.

The Shrunken Audience

The shrunken audience that results from new outlets for programming becomes an integral part of the success of the new radio. Gradually, advertisers have been moving away from the mass media. The internet, for example, has made it possible to accurately track ad impressions, target specific groups-even to geo-target[3] consumers. This effectively moves a chunk of advertising away from mass marketing and toward niche marketing, where specific prospects are targeted through a refined marketing plan. This method is comparable to killing a deer with a rifle rather than a shotgun. You use a lot fewer bullets and you're usually more accurate and deadly. So even though the new radio audience is smaller, the situation enables marketers to refine their campaigns to target specific groups with even greater effectiveness.

In online advertising, you'll find that advertisements on specific sites with a narrow audience will often cost more than an advertisement on a website with much higher site traffic and a more general scope.

For example, the open banner rate on USAToday.com is $25 while the open banner rate on HollywoodReporter.com (a specialized website with many fewer visitors than USAToday) is $45.00.[4]

An advertiser on HollywoodReporter.com is shooting at a target with specific interests and habits-making it a valuable tool for advertising products that meet the needs of that specific market. While an advertiser on USAToday.com has a larger audience, there is no telling how many wasted impressions the advertiser is buying to advertise to people who would have no interest in the message or product being thrown in front of them.

In a similar fashion, radio stations will have to segment and differentiate themselves by more than just age and sex, as they often do today. The smaller radio audiences will be able to maintain their revenues by offering a very specific target to advertisers.

Blogs have received an impressive amount of attention in recent months, partly because of their popularity and place in pop culture- but also as a result of the influence they're having on media consumption. Estimates on the number of blogs range from 10 million to 60 million worldwide. [5] While a majority of these are probably personal blogs, many are used by companies and organizations seeking a stronger connection to their customers.[6] Since a blog, in its simplest terms is just a website, the technology has been around since the dawn of the internet. But the ease of use and possibility for the average person to create their own blog without web programming skills has created a voice for millions of people. Blogs have also created a simple connection between a company and its customers, and offered a way for users to give feedback, suggestions, and to comment on the issues.

KSL Newsradio was one of the first radio stations in the country to integrate a blog into their website. In addition, KSL was on top of the XML/RSS wave that brought added speed and convenience to news delivery. But the station didn't stop there; they were also leaders in using podcasts. They now give listeners more options for listening as well as a look behind the scenes of the programs KSL produces. The company won and Edward R. Murrow award for the innovation of their website. KSL Newsradio is no longer just news radio, it has become a comprehensive source for local and national news-and the way in which that content is consumed is at the behest of the consumer.

Blogs, podcasts, media phones-each of these technologies has the potential of pushing radio out of its spot as a primary source of news. Blogs deliver news from a more user-friendly and less corporate point of view, easily tailored to the average consumer and without the oversight of a large and often politically motivated corporation, and podcasts enable the user to select what they'll listen to as well as when and where they'll listen to it.

Despite the myriad of emerging media delivery techniques, radio, a technology nearly 100 years old, has a fighting chance to remain a valuable means of transmission. In his article entitled "Principles of Mediamorphosis," Roger Fidler noted:

"The emergence of new media rarely precipitates the death of old media; instead, existing media forms evolve and adapt to the changing communication environment, in a gradual process comparable in some ways to the evolution of species."[7]

This is exactly what is meant by the term "mediamorphosis." In nearly all cases, new media do not suddenly appear, nor do they suddenly disappear (film strips excepted). Instead, they emerge from older media. When this newer form gains popularity and usefulness, the old media adapt and evolve, usually finding a new place in the media mix rather than becoming extinct.

KSL is a classic example of how radio can use these new forms of media delivery to its advantage, however, their actions must be seen as a beginning rather than the final solution to a problem that might otherwise precipitate radio from legitimacy.

In discussing blogs and podcasts and their potential effect on radio, it is important to mention a term coined by Paul Saffo, a new media forecaster and director at the Institute for the Future. He argues that there is a "strange phenomenon" called "technomyopia" that causes us to overestimate the impact of certain new technologies. Then when the technology falls short of our inflated expectations, we underestimate the impact it will have in the long term.[8]

Technomyopia, at least in part, has taken place with blogs and podcasting. The doomsayers predicted the iPod would virtually wipe out radio. As we asked before, why would listeners continue to tolerate the constant interruption of their programming by the advertising segments commercial radio forces on its listeners? The answer is that when you combine the strengths of radio with the strengths of the iPod, you have a powerful tool for gathering and consuming media-and you give control back to the consumer. Despite this potential, in keeping with the technomyopia formula, others have downplayed the usefulness of blogs and podcasts. They've ventured that the new media will soon lose their appeal and legitimacy as people realize the opinions on blogs and contained in podcasts are mere opinion as opposed to news, and that many are simply false. Instead of taking either viewpoint to the extreme, we're best served by applying the theory of mediamorphosis.

A lot of lip service has been given to media convergence, but this is where the rubber meets the road. Integrated newsrooms (television and radio news combined) have actually shown little advantage over the traditional separation of the two, but convergence when it comes to the combining of all available tools of broadcast presents a unique opportunity to dismantle the one-sided dictatorial formula mass media has been offering to consumers.

The advance of technology and the user's demand for personal control over it is creating a democracy of information where each person can contribute-if not by physically writing news as they see it, by validating the content they feel is pertinent to their interests. The community is replacing the corporation, and with the new entity they form will come a new purpose and a new attitude.

The New Purpose

Radio has strengths that no other medium has. Nothing else has the ability to be so "live" and on the spot. The dissemination of information (music, news, etc.) is instant, and without noticeable delay. It allows instant user interaction via telephone, and provides a forum for the opinions of the consumer using the actual human voice that communicates much more than the type on a screen can convey. Combining these strengths with those of emerging technologies will take radio to new heights.

Currently, the majority of the country's radio stations are owned by corporate conglomerates. Programming in these instances is often guided by a central headquarters for each company located outside the MSA a radio station serves. Voice tracks are fed to the station to simulate live programming, and most consumers are none the wiser about where their music is actually coming from, but they are beginning to catch on. The new purpose of radio will be to serve the specific MSA a station is in-it will not be able to survive as a pipe for the corporation where all programming is thrown down the chute for mass consumption without regard for local taste and culture.

In the study conducted by the author, 48% of respondents said that despite their heavy use of the iPod, they would continue listening to the radio in the future the same amount as they do now. In addition, nearly half of those surveyed said the future of radio looks "bright."

What about the future of radio could be bright? For one, radio still has a large influence-it is not dead, and many don't see it as dying. But if stations don't integrate technologies at least as fast as consumers are adopting them, the stations run the risk of becoming nothing more than archaic clearinghouses for advertisements in the eyes of their listeners.

The future of radio lies in the connections it makes with the public. Podcasts and blogs have shown the importance of interaction, transparency, and independence. While stations can still be owned by larger corporations, they must localize their programming and provide the connection that consumers desire. Blogs and podcasting are ways of fulfilling this new purpose-but even the programming will be required to return to its roots.

Radio stations will become a search engine for new music, local events, and information. Consumers will tune in for the experience of discovering more about the opportunities around them. They'll discover their favorite band is actually a local band. They will discover that they can call in and address concerns to their local politicians. They'll discover the events going on in their city or state this weekend are more exciting than watching a beach party hundreds of miles away on MTV. Then, they'll log on to the station's website to follow up on the coverage of those events, or to respond to the politician that made his views known over the airwaves. They'll visit the website to download the podcast of the interview with the local musicians that played in the city park on Saturday, and from there the station will become a friend of the community that shares information instead of dictating the corporate decision of what should be considered the day's "news," or the "top-40."

In its place alongside television, the internet, the iPod, and other upcoming technologies, radio will emerge as a thriving source for the discovery of news, music, and events-and will be powered by its strong connection to the user. As with all media who wish to survive, radio will become a participatory experience where the listener becomes more than just a listener. The listener becomes a a contributor, and ultimately a marketer of the new radio.