New Technology for Your New Technology Benefits Radio

The good news for radio is that more people are listening to it than ever. The bad news is that advertisers are spending their smaller ad budgets in other places, meaning that revenue is declining while listenership is up. That has to feel unfair!

But there's some really interesting things on the horizon for terra radio that should help boost the bottom line nicely.

A major push is on to make FM signals available on cellphones, mp3 players and other portable technology, but this isn't your Father's FM. Listeners will be able to click on a song that they like and purchase and download it instantly. Can't do that on those old transistor radios, can you? That will be a fun feature that many people will play with once or twice and some people will use all of the time, and it'll be a small stream of cash for the station. Click-through revenue, anyone?

But even better where the bottom line is concerned is the new technology will be applied to advertisements, too, making a radio ad as interactive as an Internet banner ad. Listening to an ad for a new restaurant and want to see the menu? Click, and your cellphone will take you to their web page, where you might just get a 20% off coupon code, courtesy of the restaurant and the station, as a thank-you for clicking and an enticement for visiting.

Those guys at the ANA convention were understandably intrigued by that concept, which should roll out by fall of 2009.

Old-school information and entertainment like newspapers and radio have been in danger of being pushed aside as irrelevant in the mp3/Blackberry/iPhone age. Don't count out radio yet, though...there's some good strategizing going on, and while I know that culture eats strategy for lunch, this strategy sounds like it could be just what culture is asking for.

Finally, technology that makes radio more relevant, not less. Crossing fingers...sounds promising!