Terrestrial Radio Looks To Charge Subscription Fees, But Still Doesn't Compete With Satellite
from the blah-blah-blah dept
While terrestrial radio broadcasters keep insisting that satellite radio is no competition for them, their actions
continue to betray that fallacious argument. But in addition to
all the doublespeak, terrestrial broadcasters are also trying to figure out
how they can start charging for their content -- a move that would only underline the fact that they do indeed compete with satellite radio providers. iBiquity, the company that develops the HD Radio digital radio technology for terrestrial broadcasters, says it's chosen a provider of "conditional access" technology, which will give broadcasters the ability to charge subscription fees for their content, offer pay-per-listen events, or additional subscription-based services. The fact that terrestrial broadcasters want to start charging for content (apart from sounding like a really bad idea) would seem to further undermine the NAB's claim that they don't compete with XM and Sirius. Of course, perhaps you could argue that if terrestrial broadcasters tried to make people pay for the stuff they broadcast, it really wouldn't be much competition for the satellite companies, but somehow we don't think that's the point the NAB is trying to make.
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Terrestrial pay service already exists for FM
Terrestrial FM broadcasters have been doing just that for years: SCA (Subsidiary Communications Authorization) broadcasts of background music, data (stockquotes, sports scores, etc.), reading services for the visually impaired, and more. It takes special receivers to receive the subcarrier signals, and it's "illegal" to receive and enjoy the signals without paying/permission.
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Not for me
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Bad Idea
Next, I'll buy a parrot and teach it to talk and sing and I'll put a little handle on him so I can carry him around with me and listen to him at work and in the car.
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dumb
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Maybe...
If they offered alacarte programming where I could get just a few channels that I was interested in at a discounted price I would get it again.
As for terrestrial radio. There would have to be major changes before I considered paying for their content. For starters, kill the RIAA-selected playlists. They SUCK. Period. Also, NO to VERY FEW commercials. I would not pay extra to get radio with a million and one ads.
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Sirius + XM = CBS?
According to a report on investment research website Briefing.com, CBS could make a bid for XM "and/or" Sirius sometime in the near future...
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Well, that didn't last long. Now we're still paying more and more and more for Cable TV and at the same time we get to spend most of our time watching commercials.
Paying to be inundated with commercials! What a concept! Now we'll get to do it via radio.
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Public Airwaves?
Not that I really care that much. I listed to about 30 minutes of radio a day (in the morning as my alarm), and I could even do without that if they want to charge me for it.
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Big stations don't need this
To me the only real reason I had satellite radio was for spatial coverage and consistency of the shows over that coverage. Note I said had, there were to many little things that pissed me off, static from the little fm transmitter, losses of signal in the trees and there insistence on taking the good programing like the Oldies radio and putting $%#^ sports games on there with no warning!
Hey Sirius if I want to listen to ESPN I would change the channel!
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Re: Public Airwaves?
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HD Radio is a farce!
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