Here's a nice overview of the (finally) approved Sirius/XM merger from the Wall Street Journal:

What I find most interesting about this is the palpable sense of frustration and disgust you can read in the tone of both these anchors, who are indifferent to the outcome of the approval decision itself. There's something wrong with this kind of process, they say.

I think this is the taste left in the mouths of many observers and it speaks well neither for the NAB nor the FCC.

I also like the comment that radio's response should be to "get better programming." Okay, we'll get right on that. Thanks for thinking that one through.

CBS Radio's announcement that it will launch a video platform is more proof of what I have been arguing for a while now:

Extending your brand to digital media allows radio stations to become local media companies, not simply radio stations with websites.

The implications for that thinking are, of course, vast.

And those implications suggest, at the very least, that too many radio stations are wasting their digital media efforts because their vision is entirely too narrow.

You're not a radio station with a website, folks. You're a digital media company with a loudspeaker.

Then what happens?

An appeal by the NAB to the D.C. Court of Appeals is probable, intended to slow down the crossed t's and dotted i's.

At this point, it appears that the strategy of the NAB is to force XM/Sirius into a holding pattern so that all their energies are tied up in waiting and none of those energies are directed towards adapting to a fast-changing technological environment. In other words, the uncertainty of their future has halted XM/Sirius from surfing the waves of the trends they will need to master to stay relevant for that future.

This is a big deal.

After all, there was no iPhone when this merger was announced. Now there's an iPhone that can serve as a radio every bit as good as XM or Sirius in many respects. And so much more, too.

Name - if you can - any single big headline by either XM or Sirius during the past two years which is about benefits to the consumer specifically? What are the consequential new content announcements? The new technology announcements? Now compare those headlines (if you found any) with the number of merger headlines, which have no bearing on stuff listeners care about at all.

That's the story of an industry halted.

NAB knows that if XM and Sirius can't move ahead until this merger obstacle is first removed, then delaying the removal of this obstacle is job #1. You can certainly kill a company's future by slowing down it's race to that future.

At the same time, of course, XM/Sirius is a willing accomplice. Everything is on hold because they place it on hold, fearing that dramatic but necessary moves will "shock" the system and push an FCC commissioner off the fence in the wrong direction.

The light now appears at the end of the tunnel, but I suspect the NAB will work to lengthen that tunnel.

Meanwhile, the arguments of XM/Sirius to support their merger have, if anything, resonated even more strongly in recent months, as anyone who has tuned in AOL Radio or Pandora on their iPhone knows well.

Later this week I'll post what I think the next moves of a merged XM/Sirius will be.

From Seth Godin:

[The Net] is the first mass marketing medium ever that isn't supported by ads.

If a newspaper, a radio station or a TV station doesn't please advertisers, it disappears. It exists to make you (the marketer) happy.

That's the reason the medium (and its rules) exist. To please the advertisers.

But the Net is different.

It wasn't invented by business people, and it doesn't exist to help your company make money.

It's entirely possible it could be used that way, but it doesn't owe you anything. The question to ask isn't, "but how does this help me?" as if you have some sort of say in the matter. You don't get a vote on whether Google succeeds or whether your customers erect spam filters.

The question to ask is, "how are people (the people I need to reach, interact with and tell stories to) going to use this new power and how can I help them achieve their goals?"

Seth is echoing something I've tried to communicate to broadcasters many times.

As we puzzle over how to extend our brands to digital media, we should ask a different question altogether. Namely: What problems can I, my brands, my relationships, and my content solve - and solve uniquely or better than anybody else - in a digital environment?

When you ask the question that way, you no longer ask "what should be on my website?" Instead, you begin to consider "what do or can I do OFF the air that consumers will give a damn about online? And what competitive advantage do I have in doing it?"

But if you could get him to do your daily weather forecast, would you say no?

I'm told this runs daily on Indie 103.1 in LA.

From AdWeek:

Internet radio upstart Pandora has streamed 3.3 million songs to iPhone users since the launch of its new mobile application, making it the third most popular such app for the red-hot device -- the newest version of which Apple released on July 11.

Pandora's success on the iPhone, which sold a stunning 1 million units last weekend, could elevate Internet radio to new heights, as the still-under-the-radar medium appears ideally suited for mobile usage.

As of July 14, the company had registered 180,000 new users, and more than 200,000 new stations had been created on the iPhone. Pandora executives claim that the company has attracted a new iPhone listener every two seconds since the launch, with most users listening for close to an hour per day.

This level of intense engagement is likely to excite the ad community, which has been waiting for more mass buying options in mobile media. Pandora, which has been restrained in its approach to advertising to date, is promising to roll out a new mobile marketing platform later this year.

While this is unquestionably impressive and signals more such behavioral changes to come, I have to wonder...if 180,000 new users listening an hour a day represents "intense engagement," then what does your radio station's audience and their listening represent?

So what are you doing to "excite the ad community"?

Next week Ad Age will run a piece about the likely "disruptive" effect of connected high-speed mobile devices like the iPhone on radio.

This comes in the wake of a spate of such pieces, all of which illustrate what I and others have long predicted would occur.

Says Steve Rubel:

The iPhone 3G and other smartphones like it will change how people access interact with audio. Already, the Pandora music discovery service is the fourth most popular application in the iTunes store. And bloggers like Jeff Jarvis believe that it will disrupt radio. I tend to agree.

The cellphone will change the radio landscape by not only establishing a two-way modality but by ushering in new models for advertising that are mapped to people's musical tastes and perhaps locally relevant as well thanks to GPS. This maybe one of the most promising mobile ad formats and is a space to watch.

Says Buzzmachine's Jeff Jarvis:

My most striking realization since getting my iPhone (love it, thanks for asking) is that radio is doomed. Pandora is a wonder, creating my own radio station, live and on the fly without need for a broadcast tower. CBS is streaming all its stations over the cell network but when I told my wife this she kept asking, “Why would I want to listen to a CBS station?” That’s not the point, I huffed; we don’t need broadcast towers. OK, she said, but I still don’t want to listen to CBS stations. So count that as two strikes against radio. Digital radio? Heh. Satellite radio? I’m paying for it and I want Howard on my iPhone.

Technically, Jeff's story would be stronger if he didn't piss on the CBS streaming effort, since nobody in their right mind listens to a "CBS station," but plenty of Angelenos will be interested in listening to CBS-owned KROQ (although why they want to do that when they can tune it in the old-fashioned way is a topic of a previous post, where I basically make the point that being available via the iPhone may be only half the battle, but it's an important half).

Radio is not doomed, of course, but it is certainly challenged. And I don't know about you, but I prefer to rise to that challenge.

About two years ago now I gave a presentation to the National Association of Broadcasters where I noted radio's inherent competitive advantages relative to alternatives in the years to come.

Music discovery was one of these advantages - and one that technology has threatened. But what Pandora fiends generally don't understand is that the appetite most music listeners have for new music is not boundless. If it's a steady diet of discovery you want, then Pandora is your Garden of Eden. But if it's a taste of the new mixed with the familiar, hello radio.

The "stuff between the songs" was another of these advantages. I emphasized the importance of investing in talent, a call that has generally been ignored. Name the biggest star in radio under the age of 40 - besides Ryan Seacrest? You shall reap what you sow.

Local information and connection is a third advantage. While there is plenty of potential for geo-targeted advertising, that's different from the stuff that binds people to their neighbors but is not advertising. This is not "crisis" stuff I'm talking about - it's every day connection. Radio forgets this at our peril.

The exclusive content on radio is a critical fourth advantage. And by that I primarily mean NON-MUSIC content (note that I didn't narrowly say "Talk," so use your imagination). You can tune in Alternative music on Pandora, but you cannot find Rush Limbaugh - or Howard Stern (hello, Sirius, please WAKE UP). It would be smart for radio to use its presently deep pockets to establish talents worth seeking out, regardless of what else is on, don't you think?

Obviously radio has to establish some beachfront property in new media and we have to do it in a form that emphasizes our content rather than our over-the-air brands. Then we have to enlist every state-of-the-advertising-art tool available to monetize that content.

I'll say this again until someone hears me: You need to get out of the call letter-only business. Say goodbye to the "shut up and play the songs" business.

My imagination exercise a couple years ago began this way: Pretend you don't have a broadcast tower -what would you do?

I suggest you engage in that exercise before it becomes a reality.

Part of my role is to help broadcasters and others do just that. Now is your time to act.

Okay, so between half a million and one million shiny new iPhones were sold last weekend, and already ten million apps have been downloaded from the new iPhone app store.

On one hand it's terribly unfair to compare iPhone buzz with the buzz the radio industry aspires to. On the other hand, however, if you want the buzz you need to know what it takes to generate it.

Radio is big and ubiquitous and influential, to be sure. So why aren't we getting the attention we're due?

What constitutes news and what generates excitement?

And not just any new ideas, but those which solve consumer problems and create new consumer empowerment.

Read those last two sentences again.

And then ask yourself what new ideas, what new products, what new services are part of your brand equation, and how those new elements solve consumer problems.

This can be technology - or it can be content.

If you want consumers - listeners - to talk about you they need something worth discussing.

I've been thinking lately about radio's future online.

It's easy to say "we need to be online." It's easy to say we need to be streaming. It's easy to say wherever there's a channel of distribution for our content we should be part of it.

This may be necessary, but is it sufficient?

I don't think so.

I heard a story recently about someone on the left coast cruising down the highway with his new 3G iPhone listening to WBCN in Boston from two-thousand miles away via CBS's slick new interface on AOL Radio for iPhone.

Very cool, I thought, but why was this person doing this?

Because he used to live in Boston. It was a listening occasion fueled by nostalgia, not preference or necessity.

In other words, it's hardly something he's likely to do often. In fact, he may never do it again. As a broadcaster, what does this matter to you?

I know streams, like their over-the-air counterparts, are primarily aimed at local listeners, but check your traffic. Does half of it come from outside your metro area, because it certainly could and it certainly might? What value to you is provided by these curiosity-seekers who will rarely if ever return to your brand? You wouldn't block them out, obviously. But what do they matter, really?

And even the local listeners, with a world of listening options to compare your station to - any one of them more this or that than what you're providing - why should they go online to listen to you when their trusty radios do a better, more reliable job of "streaming" the very same content (assuming your signal penetrates their location)?

I think we as an industry are missing the point of our online opportunities altogether.

If we're going to be presenting content online, we need to present that which listeners can't get elsewhere, including our own air. Just re-running the terrestrial station may be necessary but it is not sufficient.

We need to present content that listeners will seek out not because of signal trouble or because of curiosity and nostalgia half a world away. We need to present content that is unique and magnetic and destination-worthy in a crowded universe of choices.

We need to present content that is original to the web, not simply a repurpose of our terrestrial stations.

And that original web content should leverage all of radio's inherent advantages over its competitors: The talent, the engineers, the producers, the music industry relationships. Everything.

This kind of content, promoted by the power of our stations, could become online destinations rather than new channels for the same old programming. Let me ask you, how many "Stars" and "Kisses" does the online audience need?

Yes, this new content would have to be monetized without Arbitron's help and in addition to the station's core brand.

But who in the world is better equipped to create new online audio-based brands than the experts in radio?

Think about that as you flip through your new iPhone to stream a station from some other place "just because you can," not because you want to. Not because you ever will again.

There's a difference between a novelty and the grassroots stage of radio's next evolution.

Nobody at Sirius has ever asked her opinions about the service or what she listens to and why.

She has purchased multiple subscriptions, but with each purchase nobody at Sirius has ever asked the reason (wouldn't it be easy to ask why every sub buys a new subscription?).

Among other things, She'd usually catch the Deepak Chopra show on Saturdays.

Evidently, Chopra has been in "Best Of" repeats for the past two months or so.

She wrote customer service, asking when he was returning from vacation.

They told her they didn't know, but that she should email Chopra's show directly.

But there is no direct email or phone number to Chopra's show on the Sirius website. Just the phone number to call when you want to chat with Chopra on-air.

She wrote back to customer service explaining this, which they should have known already. They replied that they didn't know "when or if" Chopra was returning, even though who will possibly know if "customer service" doesn't? And wouldn't it be terribly easy for them to find out?

After a week of emails, she still doesn't know about the fate of one of her favorite shows.

And Sirius doesn't know what she listens to or why she listens and keeps buying new subs.

Is this "customer service"?