Tag Archives: Radio

GM secretly gathered data on radio listening habits

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Every minute for three months, GM secretly gathered data on 90,000 drivers’ radio-listening habits and locations. (BoingBoing)

On September 12th, GM’s director of global digital transformation Saejin Park gave a presentation to the Association of National Advertisers in which he described how the company had secretly gathered data on the radio-listening habits of 90,000 GM owners in LA and Chicago for three months in 2017, tracking what stations they listened to and for how long, and where they were at the time; this data was covertly exfiltrated from the cars by means of their built-in wifi.

The company says it never sold this data, but the presentation to the advertising execs was clearly designed to elicit bids for it. Toyota has promised not to gather and sell telematics data, but GM seems poised to create a market in data gathered by your car, which can listen to you, follow you, take pictures of you and your surroundings, and even gather data on which passengers are in the car at different times by tracking Bluetooth beacons from mobile devices.

GM looked at station selection, volume and ZIP codes of vehicle owners. No radio in The Truck. Too noisy to listen if there were.

Yellow Pages

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A friend of mine — a local small businessman — called me yesterday saying he was “taking a poll.”

FRIEND: When was the last time you looked up a phone number in the Yellow Pages?
ME: Uh, at least ten years ago. Everybody uses Google, don’t they? Why are you asking?
FRIEND: I got a call from a sales rep for the Yellow Pages asking me to renew my ad. I told him I didn’t advertise in the Yellow Pages. I was wrong. I’ve been paying a thousand bucks a year for the last ten years. When I asked my wife she said, “We’d always had an ad so…”

A few years ago I was in the front yard when a guy pulled up and tossed a plastic bag on my lawn. It contained copy of the Yellow Pages. I picked it up and took it over to the guy saying I didn’t want it and always just throw them in the trash.

“Yeah, that’s what everybody tells me but I get paid to toss ’em. I can’t take it back so just pitch it,” he explained. I’d love to know how many people with ads in the YP are like my friend.

During my radio days (1970’s) I noticed one of our advertisers had been running the same ad for over a year. I started nagging our sales rep to go see the client and get some fresh copy. We’d produce a new spot, no charge.

“I think we just just let well enough alone. He’d tell us if he wanted to change copy,” whined the sales rep.

I kept after him and one day he stormed into my office. “I hope you’re happy! He cancelled his advertising!” And stormed out. I called the client to ask why.

“We had no idea we were still running that spot — and paying for it. My bookkeeper just wrote the check every month. It slipped through the cracks.”

I’ll bet the Yellow Pages folks have reams of data “proving” who uses the book and how often.

Radio 2018

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Best job (most fun) I ever had was working at my hometown radio station. I think half of the dozen years I worked there were on the morning shift. But it’s been years since I listened to “terrestrial” radio and wondered what it’s like in 2018. So I asked my friend John Marsh if I could sit in a corner of the KWOS studio and watch him (and Dick Aldrich) do the Morning NewsWatch. Very different from 1973. Tightly formatted. All digital and computer controlled.

Bob Priddy doesn’t do “fake news”

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I had the privilege of working with Bob Priddy for 29 years. Last Saturday he was inducted in the the Missouri Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame (along with two others). You can listen to his full remarks here. The clip below runs 2 minutes. Bob Priddy remarks at MBA Hall of Fame Induction (PDF)

iHeartMedia files for bankruptcy

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iHeartMedia, the country’s largest radio broadcaster with around 850 stations and a leading outdoor advertising company, is filing for bankruptcy after spending years trying to manage its $20 billion in outstanding indebtedness. (NPR)

During the 80’s I had a front-row seat as Clear Channel Communications (the name before the cutesy “iHeartMedia”) gobbled up radio stations and gutted them of everything that made them local. Most of the bad guys got rich and got out long ago but I have no illusions about “hometown radio” returning.

Realistic-sounding speech

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Just over a year ago Google presented WaveNet, a new deep neural network for generating raw audio waveforms that is capable of producing better and more realistic-sounding speech than existing techniques. It’s gotten a LOT better and is now capable of producing natural sounding human voices.

Google is using it for Google Assistant but hard for an old radio guy like me not to imagine this tech replacing radio announcers (are there still radio announcers?)

Radio stations no longer required to have local studios

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Was fortunate to work in radio before “consolidation.” Even small towns might have two or three radio stations, each with different owners and management. After the rules changed, it soon became common for one company to own/operate ALL radio stations and automation (some software on a computer back in the 80s) made it possible to get rid of lots of on-air staff. But to call yourself a “Hooterville radio station,” you had to have a studio in Hooterville. No longer, it seems.

“Stations will still be required to keep a toll-free or local number staffed during normal business hours.”

Where a town once had a radio station with a tower and a transmitter and some DJs and maybe a news guy or two… now has an answering service.

“Because of the rule change, Newsmax Media CEO Christopher Ruddy predicted that “local news production could be moved to places such as New York and Washington as the big networks buy up local stations.”

Truth be told, that’s been happening for a long time. Some of that blood is on my hands but it’s an old story and too long to share. Let’s just say we stretched the definition of “local” to the breaking point. Glad I didn’t miss local radio when it was still local.

Before magnetic recording tape

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I’m not sure I’ve shared this photo of my old man. I’m blessed with a lot of great pics. It’s clear from this one how much he enjoys what he’s doing. Note the disc on the turntable in the foreground: just one track cut into the center of the disc. Probably a commercial. You can see more of these to the right of the control board. This is before magnetic tape and they “cut” these discs in the adjacent studio. If you fucked up while cutting, you put a piece of cellophane tape over that track and cut another one. I can’t even imagine trying find and cue these while doing a live shift. But the alternative was reading everything live. That would get old fast, for the announcer and the listener. Must have been an exciting time.

“Texas Ed” Pinner (WSLM)

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I have a lot of photos of radio folk but this might be my favorite. “Texas Ed” Pinner, WSLM, Salem, IN. There’s all this ancient tech jammed into every corner. Reel-to-reel deck; Fidelipac carts; CD players (alas, I don’t see any turntables) and propped up in front of the controls… almost too small to see… an early iPod. Texas Slip is playing the hits from his iPod. Sigh. (Photo by Mike Cady)