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by Anne Howland
The Ottawa Sun
Jun 21, 2005
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Several days after Canada's broadcasting
regulator granted three licences for pay radio services, I'm still puzzling
over the concept.
While I realize I'm a late adopter of all things technologically enhanced,
I still think getting people to pay a monthly fee for something they
can get for free at the turn of a knob is going to be a hard sell.
Apparently, pay radio, which generally uses satellite transmission,
is aimed mainly at remote communities -- where presumably there's crappy
regular radio reception -- and at people who spend a lot of time in
transit.
Toronto's Solutions Research Group predicts there will be one million
satellite radio units in use in Canada by the end of 2007. Car buyers
aged 20 to 34 and families with "influential teens" (is there
any other kind?) will be top adopters.
Other experts suggest the new medium will be slow to catch on, and conventional
radio will not shrink from a good fight.
I guess the appeal of pay radio is its lack of commercials. The CRTC
banned the new radio services from carrying local ads on Canadian channels
and is limiting national ads to six minutes per hour. For travellers,
the annoyance of poor or lost reception is also reduced.
But it's not as if radio is the only option -- think CDs, cassette tapes,
iPods, MP3 players, the list goes on.
And many increasingly offer individually tailored audio choices.
Perhaps the introduction of pay radio is like the transition from "free"
TV to cable, digital or satellite TV. But that transition worked because
"country cable" generally meant a steady diet of your regional
CBC affiliate and a fuzzy view of a handful of other local stations.
Anyone (like myself) who made the leap from "free" to satellite
TV thought they'd died and gone to broadcast heaven.
That just isn't the case for radio, at least for the vast majority of
Canadians living on the south side of the country.
Which brings up another interesting point. The CRTC says many Canadians
are already illegally tapping into satellite radio in the U.S.. A fee-paying
Canuck with a valid mailing address in the contiguous 48 U.S. states
can buy a satellite radio receiver and listen to it across Canada. Analysts
suggest that as many as 100,000 Canadian users get the service this
way.
WHIZ-BANG IDEAS
Other flies in the ointment include the CRTC's onerous requirements
for Canadian content, the provision that some 5% of revenues be set
aside for domestic talent development and the fact conventional radio
stations will fight tooth and nail to safeguard their $1-billion industry,
which depends on advertising to pay the bills.
Pay radio seems to be yet another of these whiz-bang ideas that puts
the technology ahead of the business plan. It will be interesting to
see if the latter catches up with the former. |
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