Adults and teens will spend nearly five months (3,518 hours) next year watching television, surfing the Internet, reading daily newspapers and listening to personal music devices. That’s only one of thousands of nuggets of information on Americana and the world in the U.S. Census Bureau’s Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2007.

According to projections from a communications industry forecast, people will spend 65 days in front of the TV, 41 days listening to radio and a little over a week on the Internet in 2007.   Adults will spend about a week reading a daily newspaper and teens and adults will spend another week listening to recorded music. Consumer spending for media is forecasted to be $936.75 per person.

US Census Bureau Press Release

According to this article in Response Magazine, Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio may be closer to announcing a merger.  It makes sense.  As one company they would get to the magical critical mass of subscribers much more quickly.  But, there won't be any competition out there to keep pricing in check. 

Here's the New York Times article on this subject.

From cNet News -

"Google said Tuesday that it will pay $102 million in cash for DMarc Broadcasting, a Newport Beach, Calif., company that works with radio advertisers in the sales, scheduling, delivery and reporting of radio ads.

The deal calls for Google to make additional cash payments based on product integration, net revenue and advertising inventory targets. Those payments could total $1.13 billion over the next three years, Google said.

Google plans to integrate DMarc technology into its AdWords platform, creating a new radio ad distribution channel for Google advertisers."

Link to full story at cNet

Story at Forbes

Technorati tags: Google, Google Radio, DMarc Broadcasting, AdWords, Advertising, Radio Advertising

More news from the CES show -

Motorola Inc. unveiled an ambitious music radio service for cell phones that also plays over car and home stereos.  Motorola iRadio, featuring 435 channels, would be sold by wireless service providers to their subscribers for between $7 and $10 per month -- a few dollars cheaper than the satellite radio networks that would be among the phone-based service's immediate rivals.

Story from Business Week

Link to Motorola iRadio site

It will be interesting to see how this will affect the marketplace,especially XM and Sirius satellite radio.  The Motorola product will be cheaper @ $7 per month.

Technorati tags: iRadio, Motorola, CES

Radio is under fire. Radio companies think it is about the technology. Fred Jacobs suggests they should start with the listeners.

Read the manifesto at changethis.com.

Link

XM Satellite Radio more than doubled its revenue and its subscription revenue for the second quarter and said it projects it will have 6 million subscribers by the end of the year, up from its previous estimate of 5.5 million. Second quarter revenue was $125.5 million, up 136 percent from $53 million in the second three months of 2004.

For the second quarter, Sirius posted a net loss per share of 13 cents, versus a loss of 11 cents in the same period last year. Net subscriber additions were 365,931 for the quarter, up 184% year-over-year, bringing the total number of subscribers to 1,814,626 at the end of the quarter. Sirius increased its 2005 subscriber guidance to 3 million from 2.7 million.

The increase in net loss per share likely means subscriber acquisition costs were higher.  That seems to be the major negative weighing on Sirius and XM.  But subscribers are a major asset that doesn't show up on the balance sheet.  At this point no one would know how to value subscribers or determine the present value since the retention and lapse rates are a bit speculative.

My unscientific guess is that the retention rates will be high and the lapse rates low.  This based simply on the fact that everyone (and at this point I mean everyone) I know who has either satellite service loves it.  If retention rates are high, the value of those subscribers is going to be substantial.  Anyone remember the early days of cable TV?

From the New York Post -

XM Satellite Radio has reached an alliance with Samsung to produce a new portable device that plays both satellite radio and MP3s.

It marks the second portable device offered from XM, and the first in the industry to combine satellite radio and the ability to download digital audio files from online music services.

The device — which does not yet have a name — is to be sold during the holiday season.

Fast Company has an interesting article for you radio dudes and dudettes out there about a massive programming change for WCBS-FM in NYC.

Link.

Here's an excerpt - "The idea is to replicate your iPod on shuffle. The station expands the playlist from about 400-500 songs to 1,200, goes from one format to having elements of about 10 formats, cuts down the chatter--the new Jack-FM has no DJs--and hopes to fend off you turning off your car radio in favor of whatever podcast you just downloaded.

It's an interesting strategy, obviously meant to compete not only with iPod but also with satellite radio."

Maybe the strategy is interesting, but it sounds jacked to me.  People who want that format already have an iPod (with their choices of songs) or satellite radio to choose from.  Let's see what happens.  I think it will fail.  Broadening the format to try to attract more listeners would be like competing with Amazon by trying to sell books door to door.  The strategies that worked in previous wars aren't always relevant in today's conflicts.

Roy Williams, the Wizard of Ads, has a couple of free radio scripts (written by Anthony Garcia & Dave Nevland) hanging on his website for any churches with the guts to run them.

Follow this link.  Then scroll down the page until you reach, "Ads for Your Church."  There are two links for the two scripts.

Or, you can access directly from here  -

Click here to download Ad #1
Click here to download Ad #2

Please let me know what you think by leaving a comment on this post.  Thanks.

New research published by the Barna Group shows that  while 56% of adults attend church services in a typical month, a much larger percentage is exposed to religious information and experiences through various forms of media.  Read the summary <= click there.

Here's a point that was particularly interesting to me - "People under 40 years of age show limited interest in Christian media of any type. Much of the stagnation or decline evident in the audience share statistics is attributable to the relative growth of the Baby Bust and Mosaic generations within the national population."

The research doesn't go into the "whys" of this limited interest, but let me venture an opinion.