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Being that I work for two radio stations, our broadcast group is naturally a member of the National Association of Broadcasters. While we use this as a way to educate our sales team on what is going on with our competitors, I recently started doing research on my own to stay up to date with what is going in the radio industry in general. As I was looking through nab.org, I ran across an "Innovation in Radio" section of their website. This area of focus gives broadcasters the ability stay connected with the advancements in the radio industry, as well as find "more innovative ways to deliver the high-quality content and services that local communities expect and deserve" (NAB.org, 2011).
Within this "Innovation in Radio" section, they have an article on NAB's Technology Advocacy Program called FASTROAD that was launched in 2007. FASTROAD is there “to help accelerate deployment of new broadcast technologies” (NAB.org, 2011). I really like this initiative, because like many industries, the leaders and executives can sometimes be stuck in the technology of the 70’s and 80’s. FASTROAD will force people to become more educated about the new happenings of their career space because it deploys news and information more quickly and through many more mediums.
FASTROAD has helped to disperse information on the benefits of FM-capable cell phones, HD Radio, and iHeartRadio just to name a few. Though all broadcast groups don’t adopt new technologies as quickly as others I believe FASTROAD will be major reason in why competitive research within the radio industry should be an ongoing task. Leaders within this industry, and any industry at that, are always the ones that are the first to jump on the bandwagon of new and meaningful initiatives and technologies. Increasing your market share, I think, depends highly on this and will make or break how well you perform in comparison to your competition.
With where our country is in terms of our economic state is what determines how consumers will react to their spending. Adopting the newest technologies within the radio industry will allow advertisements to broadcast in the best possible way, which will in turn attract consumers to business that are advertising on any specific station, which will then increase the rate in which businesses stay on the air, and alternatively increasing revenues brought into radio stations. It is very interesting to see how things within the radio industry are so inter-related. But, at the end of the day, my view is that it is very important to make sure new technologies are embraced as quickly as possible.
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