Mark Ramsey interrupts his holiday to panic unnecessarily about Ford and Microsoft getting together. He appears to be assuming that the Microsoft deal with Ford will result in streaming internet radio to cars, and shouts:

What is YOUR group doing to be in front of this trend? What is YOUR group doing to be in every car in every way in 2007 and beyond? What content do you have that every Ford will want to stream? And where does this leave satellite radio and especially HD radio?

In the words of Michael Winner - calm down, dear.

2007 is going to be the year that we redefine the word ‘radio’. It actually means, in this context, ‘audio entertainment’: which is what, I think, Mark is missing.

Radio doesn’t have to be live. For the BBC alone, 12 million on-demand radio programmes were listened-to. The second most popular? A topical music breakfast show.
Radio doesn’t have to be packaged as radio. Virgin Radio sees over 160,000 downloads of its podcasts every month.
Radio doesn’t have to be on a radio. 16% of commercial radio’s time-spent-listening in the UK isn’t on a radio. 28% of Virgin Radio’s TSL isn’t on a radio either.
Radio doesn’t have to be free. LBC apparently has around ten thousand listeners paying to get commercial-free podcasts of its speech programmes. (Let’s not forget that commercial radio makes around 2.5p - 4 cents - per listener, per hour).

In my car, I listen to my own music, some decent podcasts, and my radio. Streaming to cars (even if this is what this announcement means, which I don’t think it does) is not the issue for radio businesses here. Instead we should make sure that we get our unfair share of entertainment time with our audio entertaiment brands. Which perhaps means…
1. Providing music (on CD or via download), using our trusted brands to guide our audience
2. Providing podcasts to make your listener consume more of your output when the live station doesn’t appeal (or isn’t available)
3. Giving a choice of platforms and of stations to keep people listening longer. And yes, that includes additional choice on HD Radio if you can.

What would be the worst thing to do is to panic blindly about the additional choice that streaming internet radio to cars might bring - especially when apparently choice is bad.

The audio entertainment business is a good one to be in. Let’s concentrate on that, rather than panicking every time we (mis)read a headline.

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